Substance Engine, integrated with UE4, lets users directly import Substance (.sbsar) files in their UE4 project. When loaded, the plugin will expose (dynamically create widgets) the substance’s parameters, so that users can tweak them in the Unreal Editor and ask Substance Engine to update the textures defined in the same Substance file.
These parameters can also be accessed via scripting / Blue Print for runtime recomputation of the texture maps. Substance textures are shader-agnostic and will work as input to any shader.
Overall, the main advantages of using Substance files instead of traditional bitmap textures are:
Productivity via in-engine look development and texture aspect tweaking.
Reduction of texture file size on disk: faster downloads, happier players who don’t need to wait days before playing this new shiny game.
Dynamic texturing via runtime modifications / tweaking of Substance textures.
Is there any example on how to change substance parameters in Blue Print and scripting? I used substances easily in Unity (and changed them in runtime very easily), but I’m having some difficulties in Unreal.
There is another advantage you guys may not have noticed. We’ve been using substances to handle user-created textures. We can send parameters for the substance file over the network instead of a texture file, which is fantastic - no need to send loads of big textures backwards and forwards before games can begin
It seems projects built using standard builds of the 4.2 engine need to be re-built/re-compiled to work with the 4.2 Substance engine builds. Is that correct or is it just me?
For example, when trying to open the latest Vehicle Marketplace demo with the Substance 4.2 build I get “Project modules are missing or out of date. Would you like to recompile them?”
Yes, it’s a great way to simplify custom content over the network!
I have pushed a new release, 4.2.0.1 to help with this. We are still working on standalone support in general but you should be able to build them now.
This is correct, UE4 will detect the Substance version of UE4 and the marketplace project are out of sync and ask to be updated.
