Substance Plugin for 3Ds Max / Vray - Different Results

[Anonymous]

Hey There
I Encountered a problem, at least it seems like one ^^, with the substance Plugin tool
Im Using Max 2018 and Vray 3.60.04
The Plugin itself works fine for me in this setup, but theres a big bummer.

As my favourite renderfarm (Rebusfarm) is not supporting substance nodes I tried to bake the textures in the node with the substance Output settings -> Bake Outputs button.
When I copied my Vray material and put the new baked textures in, I got a "completely" different result (green does not turn into yellow, but you get what I mean).

I realy love this tool, as it is pretty fast and I get my stuff done realy quick, but as long as the baking node doesnt "work" I can not realy use it. 
Or I m doing something COMPLETELY Wrong?! 
Any suggestions?

All the best ^^

[Anonymous]

 tryied some new and different settings.
First of all there is a difference when you Export Bitmap and PNG (Jpeg will be tested next) colourwise.
I tried to show it with the attached picture.

I checked the Color Correction nodes of the Substance to Vray nodes.
Copied  and added them to a standard Vray MTL, plugged my Bitmaps and Pngs in them an switched the Color Correction nodes ON and Off... 
Result is, either when switched On as when switched off, I dont get the result of the Substance Material.

At the moment I m not sure what to try else, maybe you have a new idea?

What you see:
Picture one is a comparison between all Materials

Picture two is a comparison between the Imported PNG Diffuse and the Diffuse created with the substance Material

All the best ^^

[Anonymous]

I reworked on the Scene setup, To show the differences not only in the Diffuse.

There is only one Top light and as you can see, the Materials react differently on it.

I have no clue on my site how to get an evenly result.

[Anonymous]

One last thing, 
as the results were differently when baking the outputs with the substance tool inside of 3DsMax and exporting the same substance material in Substance player as PNG with default settings, it seems like there is a color correction already happening on the textures.

I know this is more a point on the allegorithmic side, but I thought maybe someone here encounterd these differences aswell

All the best

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

This is a reply of Galen Helfter who helped me in the Allegorithmic forum.

"They look like they're one step off from each other with a gamma, so you could try a color correct node afterwards on them.

3ds Max assumes the color space based on the file type, such linear for exr, sRGB for png, etc., regardless of what the encoded color space is, so sometimes they need to be corrected.

If you want the darker color, then you could try applying the sRGB gamma of 2.2 to the lighter nodes to match the darker color. To go from the dark to the lighter color, you can apply the inverse sRGB as the gamma, which would be 1.0 / 2.2, or approximately 0.454545. You should be able to do this using a color correct node, although I think you may need to check advanced light properties to do that."

I tried this but couldnt get an evenly result. I realy need a solution where the results of the substance material and BMP or PNG are equal.

[Anonymous]

Okey, after watchin several tutorials about Linear workflow and gamma correction, I think I get it a bit better.

So it seems that the substance Plugin in 3Ds Max (or 3DsMax itself) is exporting Gamma corrected PNGs while the Substance Player is doing it in Linear Workflow, is this right?!

It confused me alot and still is... 
I m sorry if I was writing the same with new examples ^^ 

[hagen.deloss]

Hi @Anonymous

Great to hear from you on the forums, I wish I had seen your post sooner! I'm happy that Galen was able to point you in the right direction with the color correction node! 

I'm curious if you had the same experience if you loaded in Tiff or Targa files for the texture maps? I haven't worked with Substance so it's interesting that it color corrects on certain files. 3DS Max doesn't do that (to my knowledge, unless explicitly told to (with a color correction nod, as Galen suggested)).

It sounds like this came full circle, are you looking for further feedback and help?

[Anonymous]

Hey Hagen, thank you for commenting 😉

I ve made a new try, a few days ago and got pretty close to the results of the Susbtance tool.

Would be great if this one could help someone else ^^

All the best and have agreat day!

[hagen.deloss]

Hi @Anonymous

This is a great breakdown! I would recommend you duplicate post some of this information on the Tips, Tricks and workflow thread! It gets a lot of views here on the Max boards, so it's a great place to share knowledge!

Additionally, if you ever want to share some of your 3D work, you can post it to the 3DS Max project showcase thread!

Looking forward to seeing you around the forums 😄

[RobH2]

@Anonymous . this is very helpful. I'm testing it out. I'm having terrible problems with Substance2 nodes crippling my system, even with scenes less than 100 polys. I can't use more than one Substance2 in a scene with VRay and I'm spending hours trying to Bake out the maps and making them match the Substance2 .sbsar. I hope this helps. We need for someone to write a script so it will convert the Bake to a standard Vraymtl automatically. 

[RobH2]

Substances are just massively misbehaving on my machine. Reinstalls and updates have no effect. Case in point, in the attached image, using Sebastian's material workflow (with a few small Gamma tweaks) the Baked version looks like I expect it to in both the viewport and the progressive IPR render. But, the Substance, while it looks OK in the viewport, renders way, way off (the left-hand cube in the IPR window). Argggg..... I tried it on 3 different .sbsar files from Substance inside of Max and all 3 substances render way off. 

[domo.spaji]

That's not the difference you'll get with gamma changing.

Maybe reflections from some environment, in viewport you don't have any...

+ You don't have to change gamma anyway. Better say - shouldnt.

+ There's not much sense in author experimenting, like color correction with gamma 1 = nothing, inverting colors...

+ Max will read and write gamma in PNG files 

  - read if that info is written in file in app where it's made

  - if is made in Max than there's no if, save it however from Max, load with default - that is read from file - you'll see different images in image viewers, same in Max

! Except if saving grayscale PNG - that is not meant to be color corrected - save with gamma 1

+++ If material have option "show realistic in viewport" there is no need to check in other renderers

      - Except  rare things like some math, mix... maps in bump slot - V-ray mat. can show even those.

If there is anything worth in Substance mat. (shipping with Max) you will lose it by rendering maps.

And yes they are killing Max, not Vray