An Update on Substance Format Support in Unity

@ans_unity : Any idea if they are going to be charging for the plugin? Can't seem to find anything about that.
Would be kinda lame to shell out more money for stuff I've already bought to use.

10 dollars or something is fine, but if they charge like 30 dollars or something I'd just export the textures as Bitmaps and loose all procedural stuff in the editor, ain't no way I'm gonna spend tons of money just to import something lol.

 

I doubt the plugin will cost anything, as the tools you need to make the substances are already subscription-based. There would be riots and lynchings.

 

@ans_unity
Yeah I figured they'd probably be free, but if they weren't, I'd just export bitmaps and go about my day lol. Now 10 dollars or whatever wouldn't be a problem for me, but being I'll be paying for 1 year of updates every year, it would technically only be right if the plugins were free lol.

Exactly what is the reasoning behind abandoning Substance from the Unity workflow?
Is there something they can do that the Unity version couldn't?

But I suppose we'll find out what the price is when 2018.1 comes I suppose.

 

Could we expect to see the plugin on the Asset Store the same day when 2018.1 Beta 1 launches or do we need to wait for the official release?

 

I still don't see how this is a good thing.

I would have made the engine clean and mean and make optional modules supported by unity as extras on top of the base module. some kind of extentions.

 

They are working on that, It's called "Package Manager". More info here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/what-is-packman.482001/#post-3135334

 

How is the ProceduralMaterial class going to be handled?

 

I do not like the idea of getting my projects getting more and more clogged with extensions which all my projects will use.

Unity should have a special "Common Extensions" folder outside the projects, which I could share these addons with all the projects.

 

Hi Everyone,

The Substance Plugin will be free. I will have more details to share soon but this will be a positive move for both Allegorithmic and Unity. Unity is a great partner and we are very excited about what we will be doing with the new 2018 substance support. The original integration has become old and we are now able to rework the entire plugin with our new framework as well as deploy timely updates to coincide with new Substance Engine features. We will be wrapping the Painter Live Link and Substance Source integrations all into this new single plugin package. This will greatly streamline Substance support for users in the Substance ecosystem.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Cheers,
wes

 

I have one concern and its a big one, before an asset-store creator could be sure that a user of unity had a substance shader capability build into unity and could provide shaders without having to worry about if they worked or not.

as of 2018 right now this becomes an issue. because the shader will not work.

I don't mind Allegorithmic doing the integrations, in fact I prefer that, I do mind that it's a separate plugin.

Will the plugin auto download if a substance shader is detected? like Otoy is doing with the Octane integration? perhaps that way it can be all-right.

 

Will these features be separate DLLs, so an edit-time feature like Painter Live Link does not inflate the build size of projects where SBSAR files are included in the build?

 

That concept would be useful for reasons other than Substance. For example, most developers have a small set of edit-time utilities that they habitually load into Unity whenever starting a new project. (In my case, Flipbook's "Script Inspector 3" and a couple of others are always first-in.)

The issue with this kind of feature would be version compatibility, for those of us who have more than one Unity version simultaneously installed (in different directories, of course). This could be handled by careful directory structuring, but it is something to consider.

 

My game uses a dynamic aproach to Substance materials. I generate masks in Unity, change textures dynamically and get special generated textures via code.
I fear this change will cut the freedom of the Substance engine, throwing me back maybe 6 month because I need to code my own procedural material system. :/

 

Will the package manager be smart in a way that it knows that for certain types of files or projects a cetain package is needed? so it can promt for installing the missing package?

 

When is the Substance Source plugin going be supported for 2018.1 beta? It shows a "Unity Version Not Supported" currently.

 

Since 2017.3 still has the built-in support it is rather hard to figure out how to try and use the new substance plugin and sbsar importer without confusing the two in this unity version. I have imported the Substance source plugin. Still i'm only seeing the old integration in the Unity Editor's inspector when examining sbsar's. Do you have any guidelines/docs on how to disable the old integration and enable the new substance import functionality? I would like to import an existing sbsar which i have in a unity project using only the new importer, create a few material instances based on it and use those on some objects in a scene. In other words I want to know how much the sbsar authoring and usage workflow within the Unity Editor will change in 2018.1 compared to 2017.3.

 

Support for Substance assets has been deprecated and in no loguer available: Assets/StylizedWoodVol01/Materials/Wood.sbsar

This what not what I wanted to see, breaking substance support is actually not a good thing, it should auto download the plugin and make it just work.

and there is even a typo in the unity warning : loguer



From the site:
SUBSTANCE IN UNITY
Integrated since version 3.5 in 2011.
Now used by more than 50 000 game developers worldwide.



Soon :
SUBSTANCE IN UNITY
Deprecated since unity 2018.1 in 2018
Now used by less than 50 000 game developers worldwide.
because you have to manually find the plugin

 

The issue is that I like to see the future unity versions auto download a plugin from the alogorimic site when unity detects a substance shader. will this be the way ? I have not seen any answer to that question.

It could be the same way OTOY Octane plugin is auto downloaded when a otoy scene is detected.

 

My main concern is errors in the console for existing asset store packages, most unity users that are not programmers don't know how to deal with those errors. and will blame the asset store author and will give it bad ratings.

for example https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/96422

This asset will give this error:


because is has a sbsar shader.

The solution seems that users download the plugin, normally this would be fine, but this is a different case.
because it used to be build in, and people relied on the support in packages.

Please think this through. because the way its now is not user friendly.

 

Will the official 2018.1 + the new substance plugin pack be able to correctly upgrade a 2017.3 project with all sbsar, their materials (currently saved in the sbsar.meta file) and their applications within a project? How is this supposed to work exactly since the project upgrade happens as the project is open in the 2018.1 editor the first time and we are only allowed to import the plugin to the project after it has been upgraded and loaded in the editor? Will Unity correctly detect that there's substance assets that need upgrading and will it automatically include the plugin to the project as part of the initial load project upgrade?

 

I just want to bump my earlier question about the possible depreciation of the ProceduralMaterials class; how is this change going to be handled?

A second, and somewhat more ancillary question - plugin-ising this - does this mean we can now write arbitrary file format handlers for Unity as developers?

 

Hi, thanks for some of the info that is emerging. I have just released an asset that is totally dependent on procedural materials, the asset took 2.5 years to make on/off and I launched last week.

My main concerns are:

1. 2017.3 users are getting the deprecation warning and there is no way for me to get around that. As mentioned above, this concerns buyers and can affect ratings. I am releasing an update with info in the meta data, readme and documentation - but that will only do so much to easy concerns (if they even see it).

Would it not be possible to maintain native Procedural Material support for 2018 cycle and simply allow the new plugin to override? This would remove warnings, put less pressure on the urgency of the plugin from Allegorithmic - although I don't know if it's feasible from a technical perspective of course.

2. Dependency of a third party plugin. The asset will go from working out of the box to "you also need this to make it work". I saw the native use as a strength with Unity compared to other engines. I strongly agree with above mentioned option to auto-detect use of procedural materials and suggest import of the dependency - make it as simple as possible for the user.

With the above said - I'll take this opportunity to "file a request" to Allegorithmic plugin to please support 4k-8k textures, GPU processing and 16 bit per color channel. That would do amazing wonders for assets in the category like mine with full planets and space scenes utilizing substance materials.

 

FWIW, although this will be less convenient, it would not deter me from buying a Substance-based asset. In fact, I actively seek out procedural textures in art assets because they can be easily customized and because it really shrinks build size.

 

Maybe its the fact that the word depricated is used in the error message is whats mostly bothering me, because it sounds like its gone while its not.

 

Agree different wording should be used. Something like "transfered responsiblities to a 3rd party" etc, this makes it seem like its dying.

 

When will you deprecate .png and .psd files?

I can already see this coming:

Unity R&D is on a mission to make the Unity editor as lightweight and modular as possible. Over time, this will allow us, our partners and Asset Store publishers to deploy updates for specific parts of Unity without having to launch an entire new version of the editor. It will also translate to a much smaller initial installation size for the editor, and greater freedom to choose exactly which additional features to subsequently install for your project. Deprecating built-in support for Photoshop files fits well into this overall philosophy.

 

These type posts don't help at all and probably just discourage official developer activity on the forums and wastes their time. You have already made point earlier and there is no reason to continue bashing.

 

Just venting my frustration about the way it seems to be handled, no worries I'm allright now

And will leave it at this. I think you agree that most of what I said was constructive, just the last one was sarcasm

 

@ans_unity Thanks for keeping us informed!

 

Thanks for that. TBH, I came searching for this thread because I saw the error message and thought, "Oh, s**t! They're dropping Substance?!" I was glad to learn otherwise, but it was a scary moment.

 

Thanks for info. Please consider changing wording in the remaining 2017.3+ releases too for the same reason that "deprecated" may sound scary to customers =)

 

Hello!
I`m an asset store publisher and all of my models has substance materials.
So now my custumers has to buy this plugin?
Or if it will be free, i have to warn them to load it to use my models?
Hmm.. smells 80% sales down =))

 

Main question for publishers is can you still make substance materials and sell them on the unity asset store?

 

From the release notes of assets I use:

So basically in bugfix releases asset developers are removing the features I use to make the assets compatible. Not only can't I use Substance, I can't even use the bugfix releases.

 

For, at least, the 2018.1 and maybe the next 3-4 medium update (all in 2018), one thing that "could" be quite useful to implement is a custom red warning when substance material is used that, instead of just telling the user that the code is deprecated or that sbsar file are not recognized as materials source, it would be quite a game changer to not only display a clear message explaining that sbsar/substance materials now requires an external plugin, but also that if the user double click the warning, it could open the Asset Store onto the actual plugin asset page.

Of course, it's not something that should be done for every assets in the asset store, but at least for those assets that are released at the same time as the official release of 2018.1 and that replace previously integrated features. Even if some of those now-external features ends up being delayed, it wouldn't be hard to simply create a store asset page with no download available (for now) as the 2018.1 is released that has the custom warning integrated already and opens the asset store pages.

After a couple of version update (like during mid-2018 or near end-2018, you could remove those custom message because, by then, a majority of the users will be already aware of the requirement of importing the relevant files from the asset store. Call it "a transition" if you will so that you don't start seeing a flood of complains and questions about why the users' sbsar files doesn't work anymore (or whatever happens that might relate to it).

While the Asset store page and the asset itself is the responsibility of their relevant parties (so Allegorithmic should make the store page in this case before the release of 2018.1 even if they can't release the asset yet), this idea does involve a bit of lightweight implementation from Unity itself (as custom warning and link toward the asset store within Unity itself is not something other can do remotely.)

 

will the proceduralmaterial keyword will still work if you have the allegorithmic plugin installed ?

 

Is Substance plugin going to be available via Package Manager?