Does anyone want to help me out on Substance Designer?

[Slaytexify]

I'm having a really tough time here. So many issues...not working. Even the most pro users are scratching my head when they see the issues I have. Can someone here please tell me why my material is not showing up in the 3d view? Please don't ask me the same simple questions... "Did you right-click and view outputs in 3d view?" - yes... I did. "Did you right click and reset and view outputs in 3d view." Yes... I did that too... 

There's something I'm just not doing...and I'd be happy to pay for the answer since I only get crickets on the discord channel...and basically no help at all. No support for this app exists except this ..area. Any help would be so awesome... and I'd be so grateful to reach in my wallet and pay you to help...since that seems to be the only way I can get help. lol

[Mark_Edwards]

Most likely you don't have any outputs defined or they are not named in a way that can auto map.

Easiest way to just check everything is working and get going is open empty graph, hovering over the graph hit space bar and search for base material add that to the graph.

right click and hold down right click and drag, you should see a little texture square under your cursor.  drag and drop that on to the 3d model, that will automatically map all the outputs and apply the base material.

play with the sliders in the base material get a feel for what they do.

then to get a feel for what a fairly standard prb set of output look like right click on that base material and select create output nodes, don't create all the hidden ones, if you right click hold and drag one of those over the model it will ask you what channel to apply it to and you can experiment with that.

finally to start with I would enable some basic inputs on the base material and use those to start experimenting and plugging stuff in this will make your model go black because it override the default sliders in the base material and you haven't plugged anything in there yet.  for convenience you can just do the right click drag on the base material even with the nodes coming off it.  Over time you will create your own node groups to be more exact for what you want.

Unless it's an "atomic" node which just means it's compiled with no node tree, one of the best ways to learn is look at how the nodes are constructed.  If you take the base material node for example, if you right click on it and open the reference you can see how that node is created, 

for this example you can even ctrl a and copy the displayed node tree and paste into your graph and edit it / play around etc.

to clear the materials to start again I just do it from the viewer , if you have multiple graphs open it can be a bit confusing what material is applied as it will swap depends on what graph has focus.

[Slaytexify]

Thank you! This is amazing. I've done a lot of tutorials and I have a great understanding of this, but for some reason, when I open up the graph again, the material won't show up in the 3d view. If I stay over my copy and pasting in the nodes again and reconnecting them to the outputs...it works again. I also don't have the base material node... I have all of them spread out. I will look at what you sent in detail. I'm sure some of what you put together will shed some great light on my frustrations and help me to move forward. Appreciate the reply! 

[Slaytexify]

"If I start over"

[Mark_Edwards]

Hope it helps, it's weird there is not a lot of quality current training about for designer or active communities, never has been, I think it's probably because the main users are using it in a company settings so just don't post. 

Once you get over the initial learning hump it's good so worth sticking with it.

keep in mind you don't have to have a base material node, I was just using that as a concise way to show how it worked and an easy way to show what names designer is looking for. 

If it's still problematic I would do as Dave suggested and create a simple graph demonstrating the issue and post that so people can try and reproduce.

Mark

[Slaytexify]

Thank you so much, Mark! Super helpful.   I actually had the good fortune of finally having found one of the super experts in this who works at a company as a professional substance designer - designer. He's showing me the nuances of this powerful tool. One thing we discovered is that rhino doesn't export planar surfaces with high poligonal count even if you export with the highest mesh settings... so normal maps (displacement) don't work. But he also found that I wasn't crazy... The issues I had were real because substance wasn't working correctly at times. Maybe a driver issue... not sure. Anyhow, thank you for the words of encouragement! Cheers.

[davescm]

@Slaytexify Can you post a link to your graph and I can take a look at it

Dave