How to activate "Flow Map Grooming"?

[caleb6C19]

Howdy,

I'm using this resource (Shaved Hair Material) from the substance 3D asset store in 3D Painter.

It has an option for "Flow Map Grooming" which I assumed meant you could feed a flow map to control the direction.

Problem is, I have no clue how to feed a map into this material.

My questsions are:

1.  Is this feature meant to be useable in Painter, or would this be activated in Designer?
2.  Is this meant to take in a flow map, or is it saying it will generate a flow map ( I assume if you painted with the material on a brush instead of loading it in as a fill)?
3.  If it's meant to take in a flow map inside of Painter, how do I plug a map into this material?

I've attached screenshots of the Properties panel when its in fill mode. Of note, there is nothing listed under "Image Inputs" when it's opened.

Thanks!

[davescm]

Hi

If you look at that material in Substance Designer, the button activates an input called Flow_Map with a usage of 'flow_map'. So you are correct in your expectation that the button is activating an input to teh material. At present though I cannot see a way of getting a channel to feed into that input map. There is no dedicated flow_map channel in Painter.

The Painter documentation confirms this (no dedicated channel) and whilst it gives instructions on how to paint a flowmap onto a normal channel it does not show how to get that into the material input.

https://substance3d.adobe.com/documentation/spdoc/flow-map-painting-143327274.html

So I would love to be proved wrong, but at present it looks like a material input made in readiness for a future channel.

Dave

[caleb6C19]

That's what I feared! Thank you for the thorough answer Dave. That resource on painting flow maps looks great as well