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Substance

Adobe Substance 3D Designer is a powerful, Node-based texturing tool designed for the creation of procedural textures. The textures created here (export them using the Publish command) are made available as assets for external programs using Substance Archive files (file extension *.sbsar). This means that Cinema 4D can import these substances and process them as material. In addition to substances that can be purchased (e.g., https://substance3d. adobe.com/assets), there are also freely available substances (e.g., at https://substance3d.adobe.com/community-assets).


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A quick overview

The following diagram shows the various options that are possible when interacting between Adobe Substance 3D Assets and Cinema 4D. This range of options ensures the support of the different renderers (classic Cinema 3D or Redshift) and the different Node systems (Node Material or Shader Graph material).


To summarize:


Note on loading Substance 3D assets for Redshift:

The easiest option for creating a Redshift material for a Substance 3D asset is to simply drag the .sbsar file of a Substance 3D asset from the Finder or Explorer directly onto the Cinema 4D interface (e.g., onto the Material Manager, the Viewport, the Object Manager or the Attribute Manager). A Redshift Node material will then automatically be created, which reads the corresponding channels of the asset via its own Substance Material Node(see right-hand branch of the above illustration).

Alternatively, you can open a file dialog for loading a Substance 3D asset in .sbsar format directly in the Material Manager under Create/Support/Substance. After selecting the asset, a Redshift Node Material will also be created for the loaded asset.

If an existing Substance 3D asset should be used in several projects, it may also be useful to save it in the Asset Browser. The Substance 3D material can then be accessed from there at any time. To do this, drag the desired .sbsar file from the Finder or Explorer directly onto the Cinema 4D Asset Browser. A dialog box will then open in which you can select the desired name and also the category within the Asset Browser under which the Substance 3D material should be found from now on.
Further information on creating, managing and retrieving assets from the Asset Browser can be found on these pages in the documentation.

Further information on handling Substance 3D assets when rendering with Redshift can also be found on this page.



Note on loading Substance 3D assets into classic materials:

If you use Extensions/Substance-Engine/Load Substance... for loading, Substance 3D assets will be loaded as materials for the classic default renderer, even if Redshift is selected as the active renderer in the Render Settings. Redshift can also render these materials directly, but it does not support displacement via the RS Object tag or the Sub-Polygon Displacement option of the materials. Objects must therefore themselves have a sufficient number of subdivisions to show displacement in the rendering.

If the Standard Renderer or the Physical Renderer is active, dragging and dropping a Substance 3D asset onto the Cinema 4D interface will also automatically create a matching Cinema 4D standard material (see left branch of the above illustration).



Note on converting a Substance 3D asset loaded as a Cinema 4D material to a Redshift Shader Graph material:

If Substance 3D assets have been loaded via Extensions/Substance Engine/Load Substance ..., they will also appear in the separate Substance Asset Manager, which can also be opened via Extensions/Substance Engine. If a Substance 3D asset has been selected there, it can also be converted into a Redshift Shader Graph material in the Material Manager using the command Material/Functions/Create materialsfrom selected Substance assets. The option to use displacement and the RS Object tag is then also available as normal. However, the assignment of the textures generated by the Substance 3D asset to the properties and channels of the Redshift Material should also be checked again manually. It may be the case that individual Substance properties have to be newly or additionally linked in order to achieve the same result as in Substance 3D Designer. Detailed information on the use of Substance 3D Assets in Shader Graph materials can be found on this page.


Classic materials for Substance 3D Assets

Note: Please note the options at Running Cinema 4D in the Preferences menu. There you can greatly accelerate the texture calculation using your graphics card.


How does a Substance Asset work in Cinema 4D?

A Substance 3D asset is created in Adobe Substance 3D Designer. This usually consists of a number of Nodes with a large number of their own parameters. Within Substance 3D Designer, you can define which of these parameters are to be output. These parameters can then also be changed in Cinema 4D to influence the calculation of the Substance 3D asset. The integration of the Substance Engine in Cinema 4D automatically adjusts the output textures accordingly.

Below you will find information on how to customize the Substance 3D asset settings after a classic Cinema 4D material has been created via Extensions/Substance Engine/Load Substance.... However, the same options can also be used if you have selected a loaded asset via the Substance Asset Manager and created a Redshift Shader Graph material in the Material Manager via Material/Tools/Create Materials from Selected Substance Assets. This is because the same Substance shaders are used in the Shader Graph material as in the classic Cinema 4D material.
Redshift Node Materials, on the other hand, use their own Substance Material Node, where changes to the asset settings can be made directly. In this case, you will find all the information you need on this page. The following information is not relevant for you in this case.


All Substance 3D asset settings and the resulting output textures, which can be found in the Asset tab, were defined in Substance 3D Designer (Substance Dark Stone Tiles: copyright Kay Vriend).

An asset selected in the Substance Asset Manager makes its parameters available in the Attribute Manager, as shown in the figure above. You will find the path to the loaded asset under the number 1. This also makes it easy to update or replace an asset at a later date. The resolution of the textures calculated by the asset can be individually adjusted using the width and height parameters(see section 2).
Depending on the configuration of the asset in the Substance 3D Designer, the parameters created to control the asset calculation are offered below (see number 3 in the figure above). This part of the settings will therefore look different for each Substance Asset. However, the Substance Asset dialog closes at the bottom with the output group, in which previews of the textures calculated by the asset can be seen (see section 4). Which textures are calculated is also created exclusively within the Substance 3D Designer when the asset is defined.

If you have loaded the Substance 3D asset via the Load Substance ... function of the Extensions main menu of Cinema 4D. These textures are automatically assigned to the corresponding material channels of a newly created material by special Substance Shaders. However, you can also create Substance Shaders manually and use them to link any textures of the Substance 3D asset. This also enables the use of these textures within a Cinema 4D layer shader or a displacer object, for example.

There are therefore the following Substance elements in Cinema 4D:

When passing on (or team rendering) a project, you must supply both the *.c4d project file and the Substance files linked to it. The command Save Project with Assets... helps you to collect the linked assets in a folder.

Note: If you experience high-frequency, grainy changes from frame to frame when using the classic renderer for animations, increase the anti-aliasing settings in the Render Settings (also note the filter settings there).

It is also possible - provided this has been defined in Substance 3D Designer - to load textures in Cinema 4D within the asset and have them processed by the Substance 3D Material Nodes. You only need to use one Color Image Input Node in Substance 3D Designer. This will then be displayed in the asset as a loadable texture in the Image inputs sub-tab, which makes countless effects possible.

All asset parameters that affect the calculation of the textures can be edited directly in the Attribute Manager and can also be animated using keyframes. This will automatically trigger a recalculation of the Substance 3D asset for each animation image. To ensure that these changes also lead to an update of the materials in which Substance Shaders access these textures, the Animate preview option should be activated in the View settings of the material (this option is automatically activated when a material is created using the Load Substance... command). With Redshift Node materials, you change or animate the Substance Asset properties directly on the Substance Node.
If animations in the editor run too slowly when using Substances in Cinema 4D materials, these measures can help:


Limitations

Note:Commandline rendering on Linux Cent OS does not currently support Substance Assets due to an incompatibility of the glibc version there.