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Hi everyone,

It seems like I finally managed to wrap my head around how to use 'live' Substance Materials with OctaneRender for Cinema 4D. Here it goes:
Please correct me, if I'm doing anything wrong, or you know a better way to do all this.


Now, I've already discovered, that this isn't the most elegant way to work with Substances, mainly for two reasons:

1) The Substance Shader node doesn't remember the previous asset when you copy/paste or drag/copy it, so you literally have to repeat the node creation process for every single channel.

2) Since you're creating a node for every channel, you'll also have to go through every node one by one, if you'd want to change the Substance Material later.

As it stands, working with Substance Materials in Octane will involve a lot of clicking and 'mousing around'.

So this one goes out to Aoktar: Would there be a way to have a Substance Shader node in the Node Editor that would have dedicated 'output pins' for each channel contained within a Substance Material? That would make the process almost seamless and would allow for much faster management and changes.

Also, setting the 'Render Size' under 'C4D shaders' in the Octane Settings tells me, that working with Substance Materials in this way might be considerably slower than using the 'old method' (i.e. exporting texture sets from Substance and then connecting them to materials via Image Texture nodes), as Octane will have to bake each channel into a texture, prior to rendering. Is there a way to make this more efficient?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

I'm open to add some extra support. But I'm not good on Substance. One question goes to you, why don't use saved images from substance? Isn't faster and better on quality of result?

Hi Ahmet,

I hear you on that one. The thing is, with the live link between Substance and C4D/Octane, the texturing process could become a lot more streamlined. No more exporting texture maps and hooking them up to the material individually, instant updates on changes to the material and the ability to change the exposed parameters directly within C4D/Octane. That'd be quite a time saver.

However, I agree with you, as it stands, hooking those texture maps into an Octane Material is a hell lot faster than messing around with the Substance Shader.

It's just, Substance has kind of become the standard for texturing out there and I think there's a reason Maxon integrated the Substance Asset Manager into C4D. The good thing is, all Octane would need, would be a node that allows you to hook up a Substance Material, with a flexible amount of output pins, based on the channels included (if not automatically, then by use of tick boxes maybe).

But I appreciate, that's probably easier said than done.

Would give Octane another edge over the competition though

Let me add that Substance in C4D is non-destructive and editable, you can alter your material without creating a new export.
This is were Substance is powerful. You can download a base material from 'https://source.allegorithmic.com/' and make it your own in-line in Cinema without using an extra program.

Nice little tutorial Ferdinand13, I wanted to add that if you use the "Convert Material" in the Octane options and change it to a Univeral Material, that will get you halfway there connecting all your nodes. It will auto connect; Albedo, Specular, Normal & Displacement. You'll have to manually connect the rest.

Everything natemac00 said.

I'm currently getting into Substance Designer and the amount of customisation that you can hand off to an artist down the line - who never even has to open the original application - is insane.

natemac00 wrote:Nice little tutorial Ferdinand13, I wanted to add that if you use the "Convert Material" in the Octane options and change it to a Univeral Material, that will get you halfway there connecting all your nodes. It will auto connect; Albedo, Specular, Normal & Displacement. You'll have to manually connect the rest.

Thanks natemac00. That's how I came across the Substance Shader node in the first place, though I wasn't sure, whether this conversion process wasn't messing anything up (that sometimes happened with other C4D-Octane conversions I did). But if you say that it works in this instance, it could be my workaround for now. Cheers.

Well let me add that today is the last day.

Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Substance B2M and access to Substance Source (30 assets to download every month).
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aoktar wrote:I'm open to add some extra support. But I'm not good on Substance. One question goes to you, why don't use saved images from substance? Isn't faster and better on quality of result?

To get this to work in Octane, you would need to look at the Substance Asset attributes and see what Channels were being used. At that point link them to their Octane equivalent. The issue is not all Channels are used for each Substance so I'm not sure how that would affect everything.

aoktar wrote:I'm open to add some extra support. But I'm not good on Substance. One question goes to you, why don't use saved images from substance? Isn't faster and better on quality of result?

Here's a great example of a complicated Substance Material: https://source.allegorithmic.com/assets ... gory=Paint
It's also free to download and the Subtance plug-in is included with C4D as well now I beleive.