CADustin

Morning Gang... Super interesting find you guys have here. I don't think I've ever tried to scale that small before but I tested the attached object and sure enough, its popping itself back to default. I'll log it as a bug. Looking at what you have now however, I don't think that material would be able to get to where you need it to be if the hard cap on scaling is tied to whole unit increments, you might need to make a new material (mentioned above) or "remap" your object. For those that don't know what mapping is, here's a quick breakdown. When we make 3d objects that will go into Chief, we need to "map" each face so the direction and scale of any applied materials behave correctly (think wood grain direction on cabinet doors) with this data hard locking into the object. While we are outside of Chief we can control these values as needed, but once the object is IN Chief, it's locked in place and we can only manipulate the materials that we apply. Shown below is an example made in 3ds max using a testing material that I use to dial in direction and size. The squares are mapped at (Chief Default) 20", 10", and 1" and you can see the testing image tile more and more as we scale it down. If you use Chief to model something, or if your model doesn't have any mapping data on import I believe, then the mapping would default to 20". This default of 20" is why your material looks so big initially, and if your hard capped at 1" as your minimum, why you can't scale it down super tiny. Looking at the wire mesh image, the sample size is a 6x6 grid... So each square, if mapped at chief default would be 20"/6= 3.33~ inches. If we mapped the object at 10", now your squares will be 10"/6= 1.66~ inches And finally if we mapped the object at 1" we'd end up with 1"/6 - .1666~ inches which would be closer to what you are after. Here's that example of default 20", 10", and 1" from 3ds max... As you can see the mesh gets smaller as the mapping value gets smaller. The same wire mesh material is on all three squares, set at 20"x20" but since our object mapping is different, we can get smaller or larger results. Now you can scale that Chief material down to 1" and get super tiny... So, if you need a smaller scale, and want to remap your object, you can bring it into pretty much any 3d software suite and map whatever size you need, just remember that it will multiply by whatever your chief scale value will be. Blender is a free option that should get the job done, or as mentioned above, you can tile your material a couple times in photoshop or other image toolsets to increase the pictures sample size, either or. Hope that helps, and again I'll log the 1" minimum as a bug. Let me know if I whiffed on the question or if anyone needs clarification.

I'll put the species on my list too... I'll also look at adding the scale feature from the tile builder to the wood builder as well so you'll have more control over grain size. That one might be tougher to implement though just because the wood builder is wired differently. Same rules would apply though with texture scaling, larger textures with the same amount of pixels (512, 1024, etc) You'll lose some detail of the wood when looked at up close, but when looked at from afar, you should be fine with a larger surface area coverage. Wood we make in-house is usually scaled for indoor use, but I like the idea of having an option to size up for decking, rafters, siding, etc. Maybe a catalog of large format 16' wood mats. More options are rarely a bad thing. Thanks for the feedback.

Hey Chopsaw, good catch. It's a bug. The "Uncut" wood is kind of a misnomer since, as you saw, there is some vertical offsetting going on that is kind of hard to see unless you catch a knot on a seam or load an external image like you've found out already. This was added purely to help the wood tile less obviously but I kinda forgot about it when I added the image input to the system a couple years later. I'll add it to my todo list. I'll try to make it so it doesn't slice up image inputs but keeps slicing the wood selections for better tiling. In the meantime can I ask what you're trying to make in case I can help you out in the meantime? If you have a seamless wood texture already, are you using the builder just for image manipulation like color/hue/lightness/etc?

I think you're right, X11 got the pocket wall feature... The NanaWall catalog also might help, it just got updated late last year. https://www.chiefarchitect.com/3d-library/index.php?r=site/detail/991

Small update today... Tile Builder A lot of folks have had issues with the scale of the raw materials in the tile builder when working with large format tile so now it has a "Material Scale" so if you have large marble hex tile or 2'x4' offset slabs, you can scale the tile material till it looks correct. -Each Tile Type has an independent scale slider. -Scale goes from 0% to 500%, if anyone needs more than that, let me know. As always if you have any questions or find any bugs let me know here. To see the updates you'll have to redownload the Tile_Builder.sbs from the first post on this thread.

Hey Stephen, If you want to take a crack at the wood builder, it has a shiplap option. Under "Cut" just scroll down to Shiplap - Seamed or Shiplap - Seamless and export. Hit me up if you hit any snags.

Hey Vixen, I'm not very mac savvy but I've seen some problems like this perusing to substance forums for other questions. This seemed to be the closest thing I've seen to your error... https://forum.substance3d.com/index.php?topic=5182.0 So try opening the player and going up to Window > Reset layout...I hope the issue is that easy to fix. Another thing I see sometimes is substance trying to save or work from a restricted folder location. Maybe try moving the builder.sbsar locations to a place you know is accessible. If these don't work, let me know and we can keep tracking it down. Also, Davidstvz, if you're having considerable lag, try reducing the resolution while you design your materials, then when you're ready for export, up-rez them to where you need them. Above 1024 can be pretty laggy as you shuffle around more and more pixels.

Wood Builder update is live, please download the new version from the link on the first post of this thread... -Added a vertical/horizontal orientation selector. -Added resolution sizing - It auto defaults to 512, so be sure to bump it up if you need better clarity/smaller seams. -The Image input slot now hides itself unless you select image input on the wood species drop down. -Added "Weathering" category -Age - Ages the wood, looks pretty rough and low resolutions, better at 1024+ -Paint level - adds paint as a ratio of chipped paint over the wood, max paint just covers everything. -Paint Color colors the paint. -Lichen - Yup. -Mold - Gross...but yup.

Wood builder update is still forthcoming, I found some crossed wires I gotta work out first, so just the tile update first... For specific tile patters/shapes/rotations/layouts I have to manually build them and feed them into the builder which can take some time, so the best practice is to add the shapes/features that add the most bang for the buck as we add more and more options. We try to cover the basics as best we can with the player, but if you're hyper focused on tile or materials in general, maybe take a look at substance designer for custom stuff. If you wanted to take a deeper dive, substance designer can make anything you need, but it's what I use to make chief materials so there aren't any grout sliders or tile drop downs. You have to make everything yourself. Substance player is just letting you tinker around with what I've already made so if I haven't made it for a chief catalog yet, it won't get added to the player. It's super fun software though, so if you find yourself always looking for a specific tile, maybe its worth an afternoon to try and make it yourself with the trial and hit me up here at chief if you have any questions. It's neat software, especially if you're kitchen/bath focused. Maybe we can start feeding other peoples tile layouts into the builder too

Tile Builder.sbsar got an update today (grab it from the first post on this thread, same place you got it the first time.) Let me know if you guys are finding any issues or bugs, don't call Chief tech support, this is my responsibility to fix and maintain. Changes Made... -Added some new Shape options Changed Large Tile to 1:1 Large Tile Added a 2:1 large Tile Triangle Pattern Elongated Hex Elongated Diamond Added image inputs on each material drop down -You should see a slot to add your image appear when selecting ~image input in the “Tile X Material” dropdown. --This is a little tricky under the hood and whatever you add will still go through the color blenders, I'm still chewing on how to mitigate this since there's a lot more going on under the hood with the tile builder compared to the wood Builder. Added a Material Invert for those that want white marble with grey veining instead of Black marble with White veining, etc. I hope to eventually give you guys more control over the colors of these kinds of things but that's a heavy lift. Till then this should help you guys get darker veins on white marble.

Also, sorry I missed the question... Yes, the newest versions will always be on the first post of this thread. The second post will have updates listed by date, and usually I'll make an announcement in this thread just to bump it to the top and let people know. If you think you are missing an update, e mail or msg me here on ChiefTalk and I'll check it for you and get you a fresh copy.

I see what you mean... I rotated it in windows picture viewer and sure enough, it didn't rotate in substance player but when I rotated it in photoshop, it DID rotate in substance player. After trying it again, in the windows picture viewer, if you click the "Edit and Create" and Drop down to "Edit" that gets you to a more robust edit screen that also has a rotate button. Rotating it here then "saving a copy" on the bottom right DID work correctly in substance. Just gotta save a copy in the edit screen I guess for it to make an actually rotated copy instead of windows trying to fake it. See Attached. Let me know if it' still giving you issues.

Hey gang, great info... - Thanks for the brick list, I'll look into a brick builder next time I get into a brick catalog for Chief or the next time I get a window of time. If anymore ideas come up just put them up on this thread and I'll re-review before I start it. -Lakeside, Good catch. I'll look into adding a rotator to the image input, till them you can just open the image in windows basic picture viewer (or apple equivalent) and rotate it there before added it to the wood builder.

Hi Dianne, I think a brick builder would be fantastic. If you have a sec, can you tell me what all you would need it to do? So far... -Mortar Color -Brick Color -Investigate Soldier Brick Options ???

Hey Emily, The tile builder has a "Picket" option that kind of matches your shape and you might be able to get what you need from that, to dial in your specifics you'll have to... 1. Export a "PICKET" tile from substance player and bring it into photoshop, you can use the BASE COLOR map to paint whatever stone or colors you want using the grout as a guide. 2. Import your maps and newly colored BASE COLOR into chief and ROTATE it 90° so your picket is going left-to-right. From there uncheck the "Keep Aspect Ratio" in your material dialogue and reduce the width of the texture to squish it closer to what you are after. It won't be exact but pretty close for a 30 second tile...Getting everything super exact exact would require a decent chunk of photoshop time. Hope this helps, if you run into any snags let me know.

Lookin' Sharp!

I added Tin Ceiling tiles to my to do list, but if you have any specific brands you'd like to see in Chief let us know and we'll try to get in touch with them. Beyond that, if you could post a picture of what you're looking for, I'll have a better idea of what kind of tin tile to add to my list or might know of a place where you can get it now. Should be fun to make.

Yep, just re download the wood builder from the 1st page and you should see shiplap in the "cut" drop down.Yep, just re download the wood builder from the 1st page and you should see shiplap in the "cut" drop down. Let me know if you don't see it.

Hey WestChester, I just tried to download them and had to sign out and sign back in and they came down fine, if you still can't download them, msg me your e mail and I'll send them to you direct. Thanks Renee, glad they are working out for you.

You can right click on the camera in plan view and select "Save Camera" or select the camera and hit the "Save Camera" button in the bottom left edit toolbar.

My guess would be that the edges of the plant had a little bit of transparency and it got lost along the way somehow. Not sure how though. If you e mail the image to me, I can take a look. Dustin@chiefarchitect.com

For Sketch up and CAD type modeling, I've found that the real killer is the resolution of your shapes aka your Level of Detail (LOD). Using Alaskan Sons well done example, if I was going to make a ring in sketch up, rings are made with a circle looped around with another circle looped over each individual segment. So the polygon count is going to be the number of segments used to make these circles multiplied together, so we need to things like how large and visible this ring is going to be. Is it a large part of some lighting fixture that needs to look smooth and rounded or is it a pull on some cabinet hardware? Knowing where it's going will help you pick your battles on where to spend your polygons. Example A Example A has 60 segments around the circle and 60 sides around each segment which makes a very smooth looking ring for a grand total of 7200 polygons. But wait! 60x60 is 3600! It is, but all your quad surfaces will get divided by two into tri's on export so we double our count to 7200. Example B Example B has 16 segments around the ring and 6 sides per segment, doubled for Tri's for a much more Chief friendly 192 polygons. So by reducing the ring segments and sides to something more manageable, we can drastically reduce our file sizes. Add on top of that, AS's correct point about removing what isn't visible/needed. If we assume these rings are going to be pulls for our kitchen cabinets, we know that they'll be very small, and no one will see the backside. Looking at both rings together at a reasonable distance shows that we don't need all that detail in this situation and our low poly example with 192 polygons would be the better choice, more so if you ripped off the back of the ring leaving 16 segments and 4 sides for 64 x 2 = 128 per pull, lets say 10 pulls in the kitchen, 1280 polygons total for our pulls, still way less than if we used just one ring from example A. And when you pull back they look pretty much the same... Sadly, getting to a lower resolution is something that I'm unfamiliar with in Sketch up so I'll step aside and let some pros step in to help you with that but this might help get you started... https://help.sketchup.com/en/making-detailed-model-lightweight-way I'm curious how this works out since it's a question I get often during IBS/KBIS, keep us informed and let me know if I can help you out. Thanks, Dustin

It shouldn't matter, B2M is just another software they make unrelated to what we're doing. Gotta say, I'm baffled. My guess is your Intel® HD Graphics 5500 is probably the culprit but I've got no way of verifying it since I don't have a machine with those specs anywhere. Chief has also had tech related/performance issues with these onboard chip sets. My hunch is that it's something on their end only because it's a black screen before you even load a file. At this point I'd say your best bet is to ask for help here... https://www.substance3d.com/contact/ and mention your specs, maybe intel chipsets are no longer supported? Maybe an update walled them off? They would know if anything changed. Also mention that you had it working before then it just stopped, that might help them narrow it down. Please let me know if they say anything that helps just in case they deduce that it's something that I can fix for you on my end.

Hmmm, it sounds like it's a problem with the player software. Some folks have had issues with specific panels going black, but I haven't seen anything about the entire thing going dark. Here's someone that has some black panels that got it fixed, maybe this might work If not, that forum would be the best place to ask for assistance. https://forum.substance3d.com/index.php/topic,22997.0.html Let me know if this also is a dead end, and also... PC or mac? Video card? Windows version if PC? I'll keep poking around and looking for fixes.

Hmmm...Not sure. Is it only for tile builder or do other builders also show black screen? I would say try to update your video card drivers and if that doesn't work try opening substance player, and hit F9. If this works you should see a "Select Substance Engine" pop up, from there you can try a different engine and see if that helps. More times then not though its just video card drivers. Let me know how it goes, if it's still broken we can dig a little deeper.