Bitmap 2 Material Discount (Some Questions)

Graphics Shaders & Materials
1

Hi, all! B2M 2.1 is on sale for a short time right now and I am considering pulling the trigger on this, but I have a few questions first:

  • Is Bitmap Material all I need to create nice relief / ambient occlusion maps, etc, from a base diffuse texture? I realize there is another (more costly) facet to this whole algorithmic thing called Designer. I don’t need that as well, do I?
  • Will the package work correctly in Unity Free?
  • Are there any perks to using this as opposed to using CrazyBump?

Thanks! - YA

2

There is a thread purely for answering questions about B2M on the front page of Gossip. Though I can’t answer the forst, it does work nicely with Free and one of the big perks is that it generates the other maps at runtime rather than including multiple bitmaps in the project. It also can make tiling textures and such. You should try the free version on the Asset Store. The only big difference is the watermarked textures.

3

I suggest posting to the Substance answers forum thread, Jerc is associated with Allegorithmic and gives valid answers.

4

All right. Thanks, guys!

5

My question is, after you convert the bitmap to a substance, can you delete the original bitmap to save space?

6

You don’t convert a bitmap to a substance, a substance is just an algorithm, in case of B2M B2M is a substance (you don’t generate a substance, B2M IS the substance) that takes your bitmap as an input and generates the rest as output, so it’s basically a substance graph with 1 input node (your bitmap) and many output (the different maps, including your input).

So no, you still need the input, it just saves the size of the other maps.

And for OP’s question #1 yes you only need bitmap to material to create multiple output maps from a single diffuse map, substance designer is used to create your own substance (bitmap to material is a substance), that is if you want to create your own node graphs to proceduarly modify / generate bitmaps, B2M is standalone, as a substance it will run in either unity or the free player and will allow you what you ask for , feeding 1 diffuse, and getting 1 diffuse + many other maps out.