Glossary | Substance 3D Designer

The fourth channel of a color image, often used to describe opacity.

The process of computing information out of a 3D model and storing the results into a texture.

The data is placed in the texture according to the model's UVs.

A parameter which value may change. In other words, any parameter which value is not constant is dynamic. 

This includes exposed parameters, any parameters impacted by an exposed parameter, and any parameter value that is impacted by sampling in a texture.

Contrarily to static parameters, the value of dynamic parameters can be adjusted on the fly after the graph is compiled into an SBSAR file. 

An instance node represents a graph A into another graph B. In that case, graph A may be called a subgraph of graph B.

Any change in graph A is propagated to all instance nodes that represent it.

The instance node applies its own set of values for the input parameters of graph A in the context of graph B. In that sense, graph B can host multiple instance node that all reference graph A, but each pass different values or textures as inputs into graph A.

All nodes in Designer's Library that are not atomic nodes are instance nodes.

The collection of properties and behaviours of matter in space, which includes surfaces and volumes. The appearance of an entity in 3D space is defined by its material.

Materials may be defined in various ways, and all definitions do not support all properties such as refraction, anisotropy or sheen. A shader is a particular implementation of a material definition.

Important: The term 'material' is an umbrella term used to refer to various things, including:

• The shader used to compute the appearance of a surface or volume;
• The set of textures provided to a shader;
• A Material ID, which is an attribute of a 3D primitive used to tell apart the parts that use different materials.

Object in a graph that performs computations and outputs one or more results.

The result is controlled using input parameters. These parameters can be listed as controls in the Properties dock, or as input connectors on the node itself.

There are two main categories of nodes: atomic nodes and instance nodes.

Base parameter of nodes in a Substance graph that describes the node's bit depth.

A Substance 3D file (SBS) is called a package, in the sense that it is a container for resources: graphs, bitmaps, 3D scenes, etc.

A package also stores paths to its dependencies as well as metadata.

The amount of pixels horizontally and vertically that form a bitmap. More pixels allow for representing finer detail.

In Substance graphs, the resolution of a bitmap computed by a node is controlled by the node's 'Output size' base parameter.

A parameter which value may not change.

Contrarily to dynamic parameters, static parameters cannot be changed on the fly when the graph is compiled into an SBSAR file. They can be exposed and modified in Designer only as the graph is being authored.

Preview Mode will hide these parameters in some cases, since it aims to match the behaviour of published SBSAR files as closely as possible.

A list of static parameters is available here.

Acquiring the value of a texture at a specific location.

Some algorithms require many samples to be performed for comparing values, averaging them, or other operations.

If  a sample is not performed at exactly the center of a pixel, there are two options in Designer for the value which should be acquired:

• Nearest: The value of the nearest pixel according to its center
• Bilinear filtering: The value of the interpolation between the neighbouring pixels horizontally and vertically, where closer pixels have more weight.