Professional Gamedev, trying out for the first time!

[SirTexra]

My name is Dane, I am lead items artist at Grinding Gear Games in NZ. I work on Path of Exile.

Nomad has piqued my interest for some time as I view what has gone on with Substance and Zbrush as abhorrent. I put Nomad through it’s paces making a fast weapon, testing things out, seeing how it all works, where the limitations are etc. I came out with something I’m quite happy with and want to list some thoughts, from someone that makes literally hundreds of assets a year:

PBR workflow is the killer draw here, working directly in this leapfrogs the need for much of Substance Painter. I can usually sculpt something like this off the cuff no references in about 30 minutes tops in Zbrush. Here I spent a few hours just also learning things and messing around, I had an absolute blast and I’m in love with the program.

Real mesh instancing instead of the crap Zbrush tried to do with Stager and Nanomesh etc, godlike.

The big thing I can say this program needs is some kind of Surface Filtering situation, like using cavity/curvature masks etc to drive layering and buildup. If you had some way to do this it would turbocharge the detail phase. You could have real time smart materials in essence here.

I’m still getting used to how the Sculptris/Dynamesh analog works here, I got ok results but I was fighting with it at points, I wish I could ‘smooth delete geometry out of existance’ like I can in Zbrush.

Smooth brush has some weird stuff going on where it feels like the radius is very small even when I have a huge brush setting and it feels more like it’s actually making depressions in my mesh at times not smoothing. I could be doing something wrong.

Lastly…I work on a large 4K monitor/tv with ample screen real estate. I’m BEGGING you to let me just dock every menu and panel permanently on my UI. I always want the Scene view there, at all times. I always want the layers visible, at all times. ZBrush pisses me off and has done forever with the subtool panel always being nested and has to hide to do other things. Similar problem here, where I don’t think you need to.

I understand the software is tablet centric first and foremost but on Desktop it would be incredible to have the ui able to just be max cluttered for people like me.

Incredible software and I want to see it keep improving, I’m telling every artist I know to try it out.

[stephomi]

Thanks!

@SirTexra

The big thing I can say this program needs is some kind of Surface Filtering situation

Probably one day, it makes sense.

@SirTexra

Lastly…I work on a large 4K monitor/tv with ample screen real estate. I’m BEGGING you to let me just dock every menu and panel permanently on my UI

I’ll probably do it at some point, yes.

@SirTexra

I’m still getting used to how the Sculptris/Dynamesh analog works here

Sculptris → dynamic topology (dyntopo)
Dynamesh → voxel remeshing
Honestly the weird wording is on zbrush side, blender typically uses similar wording as Nomad.

smooth delete geometry out of existance

It should definitely works if you use dynamic topology (just lower the detail value and it will decimate aggressively".

@SirTexra

Smooth brush has some weird stuff going

Maybe double check that “relax” is off on the side of the screen (the brush modifier).

[stephomi]

[SirTexra]

Ooh! Perfect! If all you gave me was pinning the scene and layer windows permanently into the UI that’d be enough but this is excellent. The fact that you have already done something here, wow. The power of solo development, absolute respect here from me!

I’d love to test this out do you have a testing branch/patch or something I could try out or should I just let you cook.

[stephomi]

Yep, sent you a build.

[SirTexra]

I love you

This is basically perfection. The only possible way it could get better is if you could then maybe group some together with little tabs to swap/toggle across but this is more than enough, just having scene and layers able to be docked is MINT. There’s probably some quirks I’ve not noticed yet but testing out it’s been great, sometimes the menus can all disappear and you need to bring them back under some contexts but its very minor to me.

Amazing work thank you, after years of complaining to adobe or autodesk or zbrush and nothing ever happens even for old bugs, to see a developer just do something, incredible.

[0uts1der]

Wow, I’ve spent hundreds of hours playing PoE, and thanks to your work, the game looks even more beautiful. Thank you! Amazing art — looking forward to your next posts!

[ToBe]

You should Check Razuum and his Brushes and Smart Materials for Nomad…this is next Level and you won’t miss substance Printer at all

[SirTexra]

Thank you! I won’t be using Nomad for any professional work at GGG currently as the pipeline is just too embedded at this point, but all my personal work is going to be in Nomad from now on, and I think in time as it gains a foothold it may indeed be used in house, the issue is other people have to be onboard and the files you create need to be accessible to others for a smooth dev workflow.

[SirTexra]

Holy moly thanks for the tip! These packs look great, definitely scooping these up.

[stephomi]

Yeah.. Nomad is more about quick concept.

High poly pbr vertex painting with layer is fun, but at the end of the day Substance Painter is just in another league.
Maybe one day I’ll add texture painting but it’s likely going to be limited as “artistic paint” (not the fully-fledge graph+layer thing).

Unrelated but I’m tweaking the panel style to be more standard, started to get annoyed by the “pill”. Also easier horizontal/vertical resizing, not just corner/diagonal.

[SirTexra]

I’m a self professed Substance Painter master, but at the end of the day, all the complexity of anchor points and referenced fills and tweaks and smart materials and using curvatures and thickness and ao and all this stuff is just a mountain of assumed complexity to what Zbrush etc was just unable to provide.

I genuinely think just having the ability to detail in your roughness levels and metalness and all this stuff with your actual sculpt as you’re doing it fascilitates most requirement’s you’d need, at least for assets you know are kind of a ‘one and done’ authoring. For things you want to be reusable and procedural sure, Painter is still valid. But if you’re like me and your goals are to make this prop and this prop and this shield and this axe, all I really want to do is say where I want my rust and my polish and my wear and tear, dirt etc.

All you really need in Nomad to facilitate that nicely is just some basic kind mask builder for cavities/peaks and depths and what not on the fly as you’re sculpting. Honestly painter’s reliant on curvature and cavity for everything makes it not super great at subtlety in texturing because a curvature map captures all details equally, and then you have to kinda tell it where you actually want rust and where you don’t etc.

[Steve]

@stephomi

Maybe one day I’ll add texture painting but it’s likely going to be limited as “artistic paint” (not the fully-fledge graph+layer thing).

That would be enough, I haven’t used SP for years but when it was version 1 it was a joy to use coming from a photoshop background because of the limited amount of features, as its evolved it is definitely more of a technical tool.

Just being able to paint high res details without ramping the mesh density to an insane level and having a robust masking system with peak/cavity detection would be more than enough

See what Claude can come up with