Bitmap2material review

Conclusions

The Substance Player at work

B2M offers some really great workflow improvements to the shading process in 3DS Max. Having the ability to create realistic shaders simply by using a single image is enough reason to purchase the tool. The amount of control offered by B2M allows you to fine tune the look of your shaders and make changes to textures and map settings, all without having to leave the Max interface. Additional tools like being able to seamlessly tile textures, and the ability to change the resolution of your textures on the fly are great features that one gets to use frequently.

There are no serious drawbacks to this tool that I could find, though something that could be improved is the UI’s speed when swapping out textures or changing texture resolution in the material editor. When performing these tasks the UI can become a bit slow. Also, what may be regarded as an obstacle for adopting the plugin is that it is currently only available for 3DS Max 2012, so users of older versions of 3DS Max are not covered at this time. The documentation seems to have improved since v1.0; it’s now easy to read and follow. However, it would be better if one could access the help documents via a compiled HTML file through 3DS Max’s ‘Help’ menu instead of having to browse manually for the PDF file.

One thing that seemed to be missing was the Substance Preset toolbar. When reading through the B2M manual, there is reference to the Substance Bonus Tools which are supposedly included in the installer. After installing twice and poking around the 3DS Max install directory I was unable to locate any scripts that gave me this feature. Not having used this feature, I cannot comment on whether or not your B2M files can be saved as presets for loading at a later time.

That being said, if you are using 3DS Max 2012, I highly recommend Bitmap2Material, as it has proven itself to be a great asset to improve the daily shader workflow. It offers some really great controls and a simple interface for creating very realistic shaders, all at a reasonable price. With the amount of time it saves, and the tools it offers, it is a very good investment for anyone who creates shaders on a regular basis.

Joël LeLièvre is an FX Artist who has worked on various film projects including Transformers 3: Dark of The Moon, Tron: Legacy, several commercials and music videos. When Joel is not pushing pixels, he can be found at home in the frozen tundra that is Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, playing guitar, tackling the mysteries of string theory, and hanging out with his family. You can find more about his work at Divisionof8 and Delicate Machines.