3D View issues

This page lists technical issues related to the 3D view in Substance 3D Designer, and offer troubleshooting steps for each.

Low performance: Discrete GPU is not used

 Issue

Substance 3D Designer does not use the system’s discrete GPU (dGPU), and uses the integrated GPU (iGPU) instead. This results in low performance when rendering graphs and/or the 3D view.

 Recommended steps

Systems with switchable graphics can force the dGPU which should be used for a specific application in dedicated software, depending on the GPU manufacturer.

For instance, users with an Nvidia dGPU can do the following:

3D object is flat

A 3D object which featured detailed volumes in one session becomes flat in the next session, however the graph has not changed and the Height map carries the same data.

The deformation effect of a 3D object according to a Height map is performed using a technique called Tessellation displacement. This technique involves two steps:

The displacement direction is known: the direction of the normal vector.
The displacement distance by which the vertices are moved is calculated as follows : Distance = Height scale * Height map. Because the Height map has not changed in the graph, that leaves the Height scale.

The default Height scale value is 1.0, which may result in a displacement effect which is not noticeable depending on the mesh displayed in the 3D View and the Height map applied to it.

This value can be modified in the following ways:

In the 3D view

Open the Materials menu open the submenu of the current material (Default in most cases) and select the Edit option. In the Properties panel, find the Scale parameter in the Height category.

In the Graph view

Create an Output node and set the “heightscale” usage in its properties, then reapply the graph in the 3D View. You may feed this output a texture, or a value using a Value processor node.

3D view is entirely black

 Issue

In versions 15.0.0 and higher, the viewport of the 3D view is flat black. I see some text overlays (E.g., samples and render time) but the 3D scene is not visible.

 Recommended steps

Version 15.1 and higher

The new 3D renderers were upgraded in version 15.1 and require recent GPU drivers. Please update your system’s GPU drivers to the latest version.

You may find drivers here:   NVIDIA   AMD   Intel

Version 15.0 and higher

Designer 15.0.0 introduced our new in-house 3D renderers, which use modern technologies and therefore are not supported by older GPUs.

Supported GPUs include NVIDIA RTX 20 series (Turing) or higher, as per Designer’s system requirements.

You may continue using the OpenGL renderer by default, by using the new option in the Project settings:

Now, all new 3D View will use the OpenGL renderer by default, which will let you continue working as before.

‘Renderer not supported’ message is displayed

 Issue

In versions 15.0.0 and higher, the ‘Renderer not supported’ message appears in the lower right corner of the viewport when using the new 3D renderers (Rasterizer, GPU pathtracer). The 3D scene is not visible.

 Recommended steps

Designer 15.0.0 introduced our new in-house 3D renderers, which use modern technologies and therefore are not supported by older GPUs.

Supported GPUs include NVIDIA RTX 20 series (Turing) or higher, as per Designer’s system requirements.

On default settings, the 3D View will automatically fall back to the OpenGL renderer, if the ‘Default renderer’ option is set to ‘Default (predefined renderer)’ in the Project settings.

You may find and adjust that option by following these steps:

3D object looks entirely smooth

After working on the data sent to the Height output, the object appears to have some volume but looks entirely smooth, as if the height information was ignored in the shading.

Make sure the height data is converted to normals which are connected to the Normal output.

When using the Tessellation Displacement technique – see “3D object is flat” above – the objects may deform to follow the height data but its surface will not react to light differently until its normals are also modified to account for the height data.

The solution is quite simple: connect the last node of the stream leading to the Height output to a Normal node. Adjust that node’s Intensity parameter according to the material you are working on and connect the Normal node to the Normal output.

{width="256px"}

Render is blurry/pixelated

The rendered image looks blurry or pixelated when the system uses display scaling.

By default, Designer uses the scaled display resolution to define the 3D view’s rendering resolution. You can change this so the native display resolution is used instead for a crisp render.

Open the Edit menu and select the Preferences… option. In the Preferences window, open the 3D View section and set the Viewport scaling parameter to None.

{width="256px"}

I cannot find the ‘Tessellation factor’ property

 Issue

After upgrading Designer to version 15.0.0, I cannot find the ‘Tessellation factor’ parameter in the material properties where it used to be.

 Recommended steps

When using the new renderers (Rasterizer and GPU Pathtracer), the ‘Tessellation factor’ is found in the properties of these renderers. In the 3D View, go to Renderer > Edit settings. The property will be listed in the Properties dock.

3D objects look wrong: their shading does not suit the lighting

 Issue

The shading of objects relies on their normal, tangent and binormal vectors. Their coordinates use the [-1, 1] range, whereas normal maps use the [0, 1] range in most cases. To adapt values from one to the other, a bias and scale need to be applied: value*scale+bias.

For instance, a scale of 2 and a bias of -1 adapts the x value from [0, 1] to [-1, 1] thusly: x*2-1.

Designer does not apply a normal scale and bias unless they are specified by a 3D mesh. If that information is missing, a warning is raised in the Console when overriding any of its materials:

[SceneGraph]No 'scale' or 'bias' defined on the UsdUVTexture shader '/root/material/<materialName>' (the rendering may be incorrect)

 Recommended steps

For scenes exported to USD formats a while ago: Reexport the scene using a recent version of USD, which will include the necessary data. Pay attention to properties related to normal scale and bias if there are any, which will depend on the software used to export the scene.

When overriding a material, Designer processes the mesh and computes any missing data related ot its normals, tangents and binormals. If Designer’s default scale and bias happen to match the ones required for the mesh, then the mesh will look correct when overridden.

Crash when starting 3D View

 Issue

Designer crashes at the time of starting the 3D View, when creating a project, loading a project, or manually starting a 3D View.

 Recommended steps

First, make sure your system meets Designer’s system requirements.

Then, update your graphics drivers. You can find the latest drivers for your GPU by following these links:

NVIDIA  |  AMD  |  Intel

If your system includes both an integrated GPU (iGPU) and discrete GPU (dGPU), make sure to update the drivers for both!

Then, disable any software that may inject or overlay data in a 3D graphics process. Examples include: