FAQ & Technical Issues

Help for frequently asked questions

Decal Designer is really slow on my machine

I recommend setting your Output Size to 2048 and Quality to Medium for the best results while editing. Also disable any outputs not in use. These options are found under Global Parameters.

Decal Designer is still slow!

Be sure to correctly setup your Substance Plugin and your Unreal Settings correctly. Choosing the correct Instance Factory and limiting your output Textures also improves performance.

Can I create and adjust decals at runtime?

Decal Designer is designed for Editor authoring use. The graph when set to 2K resolution can take around 40ms to output a standard set of four textures. While this latency is realtime and feels responsive for editor use, it's generally prohibitive for console runtime use.

Can I animate decal parameters in Sequencer?

Technically yes, but they were not designed with this use in mind. The various parameters of the graph can be added as sequencer tracks and animated but unless you are pre-rendering the sequence out as a movie, the latency of outputting the textures is prohibitive to do at runtime on a console as described above.

I can't export 4K or 8K resolution textures

Enable the GPU engine for the Substance plugin

Is there a way to save memory used by Decal Designer decals?

Using the supplied packed textures reduces the memory usage by 55% for a standard 2K Decal

How do I improve decal performance in Unreal?

Use the Feature Table to find the correct Decal Master. Limiting your required features reduces memory usage and increases Decal performance

My graph is out of sync and the textures don't match the parameters I'm changing

Refresh your graph

I have no Height texture output

Make sure to use a Substance Instance Factory with the "_Height" suffix

I started with the wrong Substance Factory Instance, how do I switch but keep my Decal settings?

Export your current preset and Import it to a new graph made from the correct parent Factory

My material looks very strange and shiny

Are you using the packed Texture? (_ARM). If so, please change the Compression Settings