It doesn't make sense to always show all parameters to a user, especially if you are building graphs with a simple goal, that don't need many parameters. Substance compositing graphs can get complicated and can contain hundreds of parameters at once. Why not expose every parameter automatically, all the time? Without exposing, Substance Materials wouldn't be very different from static textures: you'd have no way to modify their outputs.

Why is exposing useful?Įxposing Parameters is what takes Substance 3D Designer beyond a simple texture editor, allowing you to create customisable, dynamic texture-generation tools. When used in Substance 3D Painter, Substance 3D Sampler or an integration, these exposed parameters will be the only control you have over the graph.

This 'external control panel' can mean different things based on the context: when used as a Graph Instance inside Designer, it just acts as another node. What is 'exposing'?Įxposing is the process of making a parameter available for use outside of your current Graph View. When building a Graph, you usually select a node to change the parameters in its properties when exposed, you enable access to this parameter from an external control panel. The values they represent can be many different types: decimal values, whole (integer) values, boolean (true/false) values, even text snippets. Parameters can come in many different forms: sliders, dials, type-in boxes, drop-down menus, etc.

Without parameters, Substance software would not allow for any customization at all. What is a parameter?Ī parameter is a simple value, with a UI element, that controls the behavior of a graph. You use them constantly in all Substance software: to change a color, to set blend mode, to choose an opacity value, etc. *Dashed, transparent lines above are an abstract representation of the connection from exposed parameters to Graph Parameters.

Substance designer to painter