Using Substances with SineSpace

Building a region for SineSpace is easy at first, but can get complicated quickly. There is a lot to learn, and as you add items the filesize of your region quickly starts to expand. Learning to use substances with SineSpace is a great way to keep your region size under control, and is definitely worth your time.

SineSpace regions are measured by their filesize. The biggest contributor to the size of a region is your texture bitmaps. When it comes to working with physically based materials, a single material can mean several different texture maps. In no time at all, a region can go from being small and manageable to massive in size.

Unlike bitmap materials, a ‘substance’ is a very small file. It contains the information needed to render all the different textures for a material. Unity uses the Substance file to render the textures when people visit your region. Subsequently, your region is smaller and downloads more quickly. Smaller regions also means more room for furniture and decor (stuff like this holiday tree – you can never have enough room for that). Using Substances gives you more room when your region space is limited or you want to build it as big as you can.

In this tutorial, I show how to use Allegorithmic Substances in SineSpace. It demonstrates the way Substances worked in Unity through version 2017.4. Newer versions of Unity do require a free plugin available from the Asset Store. SineSpace is still working on support, and believe me when they get that sorted out I will post about it. I will also put together a new tutorial to take you through the new process and how the plugin works. In the meantime, stick with Unity 2017 and check out the tutorial on using Substances below.

That’s It!

That covers using Substances in Unity up to 2017.4. As I mentioned above, I do plan on doing another tutorial once 2018.x support is working properly.

If you’re brand new to SineSpace and need help with the basics, check out this tutorial article. You can also check out these tutorial videos. It will help you get set up to use the Unity Editor to prepare and upload your creations to the SineSpace servers. I also recommend checking the SineSpace Youtube channel for tutorials. Watch this space for more tutorials in the future!

If you have questions or comments, then please post in the comments below! If you want personal help or private training, please see this post. Good luck with your projects!

Latest Tutorials

• Allegro BTS
• How To Use The Extra Pattern System
• Unity 2019.3 Released
• Unity Hub 2 Now Available
• How To Create Regions