Using Substance Painter

When first launching Substance painter you are presented with two view-ports that will be empty when starting out, a shelf which contains all the tools necessary for texturing like Alphas, Brushes and materials. Along the right side of the screen are 4 tabs, the first is the layers tab that works in a very similar way to Photoshop with layers that stack on top of each other and can be hidden or have masks applied. The TextureSet Settings tab controls the maps that are used for texturing for example: Diffuse, Normal, Thickness, Glossiness & Specular. On the far right is the Properties tab which allows for values within the layers that are applied to be configured at the users whim, these values include: Generator levels, Contrast & Base colour. The last tab in the top right corner of the screen is the texture set list which displays a list of the TextureSets that used for the object which can be hidden to display different sections of the model, each texture set will have different settings and their respective maps will have to be baked individually.

To start using Substance Painter the first step is to go to top panel and click File > New (Ctrl + N)

This will create a pop-up box, at the top it will say "No mesh selected" with a select button to the right which allows you to browse through your files to find your 3D mesh (low-poly) that can be in a whole plethora of file formats but i recommend .OBJ because it is widely universal. After selecting the mesh you can choose between DirectX & OpenGL for you normal map formats, choose whichever you like. Thirdly a drop-down menu below asks for resolution you would like to use, thankfully Substance painter allows for this resolution to be changed at any time without loss which means you can upgrade our downgrade your texture after the fact, I recommend 2048 resolution for most meshes but you may want to use 4096 for close up high poly models like guns. The last option is to include normal maps for your maps that you may have created in other programs but since substance painter can create maps for us we wont be importing any here.

Once you've done all this and pressed "OK" your mesh should be loaded in to the left view port with your UVs in the right. I recommend selecting the borders of the view ports and dragging them to expand them out for a better view of the model.

Now it is time to start texturing but before we can start painting on the mesh we need to bake the textures that will project the detail on the High-Poly version of the mesh onto the low-poly and it will also allow for Substance Painters algorithms to understand the mesh so that it can make more accurate textures. For meshes with multiple TextureSets remember they each have to have maps that are baked individually.

Pressing "Bake Textures" brings up a pop-up menu with lots of differently options, the ones that we will be changing are the output size which needs to be the same as the initial map sizes that you chosen so that the maps line up with the mesh correctly (remember you can change resolutions of the maps whenever you like with no loss). Along the left is a list of the maps that will be created which can be changed but what we are looking at here is the warning signs that are attached to four of our maps, this means that they require a High-Poly version of the mesh to properly bake, to select a high poly version click the file icon to the right of "High Definition Meshes". A good file name for a High-Poly version is "FileNameHP.obj" adding HP on the end is quicker and simpler than writing it out and it should make each file easy to organize and find.

Once that is all done the mesh should be ready to texture, the first thing i recommend is to cycle through materials tab on the bottom shelf to find some things that you like, to apply these materials simply drag & drop onto the layers tab. Smart materials are also a good way to see the type of textures that are possible with substance painter, almost every value can be changed within these materials to give the user complete control over the texture.

A lot of custom materials can be created using basic materials layered on top of each other with masks and generators, to accomplish this first pick a material that you like to be the base texture and pick a second material to combine with it, this material can be rust to go on metal or paint to go on wood. With both these materials in the layers tab have the one that you will mask on the top for example of you want paint on wood place the paint on top and if you want rust on metal place the metal on top because this represents how the materials would be on the object in real life. Next right click the top layer and add a black mask this should mean that the layer is no longer shown and the bottom layer is now on the mesh, with the mask selected you can now use a brush to draw in the mesh or UV to paint in the top layer. Instead of manually painting we will use a generator to do the work for us, Right click the newly made mask and add a generator, this should add a new selection in the properties tab which allows you to select from a series of generators, for a painted metal texture I recommend using an edge wear type of generator but feel free to try out each one to see what you like best. One important step when creating painted steel texture is to invert the generator so that the paint that is on top of the steel is covering everything but the corners as opposed to covering only the corners.

#Substance #3D #UV #Layers #Generator