Tips on Substance Painter

[ralfetas]

Hello, some people ask me tips about substance painter workflow, so here it is.

 

This is a workflow "tutorial" not PBR substance painter etc tutorial, there is a lot of this already on the net, this is the workflow i use to make my things, until now is working fine, sorry for any english mistakes or anything, is my first tutorial, and no i don't work with this, i work with CG on arch business, if i put rusty and dirty on my works the client will be mad with me, so this is just a hobby for me.

 

Something about PBR paiting, PBR goes for Physically based rendering, don't get scared by this name, is just the name of the momment, the big difference on making textures on photoshop/gimp and a painting software like substance painter/quixel/mari etc... is that when you paint direct on the model you are making all the channels together, you change the color, this will affect the specular and so on, so you can make textures (or retextures) in a amazing rate, much faster them editing each channel on photoshop, but in PBR you can and you most of the time you must edit other channel separeted.

 

But the big secret to make a nice texture is the baked maps, this will make all the details in your mesh being in the write place, know that screw that have rust on it? This is not someone that goes there and put rust on it, this is pre made on the maps, the rust just look one map and blend with it, that's why is very very important to have a nice set of baked maps, and this is 99% of what i will show here.

 

First, making the maps, to make life easier when you start creating the final textures, you will need to make the maps, first we need only the height map and colormap, the height map will be baked as normal map, so you need to paint normals and be crazy adjusting the sides etc... just use the hight map.

 

To improve future adjustments i recommend always making all with masks, create a layer, fill the layer with a height and color, put a black mask on and them paint on this mask, this will make your job much easier to adjust stuff, you will not have to run over and find the color you use and the height number you use, is all there already, and if you decided for example that one detail must be inside or not outside you can change it just editing the fill in the layer.

 

To play with the height map to give a more up or down feeling, use a blur effect on the mask. A image to show all this (i am using images from a quick retexture i made)
Note that i use very different colors, the more different the better the results, remember that the software don't see colors as we do, a yellow is so different from a white them a black to white, try to keep the values sparse.

 

 

Here you can bake the channel inside painter or if you made the mesh in any sculpting program like zbrush you can use their normal map, the result will be even better.

 

Export this textures, you will only need the normal map and the color, this export is way fast you can use the default values and are ready to go.

The baked image will look broken, this is because the padding, i recommend use a infinite padding always, when the game load a DDS they will load the MIP maps, the texture will grown from 16x16 to the final resolution, because of this the padding is good, if the texture is still loading they will look like shit, but with a infinite padding will look like your texture shit and not something else.

 

 

Now go to substance designer, i like to use the designer, but if you make your texture direct from zbrush for example, you can export the maps from there without problem, but substance use the curvature map, and this is very important map and is used only in substance, zbrush and other softwares use the cavity map, and they are very different from curvature, so i recommend baking at least the curvature in designer, why bake in designer and not in painter itself? Because designer have a option to bake the map mixing the normal map, and that's is were you gain some time, lots of time.

See in the picture that i bake the world and AO too, yes, designer bake all that using a blend between the mesh and normal map, so you can get every small detail in all maps.

 

 

Now the painting itself, if you make all the maps write this is the fun part, let painter bake only the position and thickness maps, the rest set manually with the maps that designer create and the normal map (tangent) you bake first. After you set all the maps, just create or use a premade material and put they to color selection, select the color and you are ready, you can adjust the range of the color, if you choose the color write and don't have many colors in your mesh you can use extreme values, the more complex the more refine you need.

 

 

Export the maps.

This is the part were fo4 can get difficult for some people, fo4 use something like PBR, i say like PBR, because is not full PBR, but is very close, so they have in specular 2 colors, red and green, red goes for metalness and green for glosiness, in painter this is the metal and rought is you are in PBR-Metal-rought shader. So you have to setup your specular to combine this 2 channels in one texture, lucky, a lot of smart people already figure out the best value for this long time ago, check the image.

 

 

 

Hope this can help someone, again this is a workflow tutorial not painting tutorial, for this, youtube is the source to go.

[munkyspunk]

Is this the same program you are talking about or am I linking a more user-friendly version?

 

http://steamcommunity.com/games/454510/announcements/detail/825671875018090267

 

[ralfetas]

Is this the same program you are talking about or am I linking a more user-friendly version?

 

http://steamcommunity.com/games/454510/announcements/detail/825671875018090267

 

Yes is the same, but i don't know if this version is the substance bundle or just painter.

 

In any case, i think is better to get direct from substance site, the rent to own system is 20 dollars for month and you have the full bundle with all the apps, and if you don't like it, or don't need anymore you can pause the subscription any time.

[kingtobbe]

Very interesting ralfetas, thanks for sharing! Great to see peoples workflow, many times you notice things you also annoyed and it's nice to see how other deal with them.

 

Been trying Quixel lately and while it's pretty great, it's also very unstable. It really feels like a beta-plugin for Photoshop despite being quite mature in development. Even tried it on a fresh install but with same results. I'm gonna try Substance Painter, seen many mention it and seen content for it so many times that I think it's a sign. The batch tool seems very interesting also, I've been looking for a tool that can batch export UV maps from Fallout 4 so I can create keep it with the original texture in Fallout 4.

 

Noticed you wrote that Substance Painter is unique in baking curvature maps. I'm not sure if it's a recent addition but Quixel does that too. Although I'm not sure if it counts as "pure" baking, but hey it says "Baking curvature map..." on the screen.

 

I'm gonna go and sign-up for the Substance Live right away, $20 is a very good price.

 

If you don't mind I may be back to pester you when I've watched a few tutorials.

 

 

 

 

 

[ralfetas]

Very interesting ralfetas, thanks for sharing! Great to see peoples workflow, many times you notice things you also annoyed and it's nice to see how other deal with them.

 

Been trying Quixel lately and while it's pretty great, it's also very unstable. It really feels like a beta-plugin for Photoshop despite being quite mature in development. Even tried it on a fresh install but with same results. I'm gonna try Substance Painter, seen many mention it and seen content for it so many times that I think it's a sign. The batch tool seems very interesting also, I've been looking for a tool that can batch export UV maps from Fallout 4 so I can create keep it with the original texture in Fallout 4.

 

Noticed you wrote that Substance Painter is unique in baking curvature maps. I'm not sure if it's a recent addition but Quixel does that too. Although I'm not sure if it counts as "pure" baking, but hey it says "Baking curvature map..." on the screen.

 

I'm gonna go and sign-up for the Substance Live right away, $20 is a very good price.

 

If you don't mind I may be back to pester you when I've watched a few tutorials.

 

 

 

 

 

Quixel use curvature too yes, but is a little different from the substance, don't remember what was different, but was something

I got quixel soon as they release, was a amazing price, all the bundle was 59 dollars, but indeed is like you said, looks like a beta plugin, even they are very open to anyone share comments to improve, the software is just too slow and the workflow is a little messy, all options are "hidden".

 

But back to the curvature maps, you have 2 options for a nice curvature, or bake from a highres mesh, something that will take forever, or bake in designer using the normap map together, very fast, i don't put on the guide, but i always adjust a little the curvature in photoshop, just put some blur on it.

 

And yes, let's share ideas! Pester each other

[kingtobbe]

Hah damn, so many times I've been thinking to post here but couldn't login cause my passwords wasn't syncing with my browser for some reason.

 

Substance Painter, some impressions. The UI is alright, a bit too small to fit everything, while setting the shelf to small makes it almost useless to me, at least this early in my substance adventure where I don't know automatically what and where stuff is (I mean the app hehe). But very responsive UI, even though it had some problems with my GPU which I suspect was due to a bug in the VBIOS, seems fixed now after MSI released a patch. Guess it's my own fault for buying a GTX 1070, very expensive and they make you beta tester pretty much.

 

Spent pretty much the entire first two weeks downloading everything from Substance Share, and send everyone who sold materials on Gumroad $0,  as thanks for the trust they put in me letting me set my own price. I'm a horrible person. Got so much stuff haven't even bothered importing it all (the import function seems to ignore the metadata in .alg for some reason which is messing up my shelf order).

 

Watched a few Tutorials, like 2-3 episodes of a few different series but given have odd Fallout 4 is I've had a hard time translating the workflow they show examples in to practice. Had the same problems with Quixel as well, despite only starting to make mods a year ago I still feel more at home with Photoshop and can for the most time find a satisfactory solution if I can remember what I was doing after 3DO responds to my input 30 mins after the fact.

 

But one old problem due to my lack of knowledge seems to be more and that is color id. I have Blender, Max 2017 and Maya 2017 but I just registered my student license (which technically I would be unless I wasn't on sick leave). So I haven't had much time to get to know these apps though I've pretty much exclusivly put it the little time I have done into 3ds Max. My skill level is so that I can change the UI color, import NIF's and delete elements of vanilla armors. But I haven't been able to figure out how to get the material id's to stick when I export them to .OBJ.

 

Anyway, long story short. Still using Quixel as I'm trying to get a mod I've been working on and off since I started modding when FO4 came out. Sort of like the mod I've used to learn stuff. Will try force myself to watch one single series of tutorials so I at least get some consistency but it's annoying that pretty much all of them uses a different app to so now I got Knald, Marmoset 3, Handplane (which is free though), 3D Coat and I'm just even more confused than I started.

 

Ok long ramble here with little substance (pun intended), was up all night trying to get some stuff done but it just ended in frustration.

 

 

[ralfetas]

Hah damn, so many times I've been thinking to post here but couldn't login cause my passwords wasn't syncing with my browser for some reason.

 

Substance Painter, some impressions. The UI is alright, a bit too small to fit everything, while setting the shelf to small makes it almost useless to me, at least this early in my substance adventure where I don't know automatically what and where stuff is (I mean the app hehe). But very responsive UI, even though it had some problems with my GPU which I suspect was due to a bug in the VBIOS, seems fixed now after MSI released a patch. Guess it's my own fault for buying a GTX 1070, very expensive and they make you beta tester pretty much.

 

Spent pretty much the entire first two weeks downloading everything from Substance Share, and send everyone who sold materials on Gumroad $0,  as thanks for the trust they put in me letting me set my own price. I'm a horrible person. Got so much stuff haven't even bothered importing it all (the import function seems to ignore the metadata in .alg for some reason which is messing up my shelf order).

 

Watched a few Tutorials, like 2-3 episodes of a few different series but given have odd Fallout 4 is I've had a hard time translating the workflow they show examples in to practice. Had the same problems with Quixel as well, despite only starting to make mods a year ago I still feel more at home with Photoshop and can for the most time find a satisfactory solution if I can remember what I was doing after 3DO responds to my input 30 mins after the fact.

 

But one old problem due to my lack of knowledge seems to be more and that is color id. I have Blender, Max 2017 and Maya 2017 but I just registered my student license (which technically I would be unless I wasn't on sick leave). So I haven't had much time to get to know these apps though I've pretty much exclusivly put it the little time I have done into 3ds Max. My skill level is so that I can change the UI color, import NIF's and delete elements of vanilla armors. But I haven't been able to figure out how to get the material id's to stick when I export them to .OBJ.

 

Anyway, long story short. Still using Quixel as I'm trying to get a mod I've been working on and off since I started modding when FO4 came out. Sort of like the mod I've used to learn stuff. Will try force myself to watch one single series of tutorials so I at least get some consistency but it's annoying that pretty much all of them uses a different app to so now I got Knald, Marmoset 3, Handplane (which is free though), 3D Coat and I'm just even more confused than I started.

 

Ok long ramble here with little substance (pun intended), was up all night trying to get some stuff done but it just ended in frustration.

 

At first you will want to get every material you see, them you will see your shelf a mess and will start to making your own

 

The shelf, a tip on the last update, you can put files direct to the folder, is on documents/Substance Painter 2/shelf, them you can change the view of the shelf on substance to show just the folder you need.

 

Indeed the viewport can be small depending on the resolution you use, a feature they will add in future updates is the ability to undock the window so you can use multimonitor etc easy.

 

For the colormap, you can make it on substance, you can even make polygon selection to set colors etc... I bake a basic colormap in my 3d app, them i refine it in substance, works very well.

[kingtobbe]

Doing much better now, still a bit confused about what shader to use and how to export it (my custom Fallout 4 preset for export just laughs at me and refuses to produce any usable maps). Polygon select is my new favorite thing ever. As I learn some more 3d hopefully I will be able to make the workflow more smooth but for now it works pretty well, except for exporting the maps. So close

 

Assume I'm using the wrong shader (using PBR-Spec-Gloss) for the FO4 preset I copied of someone when I googled.

 

[MapExporter] The input map 'Base Color' needed by the map 'MM_TankTop01_F_d_0' of the texture set 'Material.000049' isn't available because: 'Base Color' channel is missing in your texture set.

[MapExporter] The map 'MM_TankTop01_F_d_0' can't be generated for the texture set 'Material.000049'.

[MapExporter] The input map 'Specular' needed by the map 'MM_TankTop01_F_s_0' of the texture set 'Material.000049' isn't available because: Your texture set needs a 'Metallic' channel to generate the 'Specular' map.

[MapExporter] The input map 'Glossiness' needed by the map 'MM_TankTop01_F_s_0' of the texture set 'Material.000049' isn't available because: Your texture set needs a 'Roughness' channel to generate the 'Glossiness' map.

[MapExporter] The map 'MM_TankTop01_F_s_0' can't be generated for the texture set 'Material.000049'.

 

EDIT: Getting closer to understanding the whole deal with shaders, seems the one I posed above I used multiple shaders (the downside with bruteforce learing is you sometimes have no f-ing clue what you have done or are doing hehe). Thus I would have needed multiple correctly configured export presets for the diff materials with respective shader I assume, where as I barely had one setup properly Considering your work this is probably like A-B-C basics for you, alas I'm just a simple forklift driver

 

 

From your screenshots you seem to be using the default shader, pbr-metal-rough. Would you mind sharing your export for when using that? Think the one I have is doing something wrong. Damnit Bethesda just use a normal pbr engine instead of your own black magic bastard version.

 

Edit2: First try using Substance Painter (using the horrible mesh for the artillery, made both 3d-Coat and Quixel crash but loads fine in Substance although I deleted the animation nodes which is probably why).

 

First  try (first time using SP):

 

Second try (made it quickly yesterday):

 

Impossible to go back to Quixel now I have to say.