Substance Painter Help Sheet
Substance Painter Help Sheet
- FlippedNormals
Introduction
01 - Introduction and UI
Concepts
- Substance PBR Guide - Must-read
- Painter is entirely procedural
- We don't paint maps - we paint materials
Hotkeys
- Select texture sets - Ctrl Alt RMB
- Isolate Texture Set - Alt Q
- Next Channels - C
- Previous Channel - Shift C
- Next baked channel - B
- Previous Baked Channel - Shift B
- Material - M
- Precision with sliders - Hold down Shift w
hile sliding
02 - Layers
- A Fill-Layer is a material
- You will base most of your work on fill layers
- Disable the channels you don’t need for Fill-Layers, to keep it clean.
03 - The Shelf
- Import a resource by dragging it from the explorer/finder into the shelf
- Change it from undefined to what you’re importing (texture for textures,
environment for hdris, etc)
04 - Brush tool
- Brush tool - 1
- Resize - Ctrl RMB left/right
- Hardness - RMB up/down
- Rotate - Ctrl LMB up/down
- Flow - Ctrl LMB left
- Straight line - Shift LMB
- Lazy Mouse - D
- Symmetry - L
- Flip Colors - X
- Color picker - P
05 - Projection
- Projection Tool - 3
- Import images into the shelf
- Drag the images into the slot of the layer you want (color, height, etc)
Navigation
- Rotate - S + LMB
- Scale - S + RMB
- Move - S + MMB
- Snap - S +Shift + LMB
06 - Polygon Fill
- Hotkey 4
07 - Clone Tool
- Hotkey 6
- V to sample
- Non Destructive: New Layer - Blending Mode: Passthrough
08 - Particles
- Works with Brush, Eraser, Projection
- Try out different presets under the Shelf
13 - Using Anchors
- Make a new layer where you paint normal maps
- Fx Stack - Add anchor point
- Add a Mask Editor
- Scroll to the very bottom: Micro Normal - Anchor Point - Select your anchor
point
- Reference Channel: Normal
- Scroll up - Micro Normal: ‘On’
02 - Baking
We bake to get mesh information into texture maps.
Elaborate video on what each map does:
- Texture Maps Explained - Essential for All Texture Artists
- Change ‘Match’ to ‘By Mesh Name’ - Under Common
Change Color Source - under ID
03 - Painted Metal
- Methodically build up materials with fill layers.
- Every material should be grouped and every layer named.
- Look at real-world reference as much as you can.
- Think about how materials layer in the real world. Does the metal come
before or after the paint? Where is the rust?
04 - Cables
- Keep some materials simpler. If you have visual complexity everywhere, the
viewer’s eyes get tired.
05 - Stealing Materials
- Be a lazy texture artist!
- Reuse as much as you can.
06 - Brass
- The roughness map is really one of the most important maps!
- Keep the color clean and put variation in the roughness map.
07- Copper
- Keep a time budget in mind. If you have a simple piece which isn’t seen a lot, make a
simple material and move on. Spend your time on the important parts.
08 - Logo
- Make a black Fill Layer
- Make a black mask for the Fill Layer
- Mask out the Fill Layer with the provided stencil
(_materials\images\Marelli_Logo.png)
- Adjust the Height of the Fill Layer to make it go in or out of the material.
09 - Updating the Model
- You will often need to update the model: UVs changed, normals edited, model
subdivided, etc.
- SAVE YOUR PAINTER PROJECT BEFORE UPDATING.
- Edit - Project Configuration
- Select a new model
- Enable ‘Preserve Strokes Position on Mesh’
- Hit OK.
- Go to Texture Set Settings - Bake Mesh Maps and rebake all the maps using the
same settings as before.
10 - Iray
- GPU renderer which ships with Painter.
- Very easy and fast!
- Hit F10 to use Iray. F9 to go back to painting.
- Change which HDRi used to drastically change the look.
- Use DOF to add realism. You control it with the aperture slider.
- Set focus point with Ctrl MMB
11 - Exporting Maps
- File - Export Maps or C
trl Shift E
- Change Config based on where you’re using the maps
- You can change the texture resolution per texture set.
- Depending on your GPU, you can export out 8k.
- For most workflows, 8-bit PNG is fine.
- For height maps, you want at least 16-bit EXR files.