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How To Convert Textures For Fallout 4 Using Substance Painter

How to convert textures for Fallout 4 using Substance Painter (and also how to convert simple meshes with blender to NIF) By Wanaming0, professional ideaman

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Денис Марфонов
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664 views13 pages

How To Convert Textures For Fallout 4 Using Substance Painter

How to convert textures for Fallout 4 using Substance Painter (and also how to convert simple meshes with blender to NIF) By Wanaming0, professional ideaman

Uploaded by

Денис Марфонов
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How to convert textures for Fallout 4 using

Substance Painter
(and also how to convert simple meshes with blender to NIF)
By Wanaming0, professional ideaman

Step 1:
Check if the textures are either PBR(Physics-Based Rendering) Specular Glossiness, or PBR Metal
Roughness. You can tell by which maps the model came with.

PBR SpecGloss comes with a Diffuse map, a Normal Map, a Specular Map and a Glossiness map AT
LEAST. Sometimes Emissive too if it glows, and a Height map also optionally.

PBR MetalRough comes with a BaseColor map, a Normal Map, a Metal map and a Roughness map AT
LEAST. Sometimes it comes with Ambient Occlusion (AO) too.

Example of PBR MetalRough textures bundled with a model.

Fallout 4 uses a edited version of PBR SpecGloss, called colloquially TBR (Todd-Based Rendering). TBR is
identical to PBR except it does not use a height map for most things at all, and specular is not colored.
Instead, the specular and glossiness channels are combined into one single file, with the Specular
channel going as grayscale in the RED channel and the glossiness going in the GREEN channel, with the
BLUE staying completely black as it is not used at all.

Step 2:
You need Substance Painter for this. It is relatively free. Just go to
https://substance3d.adobe.com/education/ to get a free license. You can put literally any image in the
student license thing and it will accept it.
Step 3:
Open substance and make a new project (File > New Project).
1. First, choose the appropriate template, depending on Step 1. In this case, it’s MetalRough.
2. Add the mesh clicking on Select.
3. Choose the document size you want (2K in this example)
4. Add the textures you already have by clicking on Add.
Step 4:
You will see the model on the left and the unwrapped mesh UV on the right.
If you’re missing any map slots, add them by clicking on the Texture Set Settings and add the missing
ones. In this case, I have an AO (Ambient Occlusion) map that came with the mesh, but no slot for it, so
I’m adding it with the plus sign like shown below.

Step 6:
Click on the Layers tab if you’re not in that tab. Then click the Fill Layer button.
Step 7:
The new fill layer has slots for all your texture maps in the Properties section. You just have to fill them.
Disable the maps you don’t have, like in this case, height, opacity and emissive.

To fill them, click on each, and type “project” in that little search bar so you can find the texture maps
you added in step 3.

End result:
Step 8:
Export!
To export, go to “File > Export Textures…”. Choose the appropriate Output template. See below:

You can use my FO4 export presets to export easier to not have to do much in Photoshop other than
converting them to DDS ->

Fallout 4 (Converted from PBR MetalRoughness) link


Fallout 4 (Converted from PBR SpecularGlossiness) link

Just drop those inside Documents\Adobe\Adobe Substance 3D Painter\assets\export-presets.


You can recreate them in case those links break or expire:

<- FO4 from


PBR spec-
gloss

<- FO4 from


PBR Metal-Rough.
Step 9:
Convert using photoshop. Remember this:

- Diffuse and emissive should use BC7 compression. BC1 only if you’re being VERY cheap with the
filesize (i.e. for Xbox). Select with or without alpha depending if the thing is supposed to have
alpha (be invisible in some bits) or not.

- Normals and Specular use BC5 compression.


If the mesh is not supposed to glow, do NOT use the _E (glowmap) map. Fallout 4 does NOT support
using a glowmap and an environment map (cubemap) at the same time.

Addendum
Separating mesh bits:

Import in blender:
Click on the mesh and press “Tab” to go into edit mode. You should see all the vertex. Click on
“wireframe mode”.

Select the bits of the mesh you want to separate using the selection tool.
Right click, Separate > Selection.

Change the name of the separated thing if you want.


Get out of Edit Mode by hitting Tab again on your keyboard. Select the things you want to export on the
right.

Export by going to File -> Export -> NIF.


CHOOSE FALLOUT 4 ON THE RIGHT

For simple collisions done entirely in NIFskope without the need of 3Dsmax 2013, see :
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dR0FU5HQrWsBiU6BtKg-dNXLSUVVlhT72fGCVyWmw3w

Done!
Feel free to donate here if you liked this tutorial or if you’d like for me to do
more.

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