Leo Martínez
Substance Painter is a powerful tool for creating and editing highly detailed 3D models and their materials. It acts as a universal material editor, allowing users to create effects that will look identical across render engines. Substance Painter offers a hard surface section, which allows users to add texture to their mesh using Normal channels. To create a hard surface tool, one must first add a paint layer. Then, select the texture set to edit from the Texture Set List. Following this, click the Add layer icon and enable Normal. Finally, select texture > hard surface from Assets, and drag and drop any material to Normal.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Purpose | To create interesting random shapes, surface gradients, and patterns |
| Tools | Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Photoshop, Cinema 4D, Blender |
| Techniques | Using custom nodes from Substance Share, creating your own normal map stamps, applying a Black Mask, using Non-Uniform Blur, using the Tile Sampler node |
| Benefits | Improved renders, highly detailed materials, universal material editing, speed and versatility |
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What You'll Learn
- Create a SmartMaterial from scratch with the help of external textures
- Use the Fill Selection Tool to choose individual objects
- Use the Slope Blur or Mosaic node to create a pinch brush effect
- Use directional bevel filter functionality to create random shapes and patterns
- Use the Hardness setting to create rigid textures without distortions
Create a SmartMaterial from scratch with the help of external textures
Creating a SmartMaterial from scratch in Substance Painter with the help of external textures is an intermediate-level tutorial. Before beginning, it is recommended that you have a basic understanding of Maya, Substance, and Arnold.
To create a SmartMaterial from scratch, you will first need to open an FBX file in Substance Painter. Ensure that Auto-Unwrap is deactivated and that your Template is set to Metallic Roughness. You can test that everything is functioning correctly by drawing on the model. You should see the markings reflected on the UV map.
Next, you will need to bake the model. Go to Texture Set Settings and scroll down until you see Bake Mesh Maps. Click on this, and then select ID and change the colour to Vertex Colour. You can also adjust the resolution in Common. Click on Bake Selected Textures. Baking creates extra maps that tell the software how to treat edges, ambient occlusion, and normals.
You can use mesh information through baked maps. For instance, ID maps can be used to quickly create masks for the different parts. You can use Ambient Occlusion to localise dirt in the concave areas of the mesh. You can also use Curvature to create paint peeling, cracks, and scratches. Remember to always be coherent with the material type and its real-life properties. For example, the texture of plastic and metal can vary significantly due to the flexibility of plastic versus the rigidity of metal.
To create interesting colours and effects, you can use gradients and dimming in the recesses to create interesting colour transitions. Tile fills and grunges have a Hardness setting that is responsible for the rigidity of the texture. A higher Hardness value will create a harder texture that is less subject to distortion when zooming or resizing, but this can also lead to sharp edges and seams that may look unnatural.
You can also create your own tools with custom alphas to quickly add nice details. For example, you can paint details like bolts on all the channels at the same time (Albedo, Normal). By doing them directly in textures, you will not have to paint over your baked normal and will get something coherent without having to paint the same element multiple times on different maps.
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Use the Fill Selection Tool to choose individual objects
Substance Painter is a powerful addition to your C4D workflow. It allows you to quickly and easily author your own highly-detailed materials, and the ability to edit them while inside of C4D. Substance Painter acts as a universal material editor that allows you to create effects that will look identical across render engines.
To choose individual objects in Substance Painter, you can use the Fill Selection Tool. Here's a step-by-step guide:
- Use the keyboard shortcut "U+F" to switch to the Fill Selection Tool.
- With the Fill Selection Tool active, you can choose each object individually by clicking on it.
- Once you have selected an object, hold down the "Shift" key and switch to the points or vertices of the object.
- You can now assign a vertex color to the selected points or vertices.
- Press "Shift+C" on your keyboard to open the Commander.
- In the Commander, type "Vertex" to view your object in black.
- Choose your desired color by selecting and sampling a color from your color scheme or palette.
- Click "Apply Selected" to apply the chosen color to the selected vertices or points of the object.
- Repeat this process for each object or group of vertices/points that you want to color individually.
By using the Fill Selection Tool in Substance Painter, you can individually select and color specific parts of your objects, allowing for detailed customization and a unique color scheme. This tool provides a high level of precision and control when working with 3D models and their textures.
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Use the Slope Blur or Mosaic node to create a pinch brush effect
The Slope Blur and Mosaic nodes in Substance 3D Designer can be used to create a pinch brush effect. This effect is useful for tightening up generated height maps or shapes that appear too loose. It can also be used to hide aliasing or artifacts when you've had to blur too much.
To create a pinch brush effect with the Slope Blur node, use a tiny negative intensity value. The Slope Blur node takes a grayscale input slope map to drive the angle of the anisotropy. This map should contain sloping gradients; sharp, harsh transitions will not work well. The number of samples, ranging from 0 to 32, will affect the quality at the expense of speed. The intensity, ranging from 0.0 to 16.0, determines the blur amount or strength. The mode parameter controls the blending mode for consequent blur passes. The "Blur" mode behaves like a standard anisotropic blur, while "Min" will "eat away" existing areas and "Max" will "smear out" white areas.
To create a pinch brush effect with the Mosaic node, use a tiny negative intensity value. The Mosaic node takes a grayscale input warp driver map and can be the same as the first input. The number of samples, ranging from 0 to 16, determines the multi-sample quality.
To get started with the Slope Blur node, it's recommended to create a graph to experiment with different combinations of nodes. You can save this graph for later and revisit it if you need to. There are also communities of professionals, such as the Future Material Artists Discord server, where you can seek help and learn from more experienced users.
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Use directional bevel filter functionality to create random shapes and patterns
When creating hard surfaces for Substance Painter, you can use custom nodes with a directional bevel filter functionality to create random shapes, surface gradients, and patterns. This is a highly effective way to add depth to your creations and make them look more machined or man-made.
The directional bevel filter is a powerful node-based workflow tool that can be used to create complex, procedural textures and patterns from scratch. It offers the ability to perform dilation in a specific direction, allowing for the creation of interesting random shapes. You can also use the directional bevel node to copy, paste, and manipulate repeated shapes to create unique effects.
To create hard surface metal paneling, you can start by designing organic shapes and then applying those principles to the desired surface. This can be done by utilizing the Tile Sampler node, which offers limitless possibilities for customization.
Additionally, the Non-Uniform Blur node is another valuable tool for hard-surface substances. It allows you to create parts that resemble machined metal or stamped metal from randomized 'Tile Sampler' shapes. By using a tiny negative intensity value on the 'Slope Blur' or 'Mosaic' node, you can achieve a similar effect to a sculpting program's pinch brush. This technique is useful for tightening up procedurally generated height maps or shapes that may appear too loose.
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Use the Hardness setting to create rigid textures without distortions
When creating a hard surface tool in Substance Painter, the Hardness setting is a crucial factor in achieving the desired texture rigidity without distortions. This setting is responsible for the texture's rigidity, and adjusting it can help prevent noticeable distortions and stretches in the texture.
The Hardness setting follows the same principle as in other image editors. By increasing the Hardness value, you can make the texture harder and less susceptible to distortion when zooming or resizing. This is especially useful when creating textures that require a precise and consistent appearance, such as machined or man-made surfaces.
However, it's important to use the Hardness setting judiciously. Setting the Hardness value too high can result in sharp seams between texture fragments, which may appear unnatural. To avoid this, it's recommended to scroll the slider of the Hardness setting to find the optimal value that maintains texture rigidity while preventing undesirable seams.
Additionally, when working with hard surfaces in Substance Painter, consider utilizing custom nodes with directional bevel filter functionality. These nodes can help create interesting shapes, surface gradients, and patterns that enhance the overall appearance of your hard surfaces. Combining these techniques with careful adjustment of the Hardness setting will enable you to create crisp and distortion-free textures for your projects.
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Frequently asked questions
Substance Painter is a powerful addition to your C4D workflow. It allows you to author your own highly-detailed materials and edit them inside C4D, acting as a universal material editor.
First, add a paint layer so that you can only paint on Normal. Then, select the texture set to edit from the Texture Set List. Click the "Add layer" icon, followed by the "Material" icon, and enable "Normal". Select "texture > Hard Surface" from "Assets", and drag and drop any material to "Normal".
You can add more AO (ambient occlusion) to the added hard surfaces. You can also use the Non-Uniform Blur node to create parts that look machined or like stamped metal.
