Starting with substance painter

[state808]

Hi everyone! I just got substance painter and am going to start tutorials this weekend (if you have one you like, I'd love your suggestions)

I have a couple questions:

I understand the idea of substance painter making the texture....but then do I have to still create on obj file and apply the textures in blender and then use the H5m convertor to make it usable in the game? (or how do you bring it into the game?)

 

Can substance painter make light or lit surfaces?

 

Thanks for sharing your experience and wisdom. I gain so much from what you all share with me!

[pes1972]

Would love some feedback to, on how to use it best/easiest for this game if anyone have the knowledge.

[Kraegar]

13 hours ago, state808 said:

I understand the idea of substance painter making the texture....but then do I have to still create on obj file and apply the textures in blender and then use the H5m convertor to make it usable in the game? (or how do you bring it into the game?)

It's more like this - you download some 3d model, import it into blender, check if there's no problems with it, i.e. back face culling, broken normals, wrong faces orientation, UV outside the UV square, etc.
Make some adjustments to materials if you need to (rename, join, create new or delete some).
Not necessary to paint any texture in blender. 

After making sure the mesh is alright - export it from blender. If you plan to convert it to h5m later, export as .obj
Start SP, pick your object, import the included textures (if it got some) or start doing new ones if those are bad.

After that you export the textures from SP, add the obj and the "color" texture to hook5 converter and you're good.
You'll need to get some dds converter or photoshop/gimp plugin to convert exported normal and spec pngs to dds. There's also plenty of other dds converters - from online to custom apps. Once converted, name them after the color texture and add "_norm" and "_spec" to the textures names. That way hook will know which textures belong to which object.

BTW
The most optimal dds conversion method is DXT5 or otherwise called BC3. Ignore DXT3 or DXT1 (BC1 BC2) - DXT5 does it better and they will likely turn your textures to shit (quality sacrificed for a benefit of a little less file size). You may use them for a specific purposes, if you'll know what you're doing, but if used without care it may result in artifacts or some other undesired issues.
 

13 hours ago, state808 said:

Can substance painter make light or lit surfaces?

It lights the objects with IBL and there's an option to enable shadows, but has no point lights.
But it's more than enough to paint comfortably and you can rotate the light with RMB
SP comes with a bunch of IBL images, but you can also import your own hdri or any kind of image that could be used for IBL

[state808]

Thank you! That really helps me understand it better!

Can't wait to git gud!

 

 

[state808]

 

On 11/20/2022 at 10:12 AM, state808 said:

Thank you! That really helps me understand it better!

Can't wait to git gud!

 

 

For anyone wondering more about it- I think substance painter is very worth it. There is also a free product called quixel mixer that is comparable. Here's my latest progress on my newest car using substance painter. It's not where I want it yet- but it's also much further ahead than when I was hand-painting everything:

 

 

 

 

 

[sexybastardo]

7 hours ago, state808 said:

There is also a free product called quixel mixer that is comparable.

Oh, I need to check that out.

[Titanoboa Serpentes]

Hi, just want to add that there is a third option : ArmorPaint and you can use different versions, one that also has DXR for RTX cards. It's not as stable and elaborate as Quixel or SP and still in development, but it hase lots of options, and you can paint directly on the model. The link is here:  https://armorpaint.org/index.html.

[igor222]

Thank you