Table of Contents

• Bake Substance Textures
• Bake Vertex Color Textures
• Paint ID Map
• Normal Texture Stamps
• Export to UE4
• Combine to Atlas

TODO:

• Bake normals, vertex colors and ambient occlusion in Blender
• Texture and paint in Quixel Mixer

Bake Substance Textures

To use Substance Painter's full potential of its generators and filters you first need to bake image textures:

1. Create a new project: main menu bar -> File -> New...
   1. Template: Unreal Engine 4 ( allegorithmic )
   2. File -> Select... -> Stature_low.fbx
   3. Document Resolution: 2048
      
      
2. main menu bar -> Edit -> Bake Mesh Maps
   
   1. Selection: Only objects with high-resolution, sculpted counterparts.
   2. Common
      1. Output Size -> 4096
      2. Dilation Width -> 16
      3. High poly parameters ->
         1. High Definition Meshes -> Stature_high.fbx
         2. Antialiasing -> Subersampling 8x8
         3. Match -> By Mesh Name
   3. Bakers:
      1. Enable 
         1. Normal
         2. World space normal
         3. Position
      2. Disable
         1. ID
         2. Ambient Occlusion
         3. Curvature
         4. Thickness
   4. Bake selected textures
      
      
3. main menu bar -> Edit -> Bake Mesh Maps ( upper settings but )
   1. Selection: Only remaining objects without high-resolution counterparts.
   2. High poly parameters ->
      1. Use Low Poly Mesh as High Poly Mesh -> Enabled
   3. Bake selected textures
      
      
4. main menu bar -> Edit -> Bake Mesh Maps ( upper settings but )
   1. Selection: All Objects
   2. Bakers:
      1. Enable 
         1. Ambient Occlusion
         2. Curvature
         3. Thickness -> optional: This value can be customized for each object if you want to use for example surface scattering.
      2. Disable
         1. ID
         2. Normal
         3. World space normal
         4. Position
   3. Bake selected textures

Bake Vertex Color Textures

To bake the image textures you need to use vertex colors painted in for example Medium:

1. main menu bar -> Edit -> Bake Mesh Maps ( upper settings but )
   1. Selection: Only Objects with high-resolution vertex color counterparts.
   2. Common
      1. High poly parameters ->
         1. Use Low Poly Mesh as High Poly Mesh -> Disabled
         2. High Definition Meshes -> Stature_highWithVertexColors.fbx
   3. Bakers:
      1. Enable 
         1. ID
      2. Disable
         1. all others
   4. ID baker parameters
      1. Texture set -> select the object(s) to bake the vertex colors  
      2. Color Source -> Vertex Color
      3. Optional: Apply to all
   5. Bake selected textures
2. Use these image textures as Fill Layer -> Base Color -> Image
3. Only turn on the color channel of this layer's material.

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Paint ID Map

You can use an ID map image to easily swap the materials of an object's surface. This ID image can be used to create color selection masks on the fly.

1. Paint the ID map image on a paint layer with a sharp-edged brush ( without semi-transparent pixels ) with only the Material -> Color channel enabled.
2. Use the base colors blue, red, and green ( + their averages ) to paint the different areas with for example
   1. red for the eyes
   2. blue for the skin
   3. green for the teeth
3. When you covered all areas of the model with ID colors main menu bar -> File -> Export Textures...
   1. Enable only the object with the ID color layer.
   2. Enable only Output maps -> XYZ_BaseColor
   3. Export
   4. Open output directory ( in the upper right corner )
   5. Close the Export window!
4. Drag & drop the exported ID map image file to the SHELF -> Project section
   1. change the type undefined to texture
   2. Import your resource to: project 'projectName'
5. Use it by selecting your model and then dragging & dropping the map image from the project shelf to TEXTURE SET SETTINGS -> MESH MAPS -> ID
6. Now disable the ID map image color layer in LAYERS to hide the painted ID map image.
7. Add a Fill Layer -> right-click context menu -> add mask with color selection
8. COLOR SELECTION -> Pick color and choose the ID map image color you want to use.

Normal Texture Stamps

You can also add normal texture details that affect the generators and smart materials.

1. Prepare the normal layer
   1. Add a paint layer for the normal details and call it the Normal_Details.
   2. Make sure it is the last layer in the layer stack (, right before the painted and disabled ID map image layer, if you have one ).
   3. Only enable nrm ( for Normal ) in the Material channels.
   4. Add anchor point to the Normal_Details layer. 
   5. Drag & drop a normal stamp into the Normal ( uniform color ) slot.
2. Connect the normal details to the ( not yet ) affected generators
   1. Select the generator.
   2. Set Parameters -> Micro Details -> Micro Normal -> True
   3. Set Image inputs -> Micro Normal ( uniform color ) -> ANCHOR POINTS tab -> select the anchor Normal_Details
   4. And set the Referenced channel -> Normal
3. Now you can stamp / paint on the Normal_Details and the generators are affected.

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Export to UE4

To export the image textures ( without emission ) and to display them in Unreal Engine 4 you need to prepare to combine the image textures to an atlas.

1. Repeat the following steps with all the objects in the TEXTURE SET LIST:
1. Add an opacity channel in the tab TEXTURE SET SETTINGS -> CHANNELS
2. Add an empty FILL layer called Opacity in the tab LAYERS.
3. Enable only op ( opacity ) of the Opacity layer’s Material.
2. Copy TODO the files in this .ZIP-file to your Substance Painter Shelf -> export-presets folder. Normally located in your User -> Documents folder on your hard disk.
3. Main menu bar -> File -> Export Textures…
   1. Tab OUTPUT TEMPLATE -> Check that the template Unreal Engine 4 (Custom) is available.
   2. Tab SETTINGS -> Global settings
      1. Choose an output directory.
      2. Choose the Unreal Engine 4 (Custom) as Output template
      3. File type -> png -> 8 bits + dithering
      4. Size -> 4096
      5. Padding -> Dilation + transparent -> 16
   3. Export
   4. Open output directory
   5. Save settings

Combine to Atlas

With Gimp you can combine the image textures exported from Substance Painter to an atlas.

Repeat the following for all three texture types:

1. File -> Open... the first XYZ_BaseColor.png image texture.
2. Open as Layers... the rest of the XYZ_BaseColor.png image textures with multi-select.
3. Change the active background color in the upper left corner to
   1. BaseColor: some neutral / average color that fits the rest of the image texture.
   2. Normal: R: 50; G: 50; B: 100
   3. OcclusionRoughnessMetallic: gray
4. In the Layers dock -> right-click context menu ->
   1. Merge Visible Layers... -> Merge
   2. Remove Alpha Channel
5. File  -> Export as... -> ObjectGroupName_BaseColor.png

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