Substance Painter

• Overview

Substance painter is a program that uses a 2D net of a 3D object to create the texture in real time and is non-destructive as it doesn't actually change the mesh even though it can add details. The program has several types of "brush" by default but also allows for the addition of more, you can use them separately or in combination with each other, mixing brushes can make a more varied combination.

The core substance painter interface sections are laid out below:

•Layout tab

Above is a screenshot of substance painter with the sample "previewsphere" loaded, this is the screen you will first see when you load a project in substance painter.

•  3D Viewport

This area of the screen show what the object will look like with its current texture, you can move around by holding the alt key ands using the mouse. You can also alter the texture directly on this viewport.

•  2D Viewport

This area shows the object in its unwrapped form, this is where most painting is usually carried out.

•  Layers Menu

The layer menu shows each layer the current project has, it can be used to do several important things including changing the layers position in the hierarchy, changing layers opacity and adding masks. The layout of layers can make the same textures and materials on an object give wildly different results.

•  Basic Menu options 

These are the normal menus present in most applications containing the usual new, load and save functions. there are also some different functions specific to substance painter ion these menu's, some of the more important ones are as follows:

•  File 

The import allows for custom/additional materials to be added to the library of "assets" for use in current and later projects.

"Export mesh"/"texture" allows for the mesh and the textures to be exported from the program for use in other programs/projects.

There is also a setting called "send to" that allows for the current life to be quickly sent to photoshop and other image modification software.

•  Edit

The main differences in this menu from normal are access to "project configuration" and "reimport mesh".

There is also two other menus for program languages java and python, I have not had to deal with these yet.  

•  Tools Menu

This area contains several tools that can be used to interact with the models mesh, these have several different way of interacting with the texture.

•  Paint brush 

The paint brush had two versions "paint" and "physical paint"; the paint one applies the current chosen texture directly to the image and physical paint creates moving particles that themselves apply the paint based on physics.

•  Eraser 

The eraser works in a similar way to the paint brush except removing texture instead of adding it, it also has the same two types of options as paint in "eraser" and "physical eraser" that work in a similar way to the paint brush version.  

•  Projection

Projection is a tool that allows the use of images to be used as stencils, this allows do images to be painted directly onto the surface.

•  Polygon fill

This allows for you to paint the texture to the models by interacting with the faces themselves.

• Smudge

The smudge tool interacts with the current texture on the mesh and moves it using using physics similar to actually smudging it with another object.

• Clone

Clone lets you choose an area in the mesh and copy the texture there onto another area, the clone target moves with the copy location.

• Material picker

The material picker allows for you to target a texture/material on the mech to copy it to another layer.

• Material picker

The material picker allows for you to target a texture/material on the mech to copy it to another layer.

The last four icons allow for exporting to other programs and browse various community assets.

•  Brush settings 

There are several options on this area that alter how each tool works, each one works in tandem to give different effect to the tools.

 • Size

Size as it sounds, changes the size and influence of where the tool will affect on the mesh.

 • Flow

Flow makes the tool changes to the impact the tool will have to the texture, low flow makes the tool slowly change the texture and high flow makes more instant and noticeable changes to the texture.

• Stroke opacity

This setting changes the transparency of the tools effect/texture.

Flow make

• Flow

Spacing affects the space between stamps/stencils used on the tool.

•  Brush settings Menu

This Menu Has the same setting on it that "brush settings" has.

•  Materials menu

The materials menu contains all currently available material that can be used in the current project, these can be used with the paint tool like normal colours.  The contain more than just colour data, they can also affect the roughness and normal maps as well as several other features.

•Example

Below is another example of a 3D model, I textured this using substance painter and exported it to a basic image file.