Substance Painter now paints over UV Tile boundaries
Hiro Protagonist
Posts: 699
in The Commons
Substance Painter now paints over UV Tile boundaries, which is a big deal for texturing Genesis figures. It was a long time coming, but it's finally here today.
Introductory youtube video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbZvyvhX7PM
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Comments
Wow, it's finally here. Seam guides no longer required. :D
not entirely true.
but I'm happy for fewer seams from SP
Yay
Finally! I had a bit of a conspiracy theory going that they were going to hold off releasing it until after you could no longer switch to a perpetual licence. So I'm very happy to be proven wrong.
(My plan is to get my perpetual version and then probably still rent but with the knowledge that if something happens I have a backup.)
They've been talking of doing this for, what, 6 years now?
Complain all you want about Adobe, but they got the job done!
Does anyone know if the painting across UV seams is included with the Substance Painter 2020 on Steam option?
Make sure that rental won't subsume your perpetual license - I'm not sure it was the intended behhaviour but there was at leasta s pell when that was happening with CC taking over, and so killing, perptual CS licenses on the same account.
Hi SBibb, It appears that you can, I'm downloading the update on Steam right now.
Hold fire on my last comment. I'll post once I get it working!
Now if only I had any skill at textures...
It seems that you have to buy the 2020 version in order to get the 2020.2 update!. I'm using 2018 version! So I'm checking out the free trial for now.
Yes, so long as you have the 2020 version for the perpetual license in steam.
Something I haven't been able to figure out yet: if you load a Genesis 8 figure for example into Substance Painter with the new UDIM features active and you try and apply its textures as fill layers, they now conceal each other based on the order of layer stack. Is it even possible to bring the textures over as a base to paint upon and have them all be visible normally on the figure at the same time?
edit: think I fixed the problem...third time I've asked for help today and then immediately figured it out. Sorry. ;)
Thanks for the confirmation that the 2020 Steam version should have the update. :-)
I think I'm going to go ahead and give the free version a try to see if I like it, then definitely consider picking up the Steam version if it works well for what I need.
(Timing... I just spent a sizable chunk of time fighting with painting across seams yesterday, so I can definitely see the value of something like this).
So would this software make it so I coud load any figure that could be loaded in DAZ Studio or Poser, and load an image that would be placed on the surface of that figure, and drag that image any place on the figure regardless of whether it crosses a place where there would be a seam?
And if I got the version that costs $149.99 and says December 17th, 2019 on Steam, would that be the newest version? Would it keep working without me spending more money?
It's a bit more complicated than that, you have to export the figure from DAZ as an OBJ with specific settings, then load your image as a stencil and use it as a brush of sorts, and export the textures out and reapply them manually back in Studio - but in general, yes, this is a 3D texturing program that lets you paint directly on the figure and apply extremely realistic material presets with very precise control over all of its parameters.
finally. been waiting for this for so long. goodbye 3dcoat!
You must have Substance Painter 2020. Previous versions don't have the paint across UV tiles feature. It's the same price as 2019 from what I can see (£129). You get one year's worth of updates and after that it won't be updated, but it's still yours to keep using without further cost.
You start a Substance Painter project by first loading the model (as OBJ or FBX usually). It will not come in with textures (other than normal maps which can be optionally imported at the same time as the model), but each Surface (e.g. Torso), or those you select, will have a Texture Set created. If you want to load pre-mapped textures you need to import them to your resources "shelf", create a fill layer in each Texture Set and drag the matching texture image into each layer. You can then project new textures over these using the Projection Tool. This is explained in this official tutorial here https://youtu.be/dLbnbHDOGUg?t=176 (link goes to the time this section starts). Note this is an old video so doesn't cover painting over UV tiles (it's part of a course which is still well worth following if you are new to Painter). The Projection Tool is also used in the video at the top of this thread.
So, I can't get this new feature to work with G8 characters. Not sure what I am doing worng.
I export as .obj and make sure collapse UV tiles is checked. I import into substance and check "Preserve UV layout per material and enable painting across tiles".
When I go to paint over the character, I still can't paint across the seams. Anyone managed to get this work?
Don't collapse the UV tiles - Substance Painter will use those to split the maps.
Okay, tried that but still can't paint across the seams.
From my experiments surfaces need to share a material zone for substance to know what to combine. you can make the entire figure one material or break it into sections so the face, torso, arms, and legs are all one material but the eyes are seperate
you can combine materials in DS, but I'd recommend editing your object in your modeller of choice. I did it in blender - much easier to select what I wanted
SP is so backwards in that regard. Treating material zones as separate "channels" essentially. Never understood why they did that, mat zones need to be nothing more than selection sets or masks that you can use optionally but otherwise stay out of your way. Did they at least fix the botched export where every mat zone is exported as separate textures even when they're all on the same UV?
j cade is right. If you import the figure with default surfaces (i.e. straight out of Studio) each surface will be imported as a separate Texture Set. Each set (e.g. torso, face) will have only one UDIM tile in its list. You cannot paint across texture sets so all the tiles you want to paint across have to be in the same Texture Set. You can see this in the video in the OP. This means you will have to make a single surface for the whole body that includes all the surfaces using UDIM tiles 1001, 1002, 1003 and 1004, assuming you don't want to paint across eye and mouth parts. I agree with j cade that this is more easily and better done in a modelling app such as Blender. You can then create your own dev object(s) for use in Substance Painter.
By the way there is now a series of tutorials for UDIM workflow on Subtance's YouTube channel (currently the latest 5 videos. Also see Playlists) https://www.youtube.com/c/Substance3D/videos
So you can confirm that we either can paint across seams but with no separate Studio-defined surfaces (like Lips, Fingernails, etc), -or- keep those surfaces but not be able to paint across seams? That's what I'm seeing so far in my tests, just want to make sure I'm not missing something.
If I understood you properly, yes. But you don't need all those in Painter anyway. The only drawback is that you have to create a Painter dev version of the figure to work on. The textures produced of course just plug into the standard DAZ surfaces so those surfaces are not changed in Studio. Things like fingernails can be masked out to work on separately.
I created a quick dev version of G8M as above and I could paint across the seams without any problems.
Just uncheck Write Surfaces on export, and your file will be one material zone.
Right, I exported an G8F OBJ and can paint across the seams as well. Thanks for confirming. If you don't mind, can I ask what your export settings are from Substance Painter? I had a preset I'd made a while back to include Glossiness, but I lost it and now I can't remember how to recreate it. Here are my current settings. Thanks in advance.
Is there a tutorial of how to make daz materials one material zone?