- Substance 3D home
- Home
- Getting Started
- Bakers settings
- Common Parameters
- Ambient Occlusion
- Ambient Occlusion from Mesh
- Bent Normals from Mesh
- Color Map from Mesh
- Convert UV to SVG
- Curvature
- Curvature from Mesh
- Curvature from Mesh (deprecated)
- Height Map from Mesh
- Normal Map from Mesh
- Opacity Mask from Mesh
- Position
- Position map from Mesh
- Thickness Map from Mesh
- Transferred Texture from Mesh
- World Space Direction
- World Space Normals
- Guides
- Features
- Common questions
- How to export the baked maps?
- Is dithering applied to baked textures?
- Should I enable "Compute tangent space per fragment"?
- What are Assbin files?
- What is the bit depth of baked textures?
- What is the difference between the OpenGL and DirectX normal format?
- Why are there strange stretches in my textures after baking or exporting?
- Why is Matching by Name not working with Ambient Occlusion/Thickness?
- Why is my mesh fully black after baking?
- Common issues
- Aliasing on UV Seams
- Baker output is fully black or empty
- Baking failed with Color Map from Mesh
- Black shading cross are visible on the mesh surface
- Mesh parts bleed between each other
- Normal map has strange colorful gradients
- Normal texture looks faceted
- Seams are visible after baking a normal texture
- Seam visible on every face
- Texture baked outside of Substance software looks incorrect
Compatible 3D software
Most 3D software is compatible with the Substance Bakers as long as they export mesh geometry as polygons in file formats supported by the applications.
However not all software is on par in terms of feature and quality when exporting these meshes. This is why it is important to clean a mesh properly and making it sure it will be compatible with the bakers. For more information on how to prepare a mesh see the various Guides.
Software Compatibility
Below is a list of commonly known 3D software and their compatibility with the bakers:
| Name | Status |
|---|---|
| Blender | Compatible: requires to flatten modifiers before export. |
| Maya | Compatible: requires a freeze transform and delete history before export. |
| 3DS Max | Compatible: requires a reset xForm before export. |
| MODO | Compatible: recommended to use the Game Tab exporter set to "Unreal Static Mesh". |
| Cinema 4D | Compatible: requires to flatten modifiers before export. |
| zBrush | Not Compatible: low-poly meshes need to be processed and cleaned in another 3D application first. |
File format
When baking geometry it is important to take into account the file format used as well. The file format will define the quantity of information that will be saved in the mesh.
Having too much information can sometimes be detrimental and lead to errors. We usually recommend to try different file formats when errors happen as it can be an easy way to troubleshoot issues and determine if the culprit is in the baker itself or coming from the 3D software.
Bellow is a quick overview of the two most common file format supported by the bakers:
| File format | Information |
|---|---|
| FBX | Autodesk FBX (Filmbox) is the main file format used by Autodesk Software, it can be wrote as text or binary.
|
| OBJ | Wavefront OBJ is a very simple text based file format that supports :
|
