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Compatible 3D software | Substance 3D bakers

  1. Substance 3D home
  2. Home
  3. Getting Started
    1. What is Baking?
    2. Software interface
      1. Substance 3D Painter
      2. Substance 3D Designer
      3. Substance 3D Automation Toolkit
    3. Availability per software
    4. Compatible 3D software
    5. Tutorials
  4. Bakers settings
    1. Common Parameters
    2. Ambient Occlusion
    3. Ambient Occlusion from Mesh
    4. Bent Normals from Mesh
    5. Color Map from Mesh
    6. Convert UV to SVG
    7. Curvature
    8. Curvature from Mesh
    9. Curvature from Mesh (deprecated)
    10. Height Map from Mesh
    11. Normal Map from Mesh
    12. Opacity Mask from Mesh
    13. Position
    14. Position map from Mesh
    15. Thickness Map from Mesh
    16. Transferred Texture from Mesh
    17. World Space Direction
    18. World Space Normals
  5. Guides
    1. Error and Warning Messages
    2. Performances and optimizations
    3. Triangulating before baking
  6. Features
    1. Geometry Cache
    2. GPU Raytracing
    3. Matching by Name
    4. Tangent Space
  7. Common questions
    1. How to export the baked maps?
    2. Is dithering applied to baked textures?
    3. Should I enable "Compute tangent space per fragment"?
    4. What are Assbin files?
    5. What is the bit depth of baked textures?
    6. What is the difference between the OpenGL and DirectX normal format?
    7. Why are there strange stretches in my textures after baking or exporting?
    8. Why is Matching by Name not working with Ambient Occlusion/Thickness?
    9. Why is my mesh fully black after baking?
  8. Common issues
    1. Aliasing on UV Seams
    2. Baker output is fully black or empty
    3. Baking failed with Color Map from Mesh
    4. Black shading cross are visible on the mesh surface
    5. Mesh parts bleed between each other
    6. Normal map has strange colorful gradients
    7. Normal texture looks faceted
    8. Seams are visible after baking a normal texture
    9. Seam visible on every face
    10. 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:

NameStatus
BlenderCompatible: requires to flatten modifiers before export.
MayaCompatible: requires a freeze transform and delete history before export.
3DS MaxCompatible: requires a reset xForm before export.
MODOCompatible: recommended to use the Game Tab exporter set to "Unreal Static Mesh".
Cinema 4DCompatible: requires to flatten modifiers before export.
zBrush

Not Compatible: low-poly meshes need to be processed and cleaned in another 3D application first.
Compatible: high-poly meshes for baking.

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 formatInformation
FBX

Autodesk FBX (Filmbox) is the main file format used by Autodesk Software, it can be wrote as text or binary.
It supports :

  • UVs (multiples sets)
  • Vertex, Tangent and Binormals
  • Vertex colors
  • Triangle face, Quad face and N-Gon face
  • Cameras
  • Lights
  • Mesh subdivisions
  • Smoothing groups
  • Material information (such as color)
  • Bitmap
OBJ

Wavefront OBJ is a very simple text based file format that supports :

  • UVs (only one set)
  • Vertex Normals
  • Vertex Colors (only if exported from Pixologic zBrush)
  • Triangle face, Quad face, and N-Gon face
  • Material color (if mtl file is present)

 Adobe

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