Last updated on
Oct 7, 2024
- Substance 3D home
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- Painting overview
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- Straight line
- Lazy mouse
- Symmetry
- Fill projections
- Presets
- Presets overview
- Creating and saving presets
- Creating particles presets
- Photoshop brush presets (ABR)
- Dynamic strokes
- Advanced channel painting
- Vector graphic (.svg & .ai)
- Text resource
- Effects
- Baking
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- Importing assets
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- Features
- Automatic UV Unwrapping
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- Technical issues
- GPU Issues
- Crash when working with overclocked GPU
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- GPU drivers compatibility
- GPU drivers crash with long computations (TDR crash)
- GPU has outdated drivers
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- Issues with Nvidia GPUs on recent Mac OS versions
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- Shader API Reference
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- Changelog - Shader API
- Libraries - Shader API
- Lib Alpha - Shader API
- Lib Bayer - Shader API
- Lib Defines - Shader API
- Lib Emissive - Shader API
- Lib Env - Shader API
- Lib Normal - Shader API
- Lib PBR - Shader API
- Lib PBR Aniso - Shader API
- Lib Pom - Shader API
- Lib Random - Shader API
- Lib Sampler - Shader API
- Lib Sparse - Shader API
- Lib SSS - Shader API
- Lib Utils - Shader API
- Lib Vectors - Shader API
- Parameters - Shader API
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- Release notes
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- Version 10.1
- Version 10.0
- Version 9.1
- Old versions
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- Version 8.3
- Version 8.2
- Version 8.1
- Version 7.4
- Version 7.3
- Version 7.2
- Version 2021.1 (7.1.0)
- Version 2020.2 (6.2.0)
- Version 2020.1 (6.1.0)
- Version 2019.3
- Version 2019.2
- Version 2019.1
- Version 2018.3
- Version 2018.2
- Version 2018.1
- Version 2017.4
- Version 2017.3
- Version 2017.2
- Version 2017.1
- Version 2.6
- Version 2.5
- Version 2.4
- Version 2.3
- Version 2.2
Substance 3D Painter
Substance 3D Painter is a 3D painting software allowing you to texture and render your 3D meshes.
This documentation is designed to help you learn how to use this software, from basic to advanced techniques.
If you have any question that is not answered in this manual feel free to ask on our Forum. You can also download our Physically Based Rendering guide if you wish to learn more about PBR.
Getting Started
- Activation and licenses — This page has information on how to activate and manage your licenses so you can start using Painter.
- System requirements — This page regroups system requirements and hardware compatibility information.
- Tutorials — Recommended tutorials for getting started with Substance 3D Painter.
- Project Creation — The new project creation window allows to create a project file to store the 3D model and its texturing information.
- Export — A project can be exported into bitmap textures to be used with other software. It is also possible to export the geometry of the 3D model.
- Glossary — This page lists the most common keywords used by the application alongside a short explanation of the concept behind it.
- Performance — This page regroups tips and tricks on how to maximize performances and make things run smoothly.
Painting tools
- Tool list — This page details all the painting tool available and how to use them.
- Straight line — The Straight Line is an easy way of drawing a line with any painting tool with less clicks and more precision.
- Lazy mouse — The Lazy Mouse is a distance offset between the mouse cursor and the actual painting which allows to paint more precise or smooth strokes.
- Symmetry — Symmetry is the action of painting in multiple locations at the same time based on geometric constraints.
- Fill projections — Fill layer and fill effects project a texture directly onto the mesh based on a specific mode. This type of layer/effect avoid to manually paint textures on the 3D model. The settings of the projection can be edited via the Properties window.
- Presets — Presets are saved configurations of Painting Tools. This page explain how and why to use them.
- Dynamic strokes — Dynamic Strokes are regular brush strokes powered by Substance files that can change for each stamp inside a brush stroke.
- Advanced channel painting — A few of the default channels used in shaders can be painted on to created advanced or complex effects. For example painting height information that get converted into a normal map.