User Guide Cancel

Version 2019.2 | Substance 3D Painter

  1. Substance 3D home
  2. Home
  3. Getting Started
    1. Getting Started overview
    2. Activation and licenses
    3. System requirements
    4. Project creation
    5. Export
      1. Export overview
      2. Export window
        1. Export window overview
        2. Export settings
        3. Output templates
        4. List of exports
      3. Export presets
        1. Export presets overview
        2. Predefined presets
          1. Predefined Presets
          2. USD PBR Metal Roughness Preset
          3. Default Presets
        3. Creating export presets
    6. Glossary
    7. Performance
  4. Interface
    1. Assets
      1. Assets overview
      2. Navigation
      3. Customizing the layout
      4. Filter by path
      5. Saved searches
      6. Advanced search queries
      7. Adding a new library
      8. Sub-library tab
    2. Substance 3D Assets
    3. Color picker
    4. Display settings
      1. Display settings overview
      2. Environment settings
      3. Camera settings
      4. Viewport settings
    5. History
    6. Layer stack
      1. Layer stack overview
      2. Creating layers
      3. Managing layers
      4. Masking and effects
      5. Blending modes
      6. Layer instancing
      7. Geometry mask
    7. Main menu
      1. Main menu overview
      2. File menu
      3. Edit menu
      4. Mode menu
      5. Window menu
      6. Viewport menu
      7. Plugins menu
      8. Help menu
    8. Project configuration
    9. Properties
    10. Settings
      1. Settings overview
      2. General preferences
      3. Shortcuts
      4. Libraries configuration
    11. Shader settings
      1. Shader settings overview
      2. Updating a shader
    12. Texture Set
      1. Texture Set overview
      2. Texture Set list
      3. Texture Set settings
      4. Texture Set reassignment
    13. Toolbars
    14. Viewport
      1. Viewport overview
      2. 2D view
      3. 3D view
      4. Camera management
    15. Miscellaneous
      1. Sliders
      2. Log
      3. Update checker
  5. Painting
    1. Painting overview
    2. Tool list
      1. Paint brush
      2. Eraser
      3. Projection
      4. Polygon fill
      5. Smudge tool
      6. Clone Tool
      7. Quick mask
      8. Path tool
    3. Straight line   
    4. Lazy mouse 
    5. Symmetry
      1. Symmetry overview
      2. Mirror Symmetry
    6. Fill projections
      1. Fill projections overview
      2. Fill (match per UV Tile)
      3. UV projection
      4. Tri-planar projection
      5. Planar projection
      6. Spherical projection
      7. Cylindrical projection
      8. Warp projection
      9. UV set to UV set projection
    7. Presets
      1. Presets overview
      2. Creating and saving presets
      3. Creating particles presets
        1. Creating particles overview
        2. Installing the particle editor
        3. Overview of the particle editor
        4. Creating a new particle script
      4. Photoshop brush presets (ABR)
        1. Photoshop brush presets overview
        2. Exporting Brush Presets from Photoshop
        3. Importing Photoshop Brush Presets
        4. Photoshop Brush Parameters Compatibility
    8. Dynamic strokes
      1. Dynamic strokes overview
      2. Enabling Dynamic Stroke feature
      3. Dynamic Stroke Performances
      4. Creating custom Dynamic Strokes
    9. Advanced channel painting
      1. Channel painting overview
      2. Ambient Occlusion
      3. Flow Map
      4. Height Map
      5. Normal Map
    10. Vector graphic (.svg & .ai)
    11. Text resource
  6. Effects
    1. Effects overview
    2. Generator
    3. Paint
    4. Fill
    5. Levels
    6. Compare Mask
    7. Filter
    8. Anchor Point
  7. Baking
    1. Baking overview
    2. How to bake mesh maps
    3. Baking visualization settings
  8. Content
    1. Creating custom effects
      1. Creating custom effects overview
      2. Generic filter
      3. Channel specific filter
      4. Generators
      5. Mesh map
      6. Mesh based input
      7. User data
    2. Importing assets
      1. Adding resources via drag and drop
      2. Adding resources via the import window
      3. Adding content on the hard drive
      4. Receiving assets from other Substance 3D applications
  9. Features
    1. Automatic UV Unwrapping
    2. Physical size
    3. Smart Materials and Masks
    4. Subsurface Scattering
      1. Subsurface Scattering overview
      2. Enabling Subsurface in a Project
      3. Subsurface Parameters
      4. Subsurface Material Type
    5. Dynamic Material Layering
    6. UV Reprojection
    7. UV Tiles
      1. UV Tiles overview
      2. Image Sequence
    8. Color Management
      1. Color management overview
      2. Color management with Adobe ACE - ICC
      3. Color management with OpenColorIO
    9. Post Processing
      1. Post Processing overview
      2. Color correction
      3. Depth of Field
      4. Glare
      5. Lens Distortion
      6. Tone Mapping
      7. Vignette
      8. Color Profile
    10. Iray Renderer
      1. Iray Renderer overview
      2. Iray Settings
      3. Viewer and MDL Settings
    11. Plugins
      1. Plugins overview
      2. Autosave
      3. Resources Updater
    12. Sparse Virtual Textures
    13. Custom Shaders
    14. SpaceMouse® by 3Dconnexion
    15. Universal Scene Description (USD)
    16. Send to
  10. Technical Support
    1. Performance Guidelines
      1. Performances guidelines overview
      2. Conflicts and background applications
      3. Mesh and UV setup
      4. GPU Drivers
      5. NVIDIA Drivers Settings
      6. GPU VRAM amount and bandwidth
      7. GPU VRAM and other applications
      8. Texture Sets amount
      9. Layer management
      10. Channels management
      11. Substance filters and materials
      12. Viewport display
    2. Configuring Pens and Tablets
    3. Exporting the log file
    4. Exporting a DXDiag
    5. Technical issues
      1. GPU Issues
        1. Crash when working with overclocked GPU
        2. Forcing the external GPU on Mac OS
        3. GPU drivers compatibility
        4. GPU drivers crash with long computations (TDR crash)
        5. GPU has outdated drivers
        6. GPU is not recognized
        7. GPU is not recognized and is mentionned as GDI Generic
        8. Issues with Nvidia GPUs on recent Mac OS versions
        9. Multi/Bi-GPU
        10. Running on integrated GPU
        11. Painter doesn't start on the right GPU
      2. Startup Issues
        1. Application failed to start because of Qt
        2. Crash or freeze during startup
        3. Software conflicts
      3. Rendering Issues
        1. Artifacts and glitches on Mac OS with Custom GPUs
        2. Blocky artifacts appear on textures in the viewport
        3. Mesh appears pink in the viewport
        4. Mesh flash to white when moving camera
        5. Some HDPI scaling values are not working
      4. Stability Issues
        1. Crash during export
        2. Crash when opening or saving a file
        3. Crash while baking
        4. Crash with low virtual memory
        5. Windows Blue Screens
      5. Miscellaneous Issues
        1. Corrupted texture error message
        2. Shelf resources are gone after 7.2 update
        3. Error there is no disk in the drive
        4. Error with missing api-ms-crt dll
        5. Impossible to drag and drop files into the shelf
        6. Impossible to use the ALT keyboard shortcut on Linux
        7. Assets (or shelf) previews are empty
    6. Workflow Issues
      1. Export Issues
        1. My exported opacity map is totally black
        2. Texture dilation or Padding
      2. Tools Issues
        1. Normal map looks incorrect when loaded in layer or tool properties
        2. Paint Tool bleeds on other UV islands
      3. Project Issues
        1. A project has been processed as a text file and is now corrupted
        2. Loading files from a network
        3. Preserve brush strokes setting stays disabled
        4. Projects are really big
      4. Library Issues
        1. Thumbnails in the shelf look incorrect
        2. Error when importing a Font
      5. Viewport Issues
        1. Mesh faces disappear when looking at them from behind
        2. Viewports and textures are blurry or lack sharpness
      6. Plugins Issues
        1. Substance Source plugin doesn't load
      7. License Issues
        1. Maintenance is expired dialog on startup
  11. Pipeline and integration
    1. Installation and preferences
      1. Preferences and application data location
      2. Automated installation
      3. Retrieving the installation path
    2. Configuration
      1. Command lines
      2. Environment variables
      3. Firewall Configuration
      4. Querying Current Software Version
      5. Remote Desktop
    3. Resource management
      1. Shelf and Assets location
      2. Resource paths
        1. Adding resource paths by editing preferences manually
        2. Editing resource paths manually
        3. Editing the Shelf Preferences with Python
      3. Adding saved searches manually
      4. Preferences and content migration
      5. Excluding resources in a resource path
  12. Scripting and development
    1. Scripts and plugins
      1. Creating a Javascript plugin
      2. Remote control with scripting
    2. Shader API Reference
      1. Shader API overview
      2. Changelog - Shader API
      3. Libraries - Shader API
        1. Lib Alpha - Shader API
        2. Lib Bayer - Shader API
        3. Lib Defines - Shader API
        4. Lib Emissive - Shader API
        5. Lib Env - Shader API
        6. Lib Normal - Shader API
        7. Lib PBR - Shader API
        8. Lib PBR Aniso - Shader API
        9. Lib Pom - Shader API
        10. Lib Random - Shader API
        11. Lib Sampler - Shader API
        12. Lib Sparse - Shader API
        13. Lib SSS - Shader API
        14. Lib Utils - Shader API
        15. Lib Vectors - Shader API
      4. Parameters - Shader API
        1. All Custom Params - Shader API
        2. All Engine Params - Shader API
        3. All Rendering States Params - Shader API
        4. Layering Bind Materials - Shader API
        5. Layering Declare Stacks - Shader API
      5. Shaders - Shader API
        1. PBR Material Layering - Shader API
        2. PBR Metal Rough - Shader API
        3. Pixelated - Shader API
        4. Surface Shader - Shader API
        5. Toon - Shader API
  13. Release notes
    1. Release notes overview
    2. All Changes
    3. Version 10.1
    4. Version 10.0
    5. Version 9.1
    6. Old versions
      1. Version 9.0
      2. Version 8.3
      3. Version 8.2
      4. Version 8.1
      5. Version 7.4
      6. Version 7.3
      7. Version 7.2
      8. Version 2021.1 (7.1.0)
      9. Version 2020.2 (6.2.0)
      10. Version 2020.1 (6.1.0)
      11. Version 2019.3
      12. Version 2019.2
      13. Version 2019.1
      14. Version 2018.3
      15. Version 2018.2
      16. Version 2018.1
      17. Version 2017.4
      18. Version 2017.3
      19. Version 2017.2
      20. Version 2017.1
      21. Version 2.6
      22. Version 2.5
      23. Version 2.4
      24. Version 2.3
      25. Version 2.2

Version 2019.2

Substance Painter 2019.2 brings new powerful features to its Bakers and delivers a new set of Smart Materials and Smart Masks in the Shelf.

Release date : 25 July 2019

Major Features

Workflow improvements for Bakers

The baking workflow has been improved with this release with some new features. These improvements will speed up and ease day-to-day work with Substance Painter.

  • Baking process visualization
    By default with this new version any baking process will now be visible in the viewport. It allows to preview the result of the bakers in realtime and even cancel it if needed without waiting until the end of the process to offer quicker iterations. This behavior can be disabled by going into the main settings and unchecking the "Enable live preview baking process" setting under the "Baking Options" section.

  • Improved baking dialog
    The baking dialog has been reworked and now displays a better status of the current baking process. There is now a counter to indicate how many textures will be computed as well as an explicit list per baker and Texture Set of what is being computed. In case of an error a red cross is displayed next to the baker name. At the end of the process a new button allows to quickly open the log window to learn more about the issue.


  • Canceling in-progress baking
    The baking process doesn't lock the application anymore. Substance Painter is now more responsive, meaning it is possible to cancel a bake that is currently in progress without waiting for it to end. Cancellation is not immediate however and may require a few seconds to take effect. This is because internally the baking process works on textures in chunks and cannot stop while a chunk is being computed. When canceling the baking process, the Baking window automatically reopens.

Performance improvements for Bakers

With the workflow improvement we also took the opportunity to update our Bakers and improve their performances. We also added the support of DXR and Optix to enable GPU Raytracing which allows to bake much faster than before. Note however that GPU Raytracing only affect the Ambient Occlusion and Thickness baker.

  • CPU Raytracing has been improved
    Raytracing computation on the CPU is now 2 to 3 times faster than before. So even if your GPU is not compatible with GPU Raytracing you will still get performance improvements in general.

  • GPU Raytracing support with DXR and Optix
    With compatible hardware the bakers can now compute directly on the GPU which drastically reduces computation time, especially when anti-aliasing is enabled and lots of rays are defined. DXR is the default option when available, otherwise Optix will be used. It is possible to disable GPU Raytracing by going into the main settings and looking for "Baking Options" :

Note:

To enable the GPU Raytracing feature make sure to update to the following drivers : Nvidia drivers 430.86.
DXR is available on RTX GPUs and GeForce GTX 10xx GPUs. DXR also requires Windows 10 to be up to date to be accessible (version 1809), see this page for more information.

Alert:

When using GPU Raytracing, the baker may fail if the high-poly mesh cannot fit in VRam. When it happens, it is advised to go into the main settings and disable "GPU Raytracing" setting under the the "Baking Options" section. After that you can simply re-launch the baking process.

Miscellaneous new features and improvements

In this release we also added and reworked a few things to improve the quality of life inside Substance Painter.

  • Improved rotation manipulator
    The rotation manipulator was a bit slow in the past making rotations sometimes tedious to perform. Rotation speed is now linked to the camera and scene size.

  • Improved performances on High DPI screens with viewport downscaling
    In the main settings there is now a new parameter named "Viewport Scaling" with the value "None" and "Auto" (default). When Substance Painter detects that a screen uses HDPI scaling (such as Retina screens on MacOS) it will automatically divide the viewport resolution by 2. This behavior avoids drawing the viewport too big and improves general performances without any noticeable loss of quality.

  • New Console plugin for Scripting
    We created a new plugin to easily run commands from our Scripting API. It is available on Github : https://github.com/AllegorithmicSAS/painter-plugin-console. The console also supports auto-completion.

New content

A new set of Smart Materials and Smart Masks has been added to the default Shelf to cover various usages. Here is the full list of assets that have been added :

  • 40 new Smart Materials

    • Fabric
      • Fabric Canvas Creased
      • Fabric Composite Reinforced Used
      • Fabric Denim Washed Out
      • Fabric Flannel Tartan
      • Fabric Linen Creased
      • Fabric Linen Worn
      • Fabric Synthetic Dots
      • Fabric Synthetic Sport Used
    • Leather
      • Leather Calf Grain
      • Leather Creased
      • Leather Natural Colored
      • Leather Rough Dark
    • Marble - Granite
      • Marble Verde Alpi
    • Metal
      • Gold Damaged
      • Iron Forged Old
      • Steel Painted Chipped Dirty
      • Steel Painted Rough Damaged
      • Steel Painted Scraped Dirty
      • Steel Painted Scraped Green
      • Steel Painted Worn
      • Steel Ruined
    • Organic
      • Creature Skin Alien Blue
      • Creature Skin Green Smooth
      • Creature Teeth
      • Creature Tongue
    • Plastic - Rubber
      • Plastic Dusty
      • Plastic Glossy Scuffed
      • Plastic Glossy Stained
      • Plastic Grainy Soft
      • Plastic Rough Scratched
      • Plastic Thermoformed
      • Plastic Thick Cracked
      • Plastic Tool Worn
      • Plastic Used Soft
    • Stone
      • Sapphire Corundum
    • Translucent
      • Glass Film Dirty Mirror
    • Wood
      • Charcoal
      • Wood Acajou
      • Wood Ship Hull Nordic
      • Wood Ship Hull Old

  • 20 new Smart Masks

    • Crumples
    • Dirt Cavities
    • Dirt Ground
    • Dirt Leak Dry
    • Dirt Soft Edges
    • Dirt Splashes
    • Dirt Spots
    • Dust Plastic
    • Dust Soft Edges
    • Dust Surface
    • Dust Wide Edges
    • Edge Dirty Cracks
    • Edge Stone Cracks
    • Edges Strong Scratched
    • Fabric Thread
    • Paint Damaged
    • Paint Subtle Scratch
    • Sand Cavities
    • Sand Dust
    • Water Drips

Release Notes

2019.2.3

(Released October 23, 2019)
Summary : Bugfix

Added:

  • [Texture Set List] Add button to quickly enable/disable focus mode
  • [Log] Add Windows 10 version number in the log file
  • Update to latest version of Substance Engine
  • [MacOS] Notarized the software to follow new MacOS Catalina distribution requirements

Fixed:

  • [Plugin] Plugin Source does not work
  • [MacOS][Shader] Mac OS 10.14.5 and AMD: material layering does not work as intended

Known Issues:

  • Alembic files with subdivisions cannot be imported
  • Rare crashes when importing some Alembic files
  • UI temporarily unresponsive when baking with DXR on Pascal GPUs

2019.2.2

(Released September 20, 2019)
Summary : Bugfix

Fixed:

  • Import resource by scripting can lead to a crash
  • [Plugin] Downloading material from source can lead to a crash

2019.2.1

(Released September 17, 2019)
Summary : Bugfix

Fixed:

  • [Mac][USD] Exported USDZ files from MacOS cannot be opened
  • [Texture Set] Not possible to isolate a texture set with the ALT modifier
  • [Shelf] Presets, Smart Materials and Smart Masks are always modified when exiting application
  • [Layer Stack] Cannot select effect after deleting another effect
  • Flickering when using a slider inside the tool properties panel
  • Crash when exporting presets to shelf
  • Crash when exporting a preset with insufficient space
  • Crash when creating a preset with insufficient space

Known Issues:

  • Alembic files with subdivisions cannot be imported
  • Rare crashes when importing some Alembic files
  • UI temporarily unresponsive when baking with DXR on Pascal GPUs

2019.2

(Released July 25, 2019)
Summary : Major release with updates of the bakers in terms of performance and a new previsualization mode + new content

Added:

  • [Bakers] Added support for GPU Raytracing with DXR and OptiX (Ambient Occlusion, Thickness)
  • [Bakers] Optimizations and accelerations for CPU Raytracing
  • [Bakers][Vis mode][UI] New baking visualization mode in viewport
  • [Bakers][Preferences][UI] New baking option for enabling-disabling GPU Raytracing
  • [Bakers][UI] Rework of the progress bar dialog
  • [Bakers] Improvement of warning and error messages
  • [Bakers] Allow more responsive cancelling of baking process
  • [Bakers] Reopen bake window after clicking cancel
  • [Proj][UX] Usability improvement of rotation manipulator
  • [Settings] Option to improve performance by reducing viewport resolution for HDPI screens
  • [Scripting] Change texture set resolution
  • [Scripting] Get selected texture set
  • [Scripting] Allow the user to select a texture set
  • [Scripting] Function to know when texture set selection has been changed
  • [Shelf] Added 40 new smart materials
  • [Shelf] Added 20 new smart masks

Fixed:

  • [Layer stack] Freeze of UI when multi-selecting layers
  • [Layer stack] Grouping lots of layers freezes the UI for longer than usual
  • [Layer stack] A layer and an effect can be both selected at the same time in some cases
  • Substance graphs used inside painting tools are not generated at the right resolution
  • [Baker] "Bake All Texture Sets" button is not disabled when no bakers are selected
  • [MacOS] Deactivate the warning message about tessellation
  • Projection tool has no preview when used with a mask
  • Crashes and corrupted projects when trying to save with insufficient disk space
  • [Shelf] Crash when importing a resource on disk via shelf with insufficient space
  • [Shelf] Crash when restoring session preset
  • [Shelf] Importing a preset with a name that ends with a space leads to a crash
  • [Shelf] Importing a resource with a prefix that ends with an empty space leads to a crash

Known Issues:

  • Alembic files with subdivisions cannot be imported
  • Rare crashes when importing some Alembic files
  • UI temporarily unresponsive when baking with DXR on Pascal GPUs

 Adobe

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