Environment workspace | Substance 3D Viewer

The Environment workspace lets you modify the lighting and environment around your 3D model, including the background color and ground plane.

You can access the Environment workspace with the button in the workspace panel on the left side of the Viewer window.

Note:

Saving new Environment defaults

You can save all your lighting end other environment settings so that Substance 3D Viewer uses them by default every time you open the app or a new file.

Simply click on the “...” next to the Environment title bar and choose “Save current settings as default”.

Adjust lighting

Lighting in Substance 3D Viewer uses panoramic HDR images (often referred to as an HDRI or Environment Light) to replicate the lighting of real-world locations and provide realistic reflections.

Substance 3D Viewer includes a selection of HDRI’s that you can use to light your scenes, or you can import your own HDRI to customize your scene.

To change the HDRI light preset:

Open the Environment workspace.
Click Light presets.
In the dialog that appears, select one of Viewers included options.
Alternatively, browse for an HDRI on your computer.

You can adjust the brightness and rotation of the current HDRI with the sliders in the Environment workspace panel.

Note:

Note

You can also use the keyboard shortcut to rotate the HDRI in your scene without opening the Environment workspace. Hold shift, then right click and drag inside the viewport to rotate the lighting around your model.

Change the background color

You can change the Viewport’s background color from the Environment workspace. To change the background color:

Open the Environment workspace.
Click the color box next to Background color to open the color picker.
Select a color.

The Color picker has various controls to aid in color selection.

Use the Eyedropper to quickly copy a color from your scene.
For precise values you can enter a hex code.
Use the dropdown to switch between RGB and HSV modes for the color sliders.
- Use the options button next to the RGB/HSV dropdown to customize the sliders.
Use the + to add the current color to the swatch for quick access later.
- Use the options button next to the Swatches to clear Swatches.

Ground plane

The ground plane properties allow you to simulate the presence of a floor or ground underneath your 3D model. The ground plane can catch shadows as well as reflect the 3D scene.

Ground plane reflections are only available when using the Ray tracing mode.

Post processing

Denoiser

The Denoiser option is a post process applied when using the Ray tracing rendering mode. It will attempt to smooth out the noise introduced by the Ray tracing computation, reducing drastically the time it takes for the image to converge.

Depending on your scene complexity, the Denoiser could be triggered after a period ranging from 5 to 30 seconds of rendering.