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Mesh and UV setup | Substance 3D Painter

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Substance 3D Painter

Substance 3D Painter

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  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. Output templates
        1. Output templates overview
        2. Default Output templates
          1. Default output templates
          2. Predefined output templates
          3. USD PBR Metal Roughness Preset
        3. Creating Output templates
    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. Mesh map settings
    4. 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 resource update
    2. Automatic UV Unwrapping
    3. Physical size
    4. Smart Materials and Masks
    5. Subsurface Scattering
      1. Subsurface Scattering overview
      2. Enabling Subsurface in a Project
      3. Subsurface Parameters
      4. Subsurface Material Type
    6. Dynamic Material Layering
    7. UV Reprojection
    8. UV Tiles
      1. UV Tiles overview
      2. Image Sequence
    9. Color Management
      1. Color management overview
      2. Color management with Adobe ACE - ICC
      3. Color management with OpenColorIO
    10. 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
    11. Iray Renderer
      1. Iray Renderer overview
      2. Iray Settings
      3. Viewer and MDL Settings
    12. Plugins
      1. Plugins overview
      2. Autosave
      3. Resources Updater
    13. Sparse Virtual Textures
    14. Custom Shaders
    15. SpaceMouse® by 3Dconnexion
    16. Universal Scene Description (USD)
    17. Send to
  10. Technical Support
    1. Performance Guidelines
      1. Performance guidelines overview
      2. Layer management
      3. Mesh and UV setup
      4. Project resources and settings
      5. GPU Drivers
      6. NVIDIA Driver Settings
      7. GPU VRAM amount and bandwidth
      8. GPU VRAM and other applications
      9. Conflict with background applications
    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 11.0
    4. Version 10.1
    5. Version 10.0
    6. Old versions
      1. Version 9.1
      2. Version 9.0
      3. Version 8.3
      4. Version 8.2
      5. Version 8.1
      6. Version 7.4
      7. Version 7.3
      8. Version 7.2
      9. Version 2021.1 (7.1.0)
      10. Version 2020.2 (6.2.0)
      11. Version 2020.1 (6.1.0)
      12. Version 2019.3
      13. Version 2019.2
      14. Version 2019.1
      15. Version 2018.3
      16. Version 2018.2
      17. Version 2018.1
      18. Version 2017.4
      19. Version 2017.3
      20. Version 2017.2
      21. Version 2017.1
      22. Version 2.6
      23. Version 2.5
      24. Version 2.4
      25. Version 2.3
      26. Version 2.2

Mesh and UV setup

Taking a few minutes to prepare your mesh for Painter can make the texturing process faster and easier.

There is no specific benchmark for polycount that Painter can handle, as it largely depends on machine specifications, Texture Set assignment, and layer stack properties, but under 10 million polys should be handled fine if the layer stack optimizations (see above) are taken into account.

There is such a thing as too low poly. This is because the texture engine uses the Polygons to know which part of the mesh should be rendered to compute the brush strokes. Meshes with a very low Polycount can be fully re-rendered even with tiny brush strokes which can overwork the GPU unnecessarily.

For example, if texturing a single quad plane, it is better to subdivide the mesh, especially when hand painting with a lot of strokes, as information is spread over more vertices. 

It is best to split larger meshes with more complex material assignments into several Texture Sets. Texture sets allow you to assign different settings per Texture Set, like resolution and shader properties. For example, if only a part of the mesh uses translucency or SSS, it is best to assign another Texture Set and a different shader instance to that part. That way, these more complex properties don't have to be calculated where they are not used. 

Try to keep UV islands which are neighbors in 3D space close together. This applies both to UDIM layout and classic UV space layout. If they have shared paint strokes or texturing, it is easier to calculate them when they are huddled in the same area of the UV space, rather than if they are at opposing ends.  

The texture engine works by dividing a texture/channel into smaller chunks to speed up computation. However, this optimization has no effect if painting on a mesh in the 3D view results in changes across the entirety of the texture.

Performance should remain comfortable when importing a mesh that has fewer than 8000 sub-objects. Going over this limit can impact the viewport and painting performance. If this limit is reached, we recommended merging objects together to reduce the rendering overhead.

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