A good and detailed tutorial on adding PBR textures with Substance Painter

[ThomasFanForever1856]

Can someone perhaps give me a good tutorial on how to export textures from substance painter in Blender, and how to set them up in Blender? And finally, how to export them to Trainz.

 

[whitepass]

https://whitepasstrainz.blogspot.com/

 

[MSGSapper]

While I don't use "Substance Painter" this thread of mine released today might be helpful:

Tutorial: How to create PBR ground textures using Materialize and GIMP

See at:

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...BR-ground-textures-using-Materialize-and-GIMP

Bob

 

[Cayden]

Can someone perhaps give me a good tutorial on how to export textures from substance painter in Blender, and how to set them up in Blender? And finally, how to export them to Trainz.

There is at the moment very little in the way of tutorials on how to create PBR (Physical Based Rendering) textures for TRS19 using Substance Painter or otherwise. I find this surprising since the capability has been around for almost a year now, at least in pre-release versions of TRS19.

For most creators there are probably many unanswered question as there are for me. How to best use Blender cycles and/or Substance Painter for PBR: will Blender 2.8 be directly useable for making Trainz assets given that it has dropped Blender render in favour of cycles, etc.?

Since I have to make notes as I explore content creation I have attempted to convert them into tutorials. Of late I have felt that complete projects might be most helpful for others trying to master the creation process so I have been concentrating on producing some.

The current offering is as follows:

A Simple Building – Law Office
This project covers the basic steps of creating a Trainz asset; modelling, texturing, export from Blender and import into Trainz 2012, T:ANE or TRS19.
http://www.doug56.net/ProjectsLawOffice00/

Substance Painter Texturing – Barrel
This project covers the basics of using Substance Painter to create the albedo, normal and parameter files.
http://www.doug56.net/ProjectsBarrel01Introduction/

Substance Painter Stencilling – Barrel with Modifiers
This project introduces the use of Blender’s modifiers to create the model and also Substance Painter’s Stencilling capability.
http://www.doug56.net/ProjectsModifiers01Intro/

Retopology and Baking a Normal Map
This project involves creating a high poly detailed mesh then transferring the detail to a low poly mesh using Blender’s baking capability.
http://www.doug56.net/ProjectsRetopology01Intro/

Substance Painter Glass
This project introduces Substance Painter’s capability of creating transparent materials and stencilling on them.
(Note, this project is currently being uploaded and thus not complete.)
http://www.doug56.net/ProjectsGlass01Intro/

These project tutorials are intended to be hands-on exercises taking one through the process of creating a Trainz asset from start to finish. Blender, Substance Painter and Texture files are provided for comparison purposes and so you can start at different point in the tutorial if you wish.

Substance Painter is relatively expense but can be downloaded for a 30-day free trial. The free trial version of Substance Painter is completely functional but has a watermark on the exported textures. This does not impede following the tutorial from start to finish. Hopefully the tutorial is complete enough that you should be able to jump right in.

I found the note by whitepass very helpful and I look forward to reading the Tutorial: ‘How to create PBR ground textures using Materialize and GIMP’ by Mika as translation from German and edited by MSGSapper. I am not familiar with Materialize. Unfortunately, it appears to be a Windows program not available to Mac users unless you are running Windows on a Bootcamp partition as I do.

But there are other ways of achieving the end result. PC users can use Awesome Bump and both PC and Mac users can use NormalMap Online. I use Krita, which is available for both the PC and Mac, to create the parameter file. See my tutorials mentioned above.

Cayden

 

[pcas1986]

I doubt anyone could write a detailed tutorial unless the model was really simple. Some of the tutorial videos I've watched run for hours.

Based on the videos I've been watching, as a CG Cookie member and the Allegorithmic tutorials, I'm changing my overall process to this:

1. Build a highly detailed model in Blender using bevel and other modifiers to improve the model look. I use Cycles Mode because baking is much more reliable than Blender Render.
2. Copy the detailed model and remove all the modifiers. This will be my LOD0 model.
3. Allocate a material but no textures.
4. Bake the normal map from the detailed model to the LOD0 model.
5. Bake an AO map from the LOD0 model.
(I haven't tried ID maps yet but I see they can be useful in Substance Painter. It would be created here perhaps.
6. Export the LOD0 mesh and maps to Substance Painter.
7. Build your textures in SP. (easier said than done!)
8. Export the PBR textures to match the chosen Trainz PBR material.
9. At this point you probably don't need to go back into Blender if your material name is OK.
10. Create material metadata files.
11. Import into Trainz.

I had a look through Whitepass' blog notes and recognised a lot of issues he found. Highly recommended reading.

The various Allegorithmic videos on Substance Painter and Substance Designer make it look easy. I don't think it is although you can have a lot of fun with the tool.

 

[buci]

Hi,

Thanks for Cayden manuals which helps a lot.
Is any manual available how to FBX export "traincar" assets from Blender to TRS2019. It seems that attachment points are not exported. Any hints/tips/workaround ?

Thanks in advance
Darko

 

[whitepass]

See the Wiki for FBX.

 

[buci]

See the Wiki for FBX.

Thanks whitepass,
but you are not helping by sending me back to wiki.
There is no mention of attachment points in "HowTo/Export from Blender using FBX" and I don't know where to look.

Kind Regards
Darko

 

[pcas1986]

...
There is no mention of attachment points in "HowTo/Export from Blender using FBX" and I don't know where to look.
...

Make sure you have the Empty box selected when you export and it will work. So, if you are exporting a mesh and attachments then you would tick Empty and Mesh. My preference is to select all the objects I want to select, including any attachments, and then use the Selected Objects option on export.

For traincars I like to keep all my attachments, such as a.limfront, etc, in their own layer and each LOD mesh in its own layer. Then I select the LOD mesh of interest plus the attachments layer and export together.

p.s. I intend to update that WiKi page when I find some time.

 

[buci]

Make sure you have the Empty box selected when you export and it will work. So, if you are exporting a mesh and attachments then you would tick Empty and Mesh. My preference is to select all the objects I want to select, including any attachments, and then use the Selected Objects option on export.

For traincars I like to keep all my attachments, such as a.limfront, etc, in their own layer and each LOD mesh in its own layer. Then I select the LOD mesh of interest plus the attachments layer and export together.

p.s. I intend to update that WiKi page when I find some time.

Thanks Paul

I make attachment points (a.bog0,...) as Empty Plain Axes parented to Lattice (b.r.main). Main object is parented to the same Lattice. Is this OK or is there better/proper way ?

Thanks in advance
Darko

 

[pcas1986]

...
I make attachment points (a.bog0,...) as Empty Plain Axes parented to Lattice (b.r.main). Main object is parented to the same Lattice. Is this OK or is there better/proper way ?

Thanks in advance
Darko

I use the arrowed empties because I like to know which way they are pointing. But that is just a visual thing and makes no difference to the empty's functionality. i.e. it will work the same regardless of its look

Attachment points in FBX work exactly the same as Indexed Mesh with the exception of animated attachments. See this WiKi entry: http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/Attachment_point#Animated_Attachment_Points_in_FBX

 

[Fwb]

Thanks for all the great info!

There is at the moment very little in the way of tutorials on how to create PBR (Physical Based Rendering) textures for TRS19 using Substance Painter or otherwise. I find this surprising since the capability has been around for almost a year now, at least in pre-release versions of TRS19.

For most creators there are probably many unanswered question as there are for me. How to best use Blender cycles and/or Substance Painter for PBR: will Blender 2.8 be directly useable for making Trainz assets given that it has dropped Blender render in favour of cycles, etc.?

Since I have to make notes as I explore content creation I have attempted to convert them into tutorials. Of late I have felt that complete projects might be most helpful for others trying to master the creation process so I have been concentrating on producing some.

The current offering is as follows:

A Simple Building – Law Office
This project covers the basic steps of creating a Trainz asset; modelling, texturing, export from Blender and import into Trainz 2012, T:ANE or TRS19.
http://www.doug56.net/ProjectsLawOffice00/

Substance Painter Texturing – Barrel
This project covers the basics of using Substance Painter to create the albedo, normal and parameter files.
http://www.doug56.net/ProjectsBarrel01Introduction/

Substance Painter Stencilling – Barrel with Modifiers
This project introduces the use of Blender’s modifiers to create the model and also Substance Painter’s Stencilling capability.
http://www.doug56.net/ProjectsModifiers01Intro/

Retopology and Baking a Normal Map
This project involves creating a high poly detailed mesh then transferring the detail to a low poly mesh using Blender’s baking capability.
http://www.doug56.net/ProjectsRetopology01Intro/

Substance Painter Glass
This project introduces Substance Painter’s capability of creating transparent materials and stencilling on them.
(Note, this project is currently being uploaded and thus not complete.)
http://www.doug56.net/ProjectsGlass01Intro/

These project tutorials are intended to be hands-on exercises taking one through the process of creating a Trainz asset from start to finish. Blender, Substance Painter and Texture files are provided for comparison purposes and so you can start at different point in the tutorial if you wish.

Substance Painter is relatively expense but can be downloaded for a 30-day free trial. The free trial version of Substance Painter is completely functional but has a watermark on the exported textures. This does not impede following the tutorial from start to finish. Hopefully the tutorial is complete enough that you should be able to jump right in.

I found the note by whitepass very helpful and I look forward to reading the Tutorial: ‘How to create PBR ground textures using Materialize and GIMP’ by Mika as translation from German and edited by MSGSapper. I am not familiar with Materialize. Unfortunately, it appears to be a Windows program not available to Mac users unless you are running Windows on a Bootcamp partition as I do.

But there are other ways of achieving the end result. PC users can use Awesome Bump and both PC and Mac users can use NormalMap Online. I use Krita, which is available for both the PC and Mac, to create the parameter file. See my tutorials mentioned above.

Cayden

Thanks for all the great info! Very usefull and well explained.

 

[JohnnyC1]

I have been using Substance Alchemist for a couple of months. It is bundled with Paint & Designer. If you are a student or have a student in your household, the 3 programs are free as long as the student is in school. Substance Alchemist beats all other programs hands down if you are going texturing.

https://docs.substance3d.com/sadoc/substance-alchemist-172823493.html

https://www.substance3d.com/

And there is a free program, Substance Player, that is free and can be used for rendering PBR textures from SBSAR files, some of which can be tweaked.

John