Perfect Normal Map Baking in Substance Painter

[Bit Barrel Media]

Edit:
Please vote on the feedback item below to fully automate the workflow:
https://allegorithmic.uservoice.com/forums/261284-substance-painter/suggestions/16122217-scripting-import-into-shelf-and-assign-to-slot-in

In this tutorial I explain how to blend an averaged and non-averaged normal bake in Substance Painter. Using this method you can get rid of skewing and get rid of black lines along the hard edges.

Important: see the manual for the minimum required Substance Painter version.



Download:
https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/2310

Download contains:
-Smart material.
-Generator source.
-Manual.
-Script.

Changelog v1.2:
-Added a script which automates half of the workflow. The normal maps are now automatically baked with the correct settings and automatically exported to a temporary directory.

[MarioIQ]

nice one will try it out

[Bit Barrel Media]

Updated to version 1.1

[Bit Barrel Media]

Added a new version which contains a script which automates half of the workflow.

Also, please vote on this feedback item in order to fully automate the workflow:
https://allegorithmic.uservoice.com/forums/261284-substance-painter/suggestions/16122217-scripting-import-into-shelf-and-assign-to-slot-in

[shane.berezowski]

Thanks for the plugin! Tried it out and it seems to be in working order 

The one thing I noticed though is you need to bake something first in order to save your bake preferences for the automation. By simply clicking the on the bake normal automation without this step results in flat normals being baked.

It's not a hard step, but perhaps stating this in the instructions could help spare some headaches.

[Bit Barrel Media]

Good point, I will add it to the manual. I think this is a design mistake on the part of Allegorithmic. Will file a bug report / feature request for this.

[koloved]

Thanks a lot!

[Bit Barrel Media]

Glad you like it :-)

I am working on a new version which has a few more workflow improvements:

-One of the normal maps is automatically applied to the slot, so you now have to drag and drop only two maps instead of three.
-The textures are now automatically placed in the shelf.
-The mask generator can now automatically generate a mask. It should work in most cases. No need to tweak the mask size anymore, it is all done automatically, and varies locally. It works using cascaded pixel processors. Not too fast (a few seconds), but a lot easier to use.

[Bit Barrel Media]

Here is a beta version which has the new improved workflow. Be sure to read the manual included:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwk4bDWv3jAcZXZ3d3J4azEwOUk/view?usp=sharing

Let me know if you find any problems.

[Bit Barrel Media]

The new version is now live at share. It features the new automatic mask generator, so be sure to check it out.

[staughost]

I've gone through your tutorial some time ago. But I have a ongoing question. Are texture/uv seams always visible when using more reflective shared especially when it's metal? Or am I doing something wrong?

[Bit Barrel Media]

What do you mean with "reflective shared"? Can you post a screenshot?

[staughost]

Sure. As you can see there is an visible edge on the surface connecting. If there was no uv split there would not be a seam as these. And these is 4k bake. If it was lower it would be more noticeable.

[Bit Barrel Media]

Yeah, I noticed that too. Not sure what is going one there. My best guess is that using normal maps at edges is only a crude approximation and you will always get some rendering errors. Unfortunately I am not a graphics guru. No one else bothered to fix the baking issue in SP so I did, but I am sure other people are better at it.

Something like this should really be build into SP, like Marmoset Toolbag does.

[staughost]

Yeah. It is something to do with viewport/shader but and if you send these to any other RT engine it will work normally, not make THE LINE. Btw tutorial is awesome forgot to mention that