Exporting out of substance painter back into maya

[ed3d]

Hey everyone.
So just to get this out the way, Using maya 2017 (Arnold for rendering) and substance painter 2.3.1

So as in the title I want to now bring the amazingly textured object back into maya for rendering. So im a bit new to texturing so honestly, I have no idea how to do this really. any help?

What i did was export textures, left all the settings the same then went into maya and applied a Blinn to the object then where it lets you select the colour for the Blinn in the attribute editor I clicked to import a file and used the base colour file. Now this looked rubbish in maya. Im guessing im not doing something?

Please help, Spent hours making this model and i really want to get a great texture for it!

Thanks

[ddankhazi]

Hi ed3d,

Here are some help.
You can export your textures from Painter with the Arnold preset. It is working.
This is the original doc: https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/SPDOC/Arnold+for+Maya
It is correct about which texture goes where.

Here are the thing you need to know for perfect result in Maya 2017 with Arnold:

Settings: Arnold in Maya 2017 understands Maya's Color Management system.
You don't need those gamma nodes anymore. Just make sure the Color Management system is on.

Textures: Import your textures.
You have to set the Color Space settings correctly in them.
sRGB: Diffuse, Specular
RAW: Roughness, f0, Normal map, Height map

You need to turn on the Alpha is Luminance feature in the following textures:
Roughness, f0, Height map (in the normal map textures it turns on automatically). Do not forget this!

One more thing. If you created a shiny surface you need something to reflect on it.
In Viewport 2.0 you can't see reflections, so a shiny reflective metal surface looks almost black (because the diffuse texture).

Cheers, D

[ed3d]

Hey

Thanks for getting back to me, Ok i tried to follow all those instructions but i ran into a few problems.

In the render setting I don't actually have the gamma correction options?
and when you say
"You need to turn on the Alpha is Luminance feature in the following textures" I couldnt find the alpha is luminance feature anywhere.

Thanks

Ed

[ddankhazi]

Hey

Thanks for getting back to me, Ok i tried to follow all those instructions but i ran into a few problems.

In the render setting I don't actually have the gamma correction options?
and when you say
"You need to turn on the Alpha is Luminance feature in the following textures" I couldnt find the alpha is luminance feature anywhere.

Thanks

Ed

You can't find the gamma correction options in render settings, because you don't need them anymore.
You have to use Maya's color management system (enabled by default).

You can find the Color Space option in each and every file node. As well as the Alpha is Luminance option.

Color Management:


Shader Tree:


File Texture Node:


Substance Painter example:


Arnold Render:

[ddankhazi]

One more thing:
If your normal map doesn't look like as it should (the bumps direction and slope are wrong), try to change the Flip R Channel and the Flip G Channel attributes.

[ed3d]

You are being a massive help.. Im startting to get there, Its starting to look good.
Ok so If i run through what I have to do.. Can you correct it and add bits if i miss them?

So I export out of substance using the Arnold preset.
I now have 6 Files:
Diffuse,F0,Height, Normal, Roughness & Specular.
 
I plug:
diffuse texture to the Diffuse channel
specular texture to plugged to the Specular channel (not the reflection channel!)
Specular Weight is set to 1.0
Roughness texture to the Roughness channel In the Specular section
the Microfacet Distribution is set to ggx
the Fresnel option is enabled
the f0 texture is plugged to the Reflectance at Normal channel
the Normal texture plugged into bump mapp

So do i not do anything with Height texture?

Now I set the Color Space settings correctly
sRGB: Diffuse, Specular
RAW: Roughness, f0, Normal map and Height - But i dont have height plugged in?

turn on the Alpha is Luminance feature in the following textures:
Roughness, f0, Height map - Thats not plugged in tho.

My Shader tree looks nothing like yours tho:

[ddankhazi]

Hi ed3d,

Height maps are usually used as displacement textures (in non real-time engines).

My shader tree is different because I used one place2dTexture node instead of five.
Try this: Drag one place2dTexture node with Ctrl + MMB onto a file node (release between the texture icon and the Solo button).
After that I deleted the unnecessary nodes.

If you have normal maps, don't forget to set the bump2d node's Use As attribute to Tangent Space Normals.

Cheers, D

[ed3d]

oh ok thanks for your help, so were would i plug height maps into if i wanted to plug them in? One last question. In substance painter i have used the emissive feature, how would I get that to show up in maya?

Thanks

[ddankhazi]

oh ok thanks for your help, so were would i plug height maps into if i wanted to plug them in? One last question. In substance painter i have used the emissive feature, how would I get that to show up in maya?

Thanks

Connect the Height map into a Displacement shader and connect that into the Shading Engine node (Displacement mat. slot).



Don't forget to add subdivisions to the mesh.


Emissive map goes into the Emission Color attribute (aiStandard material).

Cheers, D

[TheScope]

I don't get it, is there no script for lets say Maya and Vray to import all baked textures from Painter to Maya? feels like the Substance Painter is a half finished product. I'm not a big studio with people that know how to script. Is there really nothing?

[Galen Helfter]

With the newer plugin (2.0.1 or newer), you should be able to apply the existing vray workflow for the plugin to a set of images from Substance Painter.

So if you have the Substance plugin enabled, there should be an option on the shelf that you can use. It will expect that the outputs names roughly match the usage, like basecolor, metallic, etc. so that it can identify them. If they don't match, you can manually set the file.

There are options for Arnold, etc. as well. It should also work on any custom ones you've set up with it using the sbsar node.