Full Version: Objects unpaintable in Substance Painter

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Okay, I did a quick unwrap of your meshes in Blender (see attached .obj) and some dressing up in Substance Painter. Once you get used to the workflows it's all quick and efficient. This didn't take longer than 20 minutes altogether.

Happy learning :)
Sven

PS: I made three UV maps (one for the wall, one for the windows, and one for the door). To work on them in Substance Painter you have to choose them. Also the orientation of your meshes in MoI is wrong, the wall is lying on the floor, not standing upright. I didn't change that

Attachments:
house.obj

Image Attachments:
house.jpg 

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Hi All,

thanks for the info and help, much appreciated. In the end, it boils down to what Michael said: UV unwrapping.

It seems it takes more time to unwrap than to model something this simple.

I tried the "unwrappers" mentioned, but don't want to go that route. This was just a bare-bones simple test model and it will turn into a nightmare for a complex model, that's for sure.

MoI is great because it it simple and fast to use (besides all the complexity under the hood) and it doens't take a thousand page manual and hundreds of hidden button in some drop-downs to use it. I love this approach and IMHO is the best 3d modeler out there to use if one just wants to model and get things done.

My quest is to find the equivalent in the materials/painting and animation/rendering of the models created.

Unwrapping is going to be too time consuming to be an option for future complex models. What I did find however, is that if you name the materials and set them in MoI, they will come across for some apps to use. It seems however, that Moi only exports the selected colors and the names given to the materials do NOT "stick" to the material selection/definition. When I export in OBJ format some apps, like Armorpaint and SP get the materials (colors) right, but assign the names incorrectly. The windows for example become object1 and object 3, the door object2 and the wall was correctly named.

Anyway, in Owlet one can just drag and drop the materials to the objects and it works fine without any unwrapping or other prep. So it is just a matter of finding the perfect combination of apps to make it all work.

Thank you all for taking the time to respond and help.

What is your guy's workflow and what programs do you use for this, once your modeling is done?

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Hi Jack,

> It seems however, that Moi only exports the selected colors and the names given to the materials do
> NOT "stick" to the material selection/definition. When I export in OBJ format some apps, like Armorpaint
> and SP get the materials (colors) right, but assign the names incorrectly. The windows for example
> become object1 and object 3, the door object2 and the wall was correctly named.

There is more than one kind of name label involved, it sounds like you might be getting the different labels kind of confused.

When you export to an .obj file the style assignments in MoI will become material assignments in the .obj file and the styles list will become the materials list.

Separate from materials there is also in many programs a concept of an "object name". You can set this in MoI on an object and it is a separate name from the style assignment and style names.

If your object in MoI was not assigned an object name, MoI will make a generic one like "object 1", "object 2", etc... for the object name property in the exported .obj file.

If you don't want to see those generic names then you would need to assign your own object name inside of MoI. You can assign a name to an object using the properties panel, click on the name line and an "Edit name" dialog will come up. Again, this is separate from the style assignments and style names.



- Michael

Image Attachments:
PropertiesPanelEditName.jpg 

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if you want really fast quick-and-dirty UVs without much distortion, just in order to be able to use Substance Painter, I would recommend using MODO's atlas projection feature.
That's just one click for each object, then you pack the uvs and you are done.
IMHO this UV mapping is far from perfect (it wastes space), but it might be good enough - the distortion is minimized
I do this all the time in order to get stuff into Substance Painter quickly.


Here you see 4 different sub objects (from a tutorial for MOI that I am working through right now)


Now I do the atlas projection, just one click (while all objects are selected) and we get UVs for everything, but they are overlapping


Now this is the pack dialog


And this is your UV map.


If you up the rez for your textures you might get acceptable results.

Of course you can create multiple UV maps with this method, for each group of objects that you want to handle in Substance Painter individually.

I do not know if Blender or any other OSS has a comparable feature.

Cheers
PS Sorry I wanted to reply to the main thread, not the last answer

Image Attachments:
scr1.jpg  scr2.jpg  scr3.jpg  scr4.jpg 

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Hi Michael,

yeah I guess I overlooked the door and windows rectangle "constructors". The whole wall and door and windows were Boolean "union'd" and named. I must have forgotten to delete the other objects.

Thanks!

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Hi HappyWeasel.

Very cool!

But I can't afford Modo, way out of my price-league...

Anyway, pretty cool, it looks like it does what the Virtual Reality Rizom Unfold program does, only it's built into Modo, quite nice!

I tried the RizomUV program and it is very nice and easy to use. But I am trying to avoid the UV unwrapping completely.

It seems that so far the Owlet and Simlab are the candidates for that, they need no further mods of the MoI object to add materials to it.

Thanks for your very nice detailed info, I appreciate the time you guys waste on helping me out.

I am getting closer to the workflow solution I am seeking with every advice I get.

Thanks!

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I think there's also a function in Blender, something like "Average UV islands" that could probably process the MoI-generated UV coordinates to make them work better for Substance Painter.

- Michael

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Hi,
Sometimes i use an other fast workflow. MoI + Photoshop

- MoI > Export the model (OBJ)
- Photoshop :
1 - Open the OBJ file
2 - Menu 3D > Generate UV
3 - Menu 3D > Export Layer 3D (choose WavefrontOBJ)

Regards.

JP

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How to UV Unwrap Anything in Blender 2.8

https://www.skillshare.com/classes/How-to-UV-Unwrap-Anything-in-Blender/1050421952?via=user-profile

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Hi Finema,

Sounded cool, I tried it, but it acts the same way. Too bad, that would have been really cool and easy.
Anyway, I think I am giving up on unwrapping and re-normalizing/UVing.
Since Owlet works without a problem, the issue is solved, I guess...

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Hi submono

The issue is that one actually has to do all that, instead of having it exported with UV mapping working. The unwrapping is a major pain for complex objects and takes way too much time.
But: Owlet and Simlab have no issues with the unmodified object export, I decided to save myself the headache and just use them.
Thanks for the tip though, much appreciated.

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Hi Jack (it's Jack, right?),

in the end it all depends on what you want to do with your models. Every asset in any 3D game that you might have played has been meticulously modeled, probably retopoed, unwrapped, mapped, and painted (lately now using PBR workflows). So if you want to see your asset in a game engine, animate it, or if you are part of a production pipeline, unwrapping is just part of the deal. And professionals will always prefer manually unwrapping to the automatic solutions many tools offer because otherwise you lose control which will! haunt you sooner or later.

On the other hand if all you're after are pretty pictures (and sometimes that is all it takes) you can get away with an application like Owlet. These tools provide you with procedural textures and/or will automatically apply a simple uv box mapping for you, maybe even tri-planar, which will work in a lot of cases. But again you give up control for convenience. And you won't be able to export your materials as PBR maps to use them in other applications like Marmoset Toolbag, Unity, etc.

Anyway, I'd say go for Owlet now and see how far it carries you. You can always step up your game later if you feel its limits.

Regards,
Sven

Edit: I've been playing around with the Substance Alchemist beta and the results that one can achieve are impressive (forgotten temple, melting snow). So there are rewards for choosing the "other" way ;)

Image Attachments:
lost-temple.jpg  stages-of-melting-snow.jpg 

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Yup, Alchemist is what got me thinking...

It is really cool. And yes, it is Jack...

I agree with your judgement, thanks for the info.

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