Introduction to Substance Painter - Ultimate Beginners Guide

>> Hey, guys.

Henning and Morten from FlippedNormals here.

In this very exciting video, we are going to
take you through everything you need to know

in order to get started with Substance Painter.

It's going to be maybe an hour or so.

>> Something like that, yeah.

>> And it's going to be -- it's going to
allow you to be a pure beginner to something

where you actually know how to navigate the
software, what the general principles are.

So, before we get too deep into this,
we just quickly want to talk to you

about our full introduction
to Substance Painter Series.

This video you're watching now is not
a free excerpt or anything on this.

This is a whole standalone video.

But if you're interested in learning more
about Painter, we have a full course which is

over four hours long which covers
essentially everything you need to know,

where we also go through a more
project-based approach where we do --

we texture this fan here from scratch.

>> Yeah. So, if you're interested in
something that's more project-based

where you have a one-to-one
thing you can follow,

that's going to be probably your
next step after watching this video.

>> Exactly.

So, before you also get started with anything
in Painter, follow the link in the description

or Google Substance PBR Guide and read
these two volumes, Volume 1 and Volume 2.

These are by far the best guides
ever written on understanding PBR.

And if you don't know what we're talking about
in terms of PBR, you definitely have to read it.

>> Yeah. It's essential for any sort
of modern-day texturing nowadays,

especially when you're doing it in Painter.

>> Yeah, it really is.

So, let's open up Painter
and let's see what we have.

This is what it looks like
whenever you first open up Painter.

We're using 2018.3.3.

And the thing in Painter is you
need something to work with.

Like it's not like ZBrush and Maya
where you can start painting on nothing.

>> No.

>> We need assets and projects.

So, what we're going to be doing is we're going
to go to File, Open Samples and we're going

to go this little nice guy called Meet MAT.

This is a really good project to
work with because it's quite simple

but has everything you need in
order to get started with stuff.

>> Yeah. The nice thing about this is
that all maps are there for you to use

and like it's just easy to paint on because
it's got nice UVs and everything's laid out.

>> So, we use this in a full series as well
just because it's an awesome way to get started.

>> Yeah.

>> So, you have all the tools
you need over here,

such as the painting tools,
erasing tools and all that.

We'll get to this a bit later on.

Up here, we have the menu such as
saving, loading, quitting the software.

>> Should you want to rage quit at some point.

>> Should you want to do that.

Navigation is Alt-left mouse button to rotate.

To zoom, you hit Alt-right
mouse button and drag.

And then to pan, hit Alt-middle mouse button.

Now, you can pan around.

You can also see we have a split viewport here
where you can see the UVs and the 3D model.

I don't really like to work like this.

I generally prefer to see the full 3D viewport.

So, you can hit the F1 key to have the split
viewport which is what you're currently seeing,

F2 for the full 3D view and F3 for
the 2D view or the UV view like this.

>> Yeah. Most of the time, I mean,
seeing as it's a 3D painting software,

you'll probably be using the 3D viewport.

There are instances where the UV viewport is
useful, like stamping on logos or something

when we want to be more precise
with lining stuff up.

But most of the time, it's
going to be this viewport.

>> Yeah. So, you can also drag stuff around.

So, this is really cool and you are
definitely going to be doing this by accident.

So, if you, you know, want
to customize your interface,

you can do this to your heart's content.

It's really cool stuff and you can
really make an interface which suits you.

You know, everything is really modular here.

The way you fix this though is now,
we have screwed this on the out

and repair is we go to Window and we'd reset UI.

Now, everything is back to where you went off.

And it's important to say in the beginning

because you will definitely
screw some of this up.

>> Yeah. The nice thing about Painter here is
that the UI is relatively simple and the amount

of UI options that you have are also
kind of limited but in a good way.

So, after this introduction, you should have
a fairly good grasp on everything, actually.

>> Yeah, exactly.

Then we can also rotate the lighting around if
you hold down shift and then right mouse button.

So, this is the only way to
actually change the lighting.

You don't actually have 3D
lights and there is no way

to lock this to a camera, at least not yet.

So, if you're going behind here and
you're seeing that it's really dark,

you need to hit Shift-right mouse
button and just rotate the lighting.

This might seem a bit annoying in the beginning
but honestly, it just becomes second nature.

>> Yeah.

>> It's not going to be a problem at all.

Then one thing you can see
though is we have this glare.

And this is super cool but
it's absolutely useless to us.

This might be cool if you're
presenting your model but for any kind

of texture painting, this is beyond useless.

>> Yeah. It actually just messes
up your colors most of the time.

>> Exactly.

So, the way we change this is we go
to our menus here up on the right

and the top one is called Display Settings.

We have a bunch of cool settings here, but the
one we want to disable for now is Post Effects.

Disable this and we see that glare
and now there is no more glare.

This is also where we can change the
focal length as well of our camera.

Default 17 is fine for this
guy but if you have something

like a human face, it's going
to look really weird.

>> Yeah. You probably want
something closer to 35, maybe.

>> Yeah, exactly.

We can also change the environment
map you're seeing as well

because everything here is lit with an HDRI.

Like I said, we don't actually
have lights at all.

We only have HDRIs.

So, the way we change our lighting is we
go in here and we change the lighting.

You can see here that a lot of
the default HDRIs are quite bad

because they contain so much color.

Like now, there's a green tint to it.

The other one has like a nice warm tint.

You really want to be careful
with which HDRI you're using.

I prefer one of these guys,
like Studio 2 is quite nice.

It's quite neutral and it doesn't
have any color information.

>> I mean, if you are interested,
FlippedNormals also has a studio pack

that you can actually use for this.

But I think the default that come
with Substance are pretty good.

>> Yeah, they're decent.

>> Yeah.

>> This is also where you can do the
rotation, but you don't want to do it here.

This is purely the Alt -- oh,
sorry, Shift-right mouse button.

Also, keep in mind, when it comes to
rotation, you can't rotate up and down.

So, if you have an HDRI and
something is super dark on the bottom

or the top, that's just tough luck.

>> Yeah.

>> You can't really do anything about that.

>> Change your HDRI.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> That's about it.

>> We can also change the exposure.

And you never ever, ever want to do this
when you're painting because now suddenly,

if you make it too bright or too dark,

you're going to over-light
or under-light your textures.

So, make sure this is set to zero.

You can also enable the shadows
which are quite cool

because now you can see a more
approximate result of what you're doing.

You can change the computation mode as
well here, but lightweight is quite good.

I honestly prefer to work without shadows on.

>> Yeah. Because again, like when
you're painting textures, we want,

like we want our albedo to
be as pure as possible.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> And shadows can be good for previews, but
you might forget to turn it off at some point

and then start to correct after the shadows.

>> Yeah, exactly.

Then after we've disabled old stuff here and
particularly the pose effects and we know how

to change lighting now, we are quickly
going to look at -- these are texture sets.

Texture sets are essentially shaders.

The way I like to think about this is

that every single texture set here
has one shader assigned to it.

So, whenever you're exporting
this back into Maya,

the head texture set will be the head shader.

It could also be not grouped based
on body part but based on material.

I would call like maybe brass and this would
be called skin and this would be called iron.

That helps me a lot.

>> Yeah. And that's really how you separate it.

So, you would always prep it in
another 3D software beforehand.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> Just simply, you know, select the object
or parts of the objects that you want

in your texture set and apply
a different shader to it.

>> Exactly.

So, you can see these also
have different UVs as well.

So, there is no overlap between them
because there's completely separate shaders.

Whenever you're dealing with texture sets,
you kind of got to discard the mentality

of like an outliner or hierarchy of your objects

because the hierarchy is completely
irrelevant when you're texturing.

Hierarchy is used when you're
rigging and doing that kind of stuff.

But for this, these are pure shaders.

Let's go back to F2.

So, we can switch between the texture sets
by going up here and just clicking on them.

Or we can do this by holding Ctrl Alt and
right mouse button on the various texture sets.

This is the way you probably want to do it
because clicking up here is quite annoying.

Let's say you're painting down here and
you want to switch it, quite annoying.

So, Ctrl Alt-right mouse button.

We can also solo it.

So, let's say you only want to see the body.

Now, you just hit the solo button.

This is something I do all the time.

>> Is there a way to set up
a hotkey for the solo button?

>> Yes, there is.

It's Alt-Q which I believe
is the old Max hotkey for it?

>> Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. One thing that's also nice is the tool
tips that you get in the bottom left-hand corner

of the viewport whenever you're
selecting hotkeys that it sort

of shows you what possible options there are.

Like when you're rotating and
stuff, that can be quite handy.

Especially in the beginning, the hotkeys

and what they do can be a
little confusing sometimes.

>> Yeah, exactly.

You can also change the shader right here.

This is something, we aren't covering
this in this series but if you want

to have a different shader assigned to it.

For instance, if you're dealing with
opacity, this is where you would do that.

Then we have the brush tool.

By default, we have a regular layer
and we cover layers a little bit.

The brush tool is one of these tools
you are going to be using quite a lot.

So, the hotkey is 1 and you
can find it over here.

I prefer to use hotkeys as much as I can.

And by default, you're just
going to paint like this.

One thing I do very often whenever I'm painting
with this is that I disable pen pressure

for either the opacity or the flow or the size.

So, you can do that by going under right
next to the size and disabling pen pressure.

Because now, we have the
exact same pressure all over.

And you can do the same with flow.

So now, you can enable pen pressure and now
you have really a lot more control with it.

>> Whatever the difference between the two are.

>> Yeah, flow and opacity.

You can resize the brush by holding Ctrl-right
mouse button and going left and right.

You can change the hardness by holding
Ctrl-right mouse button and going up and down.

You can change -- you can rotate it
which we can't really see here right now

because there isn't anything assigned to it.

But you can rotate it by holding
Ctrl and then going up and down.

>> So, this is just going to be a
little confusing in the beginning.

It just takes some time getting used to.

>> Exactly.

You can just kind of see your
cursor is rotating around.

And then opacity is Ctrl -- flow is
Ctrl and then just go left to right.

You can also get straight lines by
holding the Shift key when you're painting

and you can hit the D key to get lazy mouse.

This is incredibly handy if you really
want, like, nice clean lines here.

So, let's do some of this and you just
get nicer, cleaner lines this way.

That's a D hotkey.

Then we also have symmetry as well
which is relevant with brush tool.

The hotkey there is L or you can
go up here and enable symmetry.

This is really cool symmetry.

It's not like Mario symmetry
which works on screen-based.

It's actual real symmetry.

>> Yay!

>> Yay! One thing to keep in mind as well
is that you can't paint across texture sets.

So, if you want to paint to the
body now, you can't do that.

You have to switch to the texture
set and then paint on that.

That's why I recommend a hotkey
for doing that because otherwise,

it's going to take too much time to go over.

>> Yeah.

>> We also have the color picker which is the
P key, which is honestly quite annoying for me

because you have to move your hand a lot.

But that's how you change the color picker.

The color is back to --

>> So, you click it or hold it down?

>> You click it and then you click
where you want and then it switches.

You can also right click to get up
brush settings such as size, flow,

spacing, all these kind of things.

And on the bottom, we also
have the color as well.

So, you can change the color
to whatever you want to.

Then we have layers.

So, layers is really where
the fun begins in Painter.

We have regular layers which is exactly this.

Let's actually go to the head
and isolate this and delete this.

So, you delete layers by hitting the trash can.

And you have two different layers here.

You have the fill layer, then you have the
regular layer which is just a paint layer.

The paint layer is where you can paint on it.

Nothing fancy about this.

This is very straightforward.

This is where we can also project stuff on top.

And if you want to paint custom
masks or whatever you want

to do, use a regular paint layer.

We have blending modes to the right.

And we can also change the
blending mode per channel.

So, if we go down here, we
have different channels.

We can paint, for instance, with height.

So now, we're painting with height and
we're painting it with red at the same time.

So now, we have some height
information in our brush.

So, we can go down here and we
can change this now to height.

And we can now change the opacity of this.

So, this is the way you control
the different channels.

So, if you have roughness, for
instance, you do the same thing.

You can change the reference value
and you would choose roughness

and you change the blending
mode or whatever it is.

So, it's really cool that
you have such fine control

over all the different channels right here.

Where the magic happens though when it
comes to Painter isn't with paint layers.

Like, it's called Painter but you really aren't
going to be doing too much hand painting.

>> Should be called Substance Filler.

>> Should be called Substance Filler because
we are going to be using the fill layer a lot.

So, a fill layer is kind of like a material.

I like to think about every fill
layer as a separate material

because we have all the material
attributes we need.

This is also where we see our properties.

And this is where this becomes relevant.

We can see down here, we have all
the properties for our fill layer

or whatever it might be,
whatever tool it might be.

So, we can change the color by
clicking to the gray part here,

the gray part, and we can change the color.

We can change the metallic.

Is it metal?

Is it not metal?

So, we can make this metallic.

We change the roughness to make it really shiny.

And we can't really see the effects
of height or normal right now.

So, this is what I mean with
it being a material.

But now, we have essentially
created some kind of like,

almost like a car paint shader
or some kind of red material.

So, you can change this here.

>> So, the interesting difference here
between paint layers and fill layers is

that for the fill layers, instead of painting
it, you're sort of almost erasing it.

>> Yeah, exactly.

So, the way you would do this is if you
want, let's say you have a base here

with a car paint shader and then you
want to have another layer on top,

maybe you have some rust on top of it, you will
make a separate layer onto fill layer on top,

make this rust and mask between them.

We'll get to this in a little bit as well.

So, let's delete these and let's
make a new fill layer as well.

So now, we're going to talk
about one of my favorite features

of Painter which is adding grunge maps.

So before, we added the color
straight under here to it.

But what we're going to be doing
now, instead of adding a color,

we are going to be adding a map into this.

So, if you click right above it where it
says base color, we can now hit type grunge.

And now, this is going to be
flooded with awesome grunges.

We have so many different maps.

And honestly, I think this is one
of the biggest strengths of Painter

because you can change the look
of your texture so quickly.

And a grunge map can be used
for really anything.

>> Yeah. There's a lot of good variety in
the maps included in Painter, actually.

>> Yeah, there really is.

So, one cool thing as well is that we
have access to tri-planar projections.

So currently, this is using UV
mapping as the projection method.

So now, you can see we get seams
where there are seams in the UV map.

And that's unavoidable.

That's --

>> And that's what you would expect, you know.

>> Yeah, exactly.

It doesn't matter how good a UV map
is, you will have seams by definition.

But if we change the projection
type to tri-planar, now suddenly,

you are not going to have any seams
anymore, at least not where the UVs are.

Because now, we have three planes
which are projected maybe from here,

here and here, depending on your setup.

And you get a nice blend between the planes.

>> Yeah. So, where you would normally
have seams with tri-planar projection,

it actually fades between the different maps.

>> Yeah, exactly.

So, we change the hardness to this and now you
can kind of see where the different planes are.

So, you can definitely see a seam but because
we can change the hardness all the way down,

you now just get this soft transition.

>> Yeah.

>> And this also means that,
we shouldn't really say this,

but it means your UV map can be
a lot worse because now suddenly,

stretching isn't that much of an issue.

>> Yeah.

>> You can also see here we have a little gizmo.

This is something they recently
introduced in Painter.

So before, you can only do it
with rotation scale in here.

But now, you can actually move it around.

You can use -- by default, it's
going to be set to just move.

You can set it to rotate by hitting the E key.

And you can set to scale by hitting the R key.

And back to move with the W key.

So, W, E and R.

>> So, one thing we talked about, it's
probably a good idea to be consistent here

with which method you use, so you don't start
mixing the normal scale rotation and hardness

with maybe with the gizmo or something.

>> Exactly.

Because now, if you start to scale some stuff
here and then you scale some stuff here,

it's really hard to know
what's actually happened to it.

Like you can have a crazy high
value here, but you don't really --

but maybe you can't see what's going on.

So, I really recommend you stick
to either using the scaling here

and rotation here or I prefer
to use just a gizmo.

I think this is a really good addition to it.

>> Yeah, yeah, it's very intuitive to use.

>> Yeah, it really is.

You can get some really good results with this.

You can also duplicate the fill layers around
and then you can mask out different parts.

For instance, if you see here, we have like a
pattern going across, you could duplicate it

and then you can rotate it and now
you can mask out different parts.

So, this is really one of
the strengths of Painter.

So, let's add something into
the roughness slot as well.

Now, you can see we have different slight
variation in the roughness to this.

Now, this is where it becomes relevant
that we have different channels.

By default, we're just seeing the material.

So, this is with all the lighting
and everything into the model.

>> Yeah. Everything's sort of like
stamped or like meshed together.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> So, you know, if we were to
add another one into the height,

we can see crazy stuff going on here now.

And this is really nice that we can
see everything because this means

that we get a pretty good approximation of
what the final one's going to look like.

But it's not very good for actual
painting because when you're painting,

you need to paint every single map.

You need to control every single map you have.

So, if we go up here to the top right,

we can see that we have material
and then we have single channel.

So, this is where you can
choose the different channels.

We have like metallic, roughness,
height, normal.

And then we also have below, we have mesh maps.

These are maps which are being generated
by Painter itself when you bake stuff.

We aren't covering too much
of this in this series

because baking is a whole
separate chapter by itself.

>> Yeah.

>> But you can choose these
by simply clicking on them.

And now, you can see the different channels.

You can also use the hotkey which is C to
go between them and Shift C to go back.

>> Yeah. And here, it becomes pretty apparent
when you switch between something like roughness

and then your height, for example,
that you can see the different maps

that we've inputted into those.

>> Yeah, exactly.

It becomes very important to be able
to see these individual channels

because after you get a certain
level of complexity into your maps,

you might just have -- there
is some reflection somewhere.

>> Yeah.

>> Where is that coming from?

Is it coming from -- is it the height
map driving it or what's going on here?

So, C to go between, Shift C to go back
and B to go between the baked maps.

So here, you have ID, ambient occlusion,
curvature, position, thickness.

We have a whole separate video
on this as well on YouTube

where we cover what each texture map is doing.

>> Yeah.

>> So, we highly recommend that
you check that out as well.

And to go back to material,
you simply hit the M key.

M for material.

This is something you're going to be doing
a lot, so really get used to these hotkeys.

When I was learning Painter, I was sitting
down and straight up just hitting the M key,

hitting the C key, Shift C, going between
them, B, Shift B. Really get used to these

because these will be your
everyday painter life.

>> Yeah. It's going to speed
up your painting a lot.

>> So, now that we briefly talk about the
fill layer, we need to talk about masking

because masking is also really
where the magic happens.

>> Yeah. Especially when
you work with fill layers.

>> Exactly.

The magic happens in a few different places,
but particularly when it comes to masking.

>> Magic just happens within Substance.

>> Exactly.

So, let's make two new fill layers.

This one is going to be like,
maybe it's like a red paint layer.

And on top, we're going to
have some kind of dirt.

So, you can also rename by
double clicking on it.

And we can call this red.

>> That's why I really like the material analogy
with fill layers because you have the control

of each individual channel and then you just
sort of add new materials or shaders on top.

>> Exactly.

Like, we covered this fairly in depth
in the full series where we're talking

about if you want to replicate
rust, you need to build it

up in a methodical way the same way it's done.

>> Yeah.

>> So now, we have like a nice
little paint material here.

And now, we can add another one.

And here, we can make this nice and grungy.

>> Yeah. So, you really just have to think of it

as like the original base of
this was painted with red.

And then over some years, it got
rust on top or something like that.

>> Yeah, exactly.

We can set this again to tri-planar.

And you're going to be doing this all the time.

>> I almost wish it was default.

>> Yeah, exactly.

One thing as well to keep in mind,
when you work with fill layers,

I tend to disable channels I don't need.

For this one, I don't necessarily need metallic
and don't need normal so we can disable that.

This just keeps it a lot cleaner because
then you have less parameters down here.

So now, we have one layer on
top like this and we have --

yeah, we have a red one and then
we have some kind of dirt layer.

The way we mask between these now is we right
click and we hit add a white mask which is going

to keep everything the way it is, or we add a
black mask which is going to erase everything.

This is very similar to how
it's done in Photoshop.

>> Yeah, yeah.

So, if you ever used Photoshop and used
masking there, this should be familiar to you.

>> Exactly.

So now, we can see that everything disappeared.

We can also disable the mask by holding
Shift key and clicking on the Mask.

And we can look at the mask by holding
the Alt key and clicking on the Mask.

>> Which I think is actually
how you do it in Photoshop.

>> I think this is exactly
the same as Photoshop.

This is where we have our effect stack as well.

This is really handy because
here, we have generators.

More on that in a bit.

And here, we have paint layers.

So now, let's add a quick paint layer to this.

And now, we can start painting between these.

>> Yeah, that's an important thing to note.

You actually need a paint layer
underneath your mask in order to modify it.

>> Yeah.

>> Otherwise, it will be completely
white or completely black.

>> Exactly.

So now, we can see if you hold the Alt key
and click on the Mask, not on this part,

on the layer, but on the Mask, now
we can see what we're painting.

And this again becomes incredibly important
when you really want control over stuff.

>> Yeah.

>> So, hit the M key well.

Again, go back to materials.

And here, we can now see
exactly what's going on.

Now, this is where we can add some
height information onto this fill layer.

>> Yeah, that's the nice thing
about the fill layer compared

to the paint layer is here,
you can just up the slider.

>> Exactly.

>> Whereas with the paint layer, you would
actually have to paint the height information.

>> So now, we can kind of see what's going on.

It's kind of like this is
carving into the painting.

So, you can have a lot of control
with this if you go into one layer

and just adjusting the height value.

A quick tip as well is if you want fine
control here, you can hold on the Shift key.

And now, you can see that
we're just getting like way --

we have way more precision
over our values instead

of just dragging and that becomes quite tedious.

So, this is really one of the ways
you can be doing a lot of your work.

You can be painting masks like this.

So, it's a very quick and easy
setup when it comes to masking.

If you want to remove this
or restart the masking,

I just go add black mask again
and then it all disappears.

You can also copy a mask and you
can also remove a mask altogether.

So, let's next look at the shelf.

The shelf is where a lot of
fun stuff happens in Painter.

This is what we have on the bottom.

And by default, it's going
to be set to materials.

But this has way more stuff than just materials.

The way we can access this is really
we can drag and drop our stuff onto it.

And now, we have a material.

This is one of the pre-made materials.

And some of these are simply fill
layers which have been turned

into smart materials by the
guys at Allegorithmic.

And some of these are made in
Designer and are way more hardcore.

>> And are really smart material.

>> And really, really smart.

So, you can just drag and drop them onto
it and you can just see what happens.

The way I really learned how to make
materials in Painter was to drag and drop a lot

of materials and try to reverse-engineer them.

You know, go through this and see what color
they're using, what are they using for height,

what kind of patterns are they using here.

This kind of stuff is really handy.

So here, we can see one which
this is made in Designer.

So here, you don't have the
same attributes as before.

So, if you're seeing this kind of stuff, that's
not because you don't know Painter well enough,

that's just simply because
this is made in Designer

and the author has made certain
attributes available.

I find these to be quite annoying because I
can't really modify them from heart's content,

but they're still really
good as a starting point.

>> Yeah. I mean, as we all know, there
are some crazy designer materials

out there that can do all kinds of things.

So, they can be quite useful.

>> Exactly.

So here, we have -- these are more --
these are simpler, these materials.

They're usually almost like one fill
layer, just modified a little bit.

But under smart materials, this is
where stuff is going really crazy.

We will cover this a little bit more later on.

But essentially, you get really advanced effects

by simply just dragging and
dropping these onto it.

And this is also where people go a bit
crazy with them and they just start

to abuse this system where, you know, they
just -- they don't learn how to texture,

they just drag and drop smart materials and
they think they're not a great texture artist.

We have a few rants on this.

>> Yeah. There's also videos about it.

And yeah, you should check that out.

>> So, definitely check that.

So, there are also more resources
under here as well.

Like, this is where your environments
are and stuff like smart masks as well

which are exactly the same as a
smart material, just with a mask.

We also have like our project maps.

You can see these were all the maps
which have been baked by the baker.

We also have alphas.

So, if you want like a cool alpha onto your
brush, this is where you would find that.

Let's actually show that real quick.

So, if you want this in a color, we
drag and drop this into the color.

Now, we have a nice little map like this.

So, you can do some pretty
crazy stuff with this.

>> Yeah.

>> You can get some very
cool effects right away.

You can also use it for height.

And ta-da, you know, we get some cool effects.

We also have all the grunges
like I was talking about before

where you -- this is where they all live.

You can also just search for them.

Like if you go in roughness, you
can just type search for grunge.

But it's really handy to have them all here.

So, in short, this is where
a bunch of stuff will live.

So, definitely worth checking that
out, particularly the materials

and smart materials and smart masking.

Also, if you want to bring in your custom
resources, like let's say you have images

from Photoshop or whatever it might
be, you already baked your maps,

this is where you could bring them in.

So, we have a little -- we have a
material or a map which has been pre-made.

And the way we get this in is we
simply drag it in to our shelf.

And now, we get this little dialog box up.

This is going to tell you the name of it and
then it's going to tell you what this is.

Is this an alpha?

Is it color lock, environment?

Or is it a texture?

This is a texture and you've
got a definer as such.

If you bring in HDRIs, you
set it to environment.

>> One thing I'd like to point out
here, something that I didn't know

which was really annoying in the beginning.

You can select multiple, you know, imported
objects here and then just select all of them

if they're all textures or all environments.

>> Oh, that's true.

Yes.

>> Yeah, you don't have to do it one by one.

>> You can just drag -- select them all.

>> Exactly.

>> That's quite handy.

You can also change, you can add a prefix to it

which I don't really find
that useful, but you could.

And then, what you do is you import
this under the current session

into the project or onto the shelf.

So, we're just going to do current session

which means whenever we restart
Painter, it's going to be reset.

>> That just keeps it clean for us here.

>> Exactly.

So now, we have our resource right here.

So now, if we have -- we make a fill layer.

Now, we can drag and drop
this guy into the fill layer.

And this is how you would tile a map across.

This is something I was wondering, me coming
from Mari, I was wondering, is there like a fill

or tile adjustment layer or something like that?

But the way you would tile something across
is dragging and dropping into a channel

and now you can, you know, scale it up.

>> Yeah. And that only works with fill layers.

>> Yeah, exactly.

So, you could also set this to
tri-planar as well which is quite handy.

So, you might use -- you're
probably going to use a combination

of tri-planars and UV production.

>> Yeah. You know, some materials
might be projections

from the UVs and some might be tri-planar.

>> Exactly.

So next up, we are going to be
looking at the projection tool.

Now that we have a resource, we can
actually use the projection tool.

The projection tool is here.

This is -- the hotkey is
3 for the projection tool.

And the way we use this is
we go under our paint tool

or under our properties here down to the bottom.

And under base color, we
drag our resource in here.

>> And that's with a regular layer and not
a -- regular paint layer, not a fill layer.

>> Exactly.

Because now, we're doing
bespoke painting onto this.

The cool thing about using this tool is
that you can get very specific results,

such as if you want to have a
logo in a very specific spot

or you just really want this texture
to be in, you know, this exact spot.

This is the way you traditionally
been painting something like Mari.

But now with all the additions of all
these super cool features in Painter,

you're doing less and less of this.

But this is still a really useful tool.

The navigation for this is the
same as regular 3D navigation,

except that you're using the S key.

So, if you want to rotate it,
it's S and left mouse button.

You want to scale it down,
it's S and right mouse button.

And you want to move it, it's
S and middle mouse button.

And then you use your regular hotkeys
for resizing your brush and all that.

So, it is an incredibly powerful
tool if you really want

to get specific textures in specific spots.

>> Yeah. And the nice thing about doing this
with projection is that if you have a layer,

let's say that it's a fill layer that's
not using tri-planar for some reason

but is using UV projection, then you can always
create a paint layer on top with projection

to fill out, you know, those seams.

>> Exactly.

You can also set this to tiling.

It's currently set to no tiling,
but we can set this to tile.

And now, it's just going to keep on painting.

As this is a tileable map, you know,
this here is just going to keep on going.

So, the projection tool, very, very useful.

Then we're going to be looking
at the polygon fill tool.

Let's make a new regular layer and
let's look into the Polygon Fill tool.

The Polygon Fill tool is incredibly
powerful because it allows you to fill

in specific colors in specific areas.

So, let's just try it by
default and see what happens.

So now, it's set to polygons which
means that whatever polygon is selected,

we are going to be filling this in.

You can also set in triangles which
is also quite useful, I suppose.

Where this becomes really useful is if
this is set to the mesh part like this,

the mesh fill option, where now
you can just click on a portion

and it will do all the connected
bits to this piece of geometry.

>> This is really handy for something
like masking, when you want to mask

out entire regions and not like
wanting to have to hand paint it.

>> Exactly.

And then we also have UV section as well.

So now, we can mask out only
the UV part of this.

This is entirely based on your UV map.

>> So, like Morten said,
this becomes really handy

if we have a new fill layer and this is red.

And then we have another filler
and this is not red, it's blue.

And now, we mask it out.

Right mouse button, add a black mask
effect stack, add a paint layer.

And now, we can use this
tool, the Polygon Fill tool.

And simply just click where you want to be.

So, for UVs, you simply click these
parts and now we mask between them.

>> Yeah. So, you know, just
in case you didn't catch it,

you're not actually selecting with blue here.

You're just -- you're selecting
white for the mask and then

that just shows the blue
that is on top of the red.

>> Exactly.

This is a really useful tool.

Like Morten said, this is
mostly used for masking.

I don't really use this for anything else.

Sometimes maybe you want to select some
polygons here and there, but I've only used this

for masking as far as I can remember.

Hotkey here is again 4.

So, it's 1, 2 and 3 and 4.

>> Pretty intuitive.

>> Pretty intuitive stuff.

Then we have generators,
filters and mask editors.

So, let's look at some of these.

Let's start with another fill layer
and let's make this the same --

kind of same as what we had before.

>> Don't tell me it's a red paint.

>> It's going to be a red paint.

And on top of this, we can make another
layer which could be like a dirty one,

something like this, and just
change the scale of this.

Hold on the Shift key just
to have a bit more precision.

And where generators become
useful is if you want to mask

between these different materials now.

Now, you saw before we were hand painting it.

But honestly, hand painting,
that's for like if you're in 2001.

>> Yeah.

>> We are going to let the
computer do some of the work.

>> And the generators, as far as I
know, they require the mesh maps, right?

>> Yes, exactly.

So, if we add a generator to this again
under the effect stack on the layer --

oh, sorry, we have to make a black mask first.

And now, we can add generator to this.

Now, we have -- nothing has happened
now because there's nothing in it.

But if we go under the generator
now, we have a few of them.

One which is really cool is metal edges.

And this just brings you like
really gnarly broken up edges.

The way this works is exactly
what Morten was saying.

If we go through our mesh maps in the B key,

we can now see that we have
ambient occlusion and curvature.

These generators rely heavily on
particularly curvature and ambient occlusion.

>> Yeah.

>> Because now, we have data on where are the
edges which is exactly what's happening here.

>> Yeah. I mean, so you could use painter
with purely paint layers and fill layers

if you want to, but you won't have
access to the actual power of Painter

which is the generators, in my opinion.

>> So, you can hit the Invert button.

This is something you're
going to be doing quite a lot.

You can also change the wear level for this.

Now, keep in mind, this is a specific
generator called metal edge wear.

This is not great for a lot of things, but it's
also really good to get a starting point for it.

Like, you can see it's very
specific in what it's doing.

>> Yeah, it's wearing metal on the edges.

>> On the edges.

Exactly what you would expect it to do.

So now, we can delete this one
and we can get another one.

Just hit the X key there.

And now, we can get another
one which is the mask editor.

The mask editor is a lot less sexy from the
get go, but this has a lot more power into it.

This is also what I was saying
before that this is where you have

to start looking at the specific mask.

Hold down the Alt key and click on the Mask.

And now, you can see what's going on.

>> It's kind of like if you use
someone's predefined brush in Photoshop

versus kind of making your own brush.

>> Yeah, exactly.

So, this allows you to do tons of
different things where you can amp up stuff

like the ambient occlusion,
you can amp up the curvature

and you can really get very
specific results with this.

You can also under texture input, you
can add, you guessed it, a grunge.

And you can get very cool results with this.

If we can see where we can add this
and set the opacity now to higher.

And that's a super funky texture.

So now, this is where you can really
get some real power out of the masking.

The mask generator is something you're just
going to have to play with because, honestly,

there are way too many settings
to play around to show you here.

But this is --

>> But essentially, you could make the
metal edge wear from the mask editor.

>> Yeah, pretty much.

You can get some very interesting
results with this.

And again, this is why we look into our --

we watch our mask here instead of looking at
the material because it's just too hard to --

like, you don't have enough
information, honestly.

>> Yeah. And especially once you start stacking
stuff on top of each other, you have more

and more materials, it can
be quite hard to figure

out what material and which generator does what.

>> Exactly.

And this is again where we
can add like a height to it.

And now, you can just see that.

Oh, let's do another one.

And now, we get this really nice result
where you get like real depth into it.

So again, this is one of the
absolutely coolest things in Painter

where you really have a lot of power in this.

Another one which is quite handy
if you going to delete this is --

oops, that was deleting the entire thing.

>> Yeah, that's important.

Like, you don't have to actually
delete the generator every time.

You can just delete the generator
that's being used in the generator.

>> Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, the container for it.

> Yeah, yeah.

>> But there's a specific one you're using.

Light is also quite handy.

This is again, if we hold on the Alt key.

Now, you can see exactly what's
going on here where this is --

you can mask out stuff based on light direction.

Now, keep in mind, this doesn't actually -- this
is not physically based or anything on this.

This just looks at your position map
and your world normal map, I believe.

So, this doesn't respect
shadows or anything like this.

But this is incredibly handy if you
want to do something like a worn texture

from the top where, you know, stuff is --
there's been a lot of stuff happening up here,

but you don't want the bottom to be masked out.

>> Or you could do like snow with it, you know.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> So, don't think of it as maybe actual
light but more -- it's just a mask, basically.

It could also be, you know, the
sun has destroyed it and stuff.

>> Exactly.

This is something you see a lot where there's
a lot of sun damage everywhere and stuff.

So, the light one is really nice.

And then you can also use a fill layer on top.

And you could pipe in different
things like grunges

and change the blending modes
here to something like multiply.

And now, you can really break
up this material now.

>> Yeah. So now, it kind of looks
like it's had a lot of heat from above

and the paint has started to like
almost bubble up or something.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> So, the power of generators
is crazy in Substance.

>> Yeah. This deserves its own
video because there's way too much

to cover when it comes to generators.

Then we have smart materials.

Smart materials are really, really cool.

A smart material is just a saved material
where all the settings here are saved.

So, we can make -- actually, let's
undo this and let's have this.

So, we could save this as a material.

Let's say we want to use this exact
material here for something else.

Let's say you want to use this for the body.

We can easily do that.

We can group this and we can call this --

>> So, how do you do that?

>> You hit Ctrl G to group it
and then we can name it now.

We can call it My Smart Material.

So, what this means is it's going to use the
same curvature maps and everything is going

to pipe into the same places,
just in a different place.

So, you could simply copy
paste this onto a different one

or we can make a smart material on it.

And you do this by holding down the right mouse
button or clicking the right mouse button.

And then we have Create Smart Material.

And now, we can see that My
Smart Material has been created.

Now, we can drag this onto
one of the other ones.

So, this is incredibly powerful when
it comes to texturing because now,

you don't have to texture
every single piece by hand.

You can make one really kick-ass material
and you can drag these onto the other pieces,

obviously do a better job than this.

And you can use that as a base.

So, for instance, if you have a project and
you got a texture like 200 pieces of wood,

you wouldn't look for, like, these
specific references for each of them.

You would just make a smart material for
wood and you would modify them based on that.

>> And if you need something that's a
little more hero for one piece of wood,

you could always drag on your smart material.

And then on top of that, you know,
add more fill layers or paint layers.

>> Yeah, exactly.

Smart material should really be used as
a starting point and not the end result.

So yeah, this is -- you have
all the predefines down here.

And like I said, I really
recommend that you go through them

and just reverse-engineer the life out of them.

>> Yeah.

>> That's going to be quite handy.

And then the last thing we are
going to be looking at is Iray.

Now, we have done some really
nice texturing on our model

and everything is ready for presentation.

The way we can present this is we can
use iRay which you find by clicking

on this nice friendly camera icon up here.

So, iRay is a really nice feature in Painter
as it's a proper ray-traced render engine

and not like a real time preview like
you're seeing in the actual viewport.

So here, we have the render
settings all the way on top here.

We set this to one second
just to make recording easier.

>> Yeah.

>> But this is where you would set how
long the rendering time is going to be.

So, if you want, like, a nice good render,
maybe set this to like 20 minutes or so.

>> You can see we have some noise here,

but you can get that away by
just increasing the max time.

>> Yeah, exactly.

So, that's one of my favorite features of
iRay because it's so easy to use in terms

of render settings because you have,
like, one slider and that's time.

There isn't any like threshold craziness.

And then under here, under Display
Settings, it will inherit all the settings

from the regular Painter mode
because it's still in Painter.

So, whatever HDRI you have enabled, it's
going to set that up for you and it's going

to light it properly here with
nice shadows and everything.

There isn't like a setting for enable
shadows, it's just going to do that by itself.

>> Because that comes built in with HDRIs.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> So, this is where I want to
show the FlippedNormals' HDRIs

because I think they're just nicer
than the regular studio HDRIs.

But that's totally up to you.

>> Exactly.

So, one setting I always
change is the clear color.

By default -- it seems like they're changing
setting now, so clear color section enabled.

But if it's not in yours for some reason,
then I would highly recommend enabling it.

It just means that there is one clean color
in the background because the HDRIs have

so much stuff and when you're presenting your
work, you really don't want any nastiness.

>> They don't really look
nice for backgrounds, I think.

>> No, no they don't.

You want like probably a
nice clean presentation here.

You can also change the ground
plane where that is.

This is by default set to pretty
good value, so this actually works.

But you could also change
this to something else.

You can do like this.

>> Yeah. So, you know, if your model is
properly centered and placed on the ground

where it should be, that shouldn't be an issue.

>> Yeah, exactly.

Then we also have, if you scroll down, we have
our camera settings or you can click on these.

These aren't different -- they
aren't like different menus,

they're just bookmarks to the same one.

So, we have camera settings.

You can change this to something like
35 millimeters if you want, like,

a more -- less squished look for it.

I prefer a more 35 look.

And we can also change stuff like post-effects.

If we enable post-effects, by default, glare
should be enabled which is quite crazy.

I really just hate the glare feature because
it just makes my stuff look nasty, I think.

But if you want glare, you can enable
that and have nice glare on your models.

>> I mean, if you're going
for like a Mass Effect 3 look

on your Painter stuff, then glare can be nice.

>> Exactly.

When it comes to post-effects, I just
prefer to do all of this in Photoshop

as I have so much more control over it.

And I think the tools there
are just a bit nicer.

One thing though which is quite
cool is we can use depth of field.

So, if you enable depth of field
and when it's changed aperture,

now it's going to give you some
pretty damn good 2D depth of field.

>> Yeah.

>> You can also change your focus
distance to see where it's going to be now.

And now, it's not rendering.

This is purely a 2D effect.

Or we can hit control middle
mouse button to set the focus.

So, we can set this all the
way up so it blurs like crazy.

Keep in mind, this here is only a 2D effect.

If you want real depth of field, we
first set the aperture all the way

down so it doesn't go crazy.

We disable the 2D depth of
field, just disable post-effects.

And now, if we increase the aperture, now
it's going to start blurring the render.

>> Pretty crazy.

So, this is actual 3D depth of field.

>> Yeah, this is quite nice.

This is quite noisy though, as you can see,
because we have set it to literally one second.

But if you want this to look nice,
you got to increase this quite a lot.

Depth of field takes a long time to resolve.

And as with 2D depth of field, it's
the same hotkey for changing the focus.

So, Ctrl-middle mouse button for that.

>> Yeah. So, I think it's a really cool
feature of iRay actually to have that included

because you can make some really nice,
very cinematic-looking renders with it.

>> I really like iRay.

It's a sort of really good engine.

We use it for some of our FlippedNormals'
promo shots because it's here.

>> Yeah.

>> All the stuff rendered for the promo
shots for the fan tutorial is all iRay.

There isn't any fancy stuff outside there.

When you want to save your
render, once it's computed for more

than one second, you hit Save Render.

And that's going to save the render.

I prefer to save it as an EXR file
as I just have more control that way.

Bring it to Photoshop and keep editing it there.

Or you can share it directly to
ArtStation if you are so inclined.

You can also just see up here, it's done.

If it's not done, it's going to say, "Not done."

>> Yeah. And rendering time, one
second out of one second, so.

>> So, pretty good.

So again, the hotkey is F10 to go into iRay or
you can click this nice friendly button up here.

And F9 or click it again to
get back into regular Painter.

The cool thing about iRay is that
you can really preview your model.

So, instead of exporting your maps out and,
you know, setting them all up in Arnold

or whatever it is, you can just
get a nice render for it there.

So, what I'm doing -- my workflow for this
is I paint in Painter and I go into iRay,

see the result, go back into
Painter and keep painting here.

So, it's a very iterative process.

So, this really covers pretty
much everything you need to know

in order to get started with Painter.

There are some features we haven't covered which
deserve separate videos like exporting out maps

and baking because they're just slightly
bigger topics and they can't fit in this.

>> So, yeah, I think you should
be good to go from now on.

If you want to see more specific topics
covered, like maybe want us to do a video

on purely baking or one on
generators or something like that,

make sure to leave that in
the comments down below.

>> For sure.

>> And if you do want a more in-depth
one that's more project-based,

we have our sort of more comprehensive
introduction to Substance Painter

that you can grab over on the
FlippedNormals Marketplace as well.

>> Link to that in the description.

And in the description as well,
you'd also have all the hotkeys used

and timestamps for everything.

So, if you want to revisit this video in
the future, it's going to be really easy.

>> Yeah.

>> And also, please share this with
friends and colleagues and everything.

This is --

>> Anyone who's wanting to
get into Painter, I guess.

But yeah, thank you guys so much for watching.