• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

MSFS20 Substance Painter help...

The best way to find and get rid of double vertices is by what was shown above [Edit mode: Select All (A) then Mesh -> Clean Up -> Merge by Distance). It's best when starting a new scene or model is to have vertices merge automatically (though not foolproof). This can be done within the Properties Panel (Active Tool and Workspace settings - the wrench and screwdriver icon. Located under the options tab). The idea is to eliminate vertices that are not needed or Doubled up (one on top of other),

Also, to go from ngon to tris (to avoid a warning from SP) within Edit mode: Select All (A) then Faces -> Triangulate Faces (Ctrl-T). It doesn't hurt to make sure it's in Quads first also. Adding loop cuts or knife cuts is adding vertices and the use of memory to a model. What you are wanting to achieve are squares so that the squares that can be divided evenly (a line going from one corner to the opposite lower corner or vice versa - diagonally). The fewer vertices you have, the better.
 
Quick question about textures. I want to have one 4096 texture sheet for my building and actually my UV layout has 2 buildings on it that are going to share textures. For now I am just filling it with the textures for one building. When exporting from Substance Painter for MSFS I noticed that it exports each texture set as it's own 4096 sheet (because I chose 4096). So with my albedo, metallic, roughness, and normal I have 15 different 4096 textures for this building when there should only be one albedo with the metallic, roughness, and normal inside the channels for that texture. Obviously for memory and performance having 15 textures isn't going to cut it. How do I get everything combined onto one 4096 sheet when they are all filling individual 4096 sheets? I'm not sure I understand how it works. I had assumed the MSFS Substance Painter export would give me one texture sheet with my UV Layout and the PBR channels for metal, rough and then the normal?
 
You have to assign for all buildings that you want the same texture the same material in blender. 1 blender material will be 1 set of textures in substance painter.
 
Mikea.at said:
You have to assign for all buildings that you want the same texture the same material in blender. 1 blender material will be 1 set of textures in substance painter.
Click to expand...
This does not make sense to me. I used Tex Tools to assign color ID to the different parts of my building in order to texture it in substance painter. I had 5 different colors on the building which ended up making 5 different materials on the building in blender. I made my UV layout in Blender and obviously Substance painter used that UV layout because I could see it in the 2D view when painting each section that I had marked with colors. My assumption was when Substance Painter exported that it would export what I painted on one texture using the UV layout and that it would have put the metallic, roughness, etc. in the correct channels. Instead I ended up with a 4096x4096 sheet of each albedo I had painted along with the metallic, roughness, and normals which totaled out to be 15 different 4096 textures. How do I get those textures all on one sheet? Because right now they are not laid out on one sheet...they're on 15 different ones.
 
This is what I meant before, you will now place all the same buildings textures (and the other) into one texture sheet by using Photoshop or GIMP. You might have to use blending mode of "normal", "multiply" or "overlay", depending on the texture that you are copying to. You will need to do this, of course, for each texture sheet.

Once you have them all, save it either as tga or png.
 
You dont need 5 blender materials just make 1 and everything will be fine.

If you want a color id map use vertex paint in blender to do that.
 
@thetford569

What he is saying (hopefully I'm right), you will need to setup 1 material in blender.

But you will need to merge all the albedo maps into 1 texture sheet then all the roughness, metellic and normal maps individually. After that take care of the roughness and metallic by placing them into their proper channels.
 
thetford569 said:
This does not make sense to me. I used Tex Tools to assign color ID to the different parts of my building in order to texture it in substance painter. I had 5 different colors on the building which ended up making 5 different materials on the building in blender. I made my UV layout in Blender and obviously Substance painter used that UV layout because I could see it in the 2D view when painting each section that I had marked with colors. My assumption was when Substance Painter exported that it would export what I painted on one texture using the UV layout and that it would have put the metallic, roughness, etc. in the correct channels. Instead I ended up with a 4096x4096 sheet of each albedo I had painted along with the metallic, roughness, and normals which totaled out to be 15 different 4096 textures. How do I get those textures all on one sheet? Because right now they are not laid out on one sheet...they're on 15 different ones.
Click to expand...
The color ID map is just for building the texture set in Substance nothing else. That set will then be represented in MSFS via a single material. You need the MSFS export presets for Substance and they can be found here:
https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/substance-painter.448483/post-853098 (The one I use)
https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/resources/substance-painter-export-presets-for-msfs-2020.257/

When exporting from SP, make sure you have the correct export option selected (I use the FS2020.spexp) and it will pack all your textures ready for MSFS. Previously when you mentioned you had 15 different textures ,this will prevent that and pack everything up into 3 files. The whole point of using the color ID map in Substance is to avoid merging any textures, let Substance handle merging things.

***edit2.. read it again and I understand what is happening. Make a copy of your model for exporting into Substance that only has one material assigned to all faces. This way, everything will be one and the colorID map will serve it's purpose. I'm pretty sure the reason for all the different maps is that each material assigned to a model you export from blender gets separated in Substance during export. A single material + color ID map is what you're looking for in Substance.

For the sake of clarity, multiple materials into Substance is multiple materials out. Say you want to texture a building and it has see-through glass and interior, that would get two materials exported from Blender into Substance due to the opacity map required in the glass shader. Otherwise, if it's just all a standard shader and all going on the same sheet then a single material. Hope that makes sense as to why your "sheet" was broken up into 5 different sets due to the 5 colored materials on your model during export for SP. Those 5 colors are only necessary for the color ID bake.

I'd be happy to jump on Discord some day if you'd like, could be much easier to pass information.
 
Last edited:
Thank you all and I believe I understand this more after your explanations. Unfortunately I have had zero time this weekend to look at anything. This week is also very busy but I hope to be able to get some work done. I will take you up on the discord offer sometime Yohan. Thank you all so much!

Brandon
 
YohanNaz said:
The color ID map is just for building the texture set in Substance nothing else. That set will then be represented in MSFS via a single material. You need the MSFS export presets for Substance and they can be found here:
https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/substance-painter.448483/post-853098 (The one I use)
https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/resources/substance-painter-export-presets-for-msfs-2020.257/

When exporting from SP, make sure you have the correct export option selected (I use the FS2020.spexp) and it will pack all your textures ready for MSFS. Previously when you mentioned you had 15 different textures ,this will prevent that and pack everything up into 3 files. The whole point of using the color ID map in Substance is to avoid merging any textures, let Substance handle merging things.

***edit2.. read it again and I understand what is happening. Make a copy of your model for exporting into Substance that only has one material assigned to all faces. This way, everything will be one and the colorID map will serve it's purpose. I'm pretty sure the reason for all the different maps is that each material assigned to a model you export from blender gets separated in Substance during export. A single material + color ID map is what you're looking for in Substance.

For the sake of clarity, multiple materials into Substance is multiple materials out. Say you want to texture a building and it has see-through glass and interior, that would get two materials exported from Blender into Substance due to the opacity map required in the glass shader. Otherwise, if it's just all a standard shader and all going on the same sheet then a single material. Hope that makes sense as to why your "sheet" was broken up into 5 different sets due to the 5 colored materials on your model during export for SP. Those 5 colors are only necessary for the color ID bake.

I'd be happy to jump on Discord some day if you'd like, could be much easier to pass information.
Click to expand...
So I made a copy of my mesh with just one material assigned and loaded that into my project that had the color ID and was already textured in Substance painter. The new mesh loads and then it's not textured any longer. I think what you are trying to tell me to do with a copied mesh is something I would have had to do from the beginning? I can't re-do this building now without re-texturing the new mesh I guess? So for this one that I've already started I have 5 texture sets because of the 5 materials in Blender that were made when I used the Tex Tools addon. I guess I need to layer the textures in Photoshop to get my one sheet and then in the future I can import into Substance painter with one mesh and one material and a color ID map? It will probably be next week before I can get on discord or look at this much further due to my schedule.
 
Last edited:
Never heard of Vertex Paint.
I usually use an ID Map...just painting the faces in Blender what different colors.
Whats the advantage of Vertex Paint over ID Map?
I suppose one texture for the whole model instead of 1 texture for each different painted face??
 
Almost the same, vertex colors get saved with the mesh no need to save a image file. If you have multiple materials with multiple textures an 1 object. You dont have to mess around with different id maps because the information is in the mesh itself.
 
Mikea.at said:
Almost the same, vertex colors get saved with the mesh no need to save a image file. If you have multiple materials with multiple textures an 1 object. You dont have to mess around with different id maps because the information is in the mesh itself.
Click to expand...
Thx!. Any advice on a proper tutorial for it? This would reduce my textures quantity for at least 75%!!.

After watching a random tutorial...it's very similar to polygon painting in Substance Painter.
 
Last edited:
thetford569 said:
So I made a copy of my mesh with just one material assigned and loaded that into my project that had the color ID and was already textured in Substance painter. The new mesh loads and then it's not textured any longer. I think what you are trying to tell me to do with a copied mesh is something I would have had to do from the beginning? I can't re-do this building now without re-texturing the new mesh I guess? So for this one that I've already started I have 5 texture sets because of the 5 materials in Blender that were made when I used the Tex Tools addon. I guess I need to layer the textures in Photoshop to get my one sheet and then in the future I can import into Substance painter with one mesh and one material and a color ID map? It will probably be next week before I can get on discord or look at this much further due to my schedule.
Click to expand...
There should be a way to save each "material" from the original SP file as a smart material (group everything and right+clk on group "Create Smart Material" save to shelf) then drag and drop those material's to the color ID's of the new mesh? Good luck, this is fun isn't it! :banghead::rotfl:
 
Well...after testing a bit. Even tho you save lots of space with Vertex Paint..Quality Wise is clearly a downgrade from using a common ID Map.
 
If you select the faces an use the fill command. Shift + k it will be exactly like a normal id map i think. SP will then bake a very good id map out of this data.
 
Mikea.at said:
If you select the faces an use the fill command. Shift + k it will be exactly like a normal id map i think. SP will then bake a very good id map out of this data.
Click to expand...

So, finally i kinda found it my own workflow. Vertex paint + UDIM if i need better texture quality for higher dimensions models (Big terminals, Aprons, etc) using the same texture. so the Texture Density still high for certain parts
 
With udims you have 1 blender material and SP is generating for every udim tile 1 texture. So you end up having multiple textures.

Check if you can assign this textures to the model in blender to export it with the msfs toolkit. At the moment i can't imagine that this is working because of the lack of blender materials. :rolleyes:
 
Mikea.at said:
With udims you have 1 blender material and SP is generating for every udim tile 1 texture. So you end up having multiple textures.

Check if you can assign this textures to the model in blender to export it with the msfs toolkit. At the moment i can't imagine that this is working because of the lack of blender materials. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
I was using an extra pack of textures per material before...so going from 30 packs to only 2 packs..and keeping almost the same quality, it's a gogo situation for me.
Thx for letting me know about vertex painting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top