Solved! How do I export my hand-painted textures from Blender to Substance Painter?

[michaelws]

I am hand-painting my dog model in Blender, with UV UDIMS (2), I would like to export the image maps I made in Blender to Substance Painter to add details. Is there a way to do this?

Also my dog has 11 objects. All UVs mapped onto two UV UDIM panels. Do I need to save the painted image maps for each object separately so that I have to export/import 11 Image maps?

And good tutorials showing this process?

Thanks

[dan2 (dan)]

I’m sure there are some youtube tutorials on the process, but there are just a few steps to it really. One way would be to export your model as an fbx, and export the image textures from Blender.

In Substance painter make sure to check the UV tile workflow:

After importing your model, you’d need to add the textures as resources:

Once they’re added, you can just create a new fill layer, and drag and drop the textures into the diffuse slot, and other slots if you have generated other maps as well:

Once they seem to be working you can just create a new paint layer and continue texturing. Using passthrough mode you can manipulate your original textures with the smudge tool for example.

I would recommend not using bridge addons until you’re familiar with the process. That way you can always do it manually if something goes wrong, and you wont have to rely on addons. Once it becomes a bottleneck in your workflow you can always install one later to make things faster.

[michaelws]

Thanks again dan2. Will try this as soon as I send in my tax prep material! That time of year.

Sure appreciate the step-by-step you gave here.

[michaelws]

dan2
I am not having any success exporting a saved image map from Blender and Bringing it into Substance Painter.

I am not using UDIMS. I started a new file with a subdivided sphere in Blender, applied a material to it, attached a Texture Image to the principled shader, UV mapped it, and painted it simply (as it is just a test to learn how to do this.

I saved the image as a .png to my desktop;

Then after saving the blend file I went to File>Export>FBX, again saving this to the desktop.

Then in Substance I bring in the FBX…I checked “Use UV Tile workflow” (even though there are no UDIMs).

Then I attempt to Import the Resource (the png file) to the Current Session;

After Clicking “Import” I get this little window saying "Some Files are still designed as “undefined” and will be discarded during the import. Continue?

And after clicking ok nothing happens. It just takes me to the unpainted sphere.

[michaelws]

I figured it out dan2. I am so think-headed.

I totally missed the last part of creating a new “fill layer” in substance and then dragging the png onto the base color.

Also in my screen grabs I took it before setting the imported png as a “Texture.”

Thanks for putting up with me.

[dan2 (dan)]

Glad it worked out.

Yes, the import process is a bit convoluted to be honest - I had to do it a couple times myself to get the hang of it. I don’t think it’s intuitive enough for such a common workflow, so I’d consider it a design flaw.