Paint and Projection Tools
Paint
The paint tool allows you to apply Brush Strokes with a specific material over the mesh in the project.
Eraser
The eraser allows you to remove paint information on the current layer.
Projection
The Projection allows you to apply a material or texture aligned to the current point of view.
Polygon Fill
The Polygon Fill allows you to select polygons on the 3D mesh to create masks based on geometry.
Smudge
The Smudge tool allows you to stretch, mix, and blur base color and other channels.
Clone
The Clone tool allows you to duplicate or patch any part of the existing material on the 3D mesh.
Material Picker
The Material Picker allows you to copy material properties (colors and values from active channels) from any point on the 3D mesh.
This is a temporary tool, once a color is picked the previous tool will be switched back on.
Paint tool basics
The Paint tool is the default brush for painting colors and material properties on a 3D mesh. It has specific parameters which can be edited in the Properties panel.
The Paint tool is comprised of a brush, alpha, stencil, and material. The brush properties are similar to the brush properties found in Adobe Photoshop. You have controls for adjusting size, spacing, opacity, flow, and various jitter settings. For a full description of the toolset, please check the Paint Brush page.
The Paint tool has many options to help simulate a wide variety of brushes. The contextual toolbar at the top of the 3D view contains the standard controls for the Paint tool.
Symmetry
Use Symmetry to duplicate your strokes based on geometric constraints. Enable Symmetry by clicking the Symmetry button in the Contextual Toolbar. Symmetry is only available when using the Paint tool or Eraser tool.
There are two main Symmetry modes:
- Mirror Symmetry: reflect brush strokes across a 3D plane
- Radial Symmetry: duplicate brush strokes around a line in 3D space
Lazy Mouse
Lazy Mouse lets you paint smoother, more precise strokes. Lazy Mouse offsets the distance between the cursor and the brush stroke so that the stroke drags behind the cursor instead of being attached to it.
Material
Materials are composed of multiple channels where each channel represents specific surface properties. Which channels are available depends on those defined in Texture Set Settings window.
In Painter, you can paint data across multiple channels. Enable and disable channels in the Properties panel, click a channel button to toggle it on or off. When disabled, channel parameters cannot be changed and the channel is not modified by the painting process.
The Material mode button is an easy way to load a material and quickly set multiple channels.
Alpha
The Alpha determines the shape of the brush tip. Painter includes hundreds of alphas by default. Change your alpha by selecting a new one in Assets > Alphas or by clicking your current Alpha in the Properties panel.
Many Alphas have parameters that you can adjust to create variations. You can create your own parametric Alphas with Adobe Substance 3D Designer.
Stencil
The Stencil is a grayscale mask for the brush stroke. The stencil is attached to the viewport and acts just like stencils do in the physical world. Brush strokes through a stencil will only be applied where the stencil isn’t black. More information on how to use the Stencil is available here.
Projection
Projection is a tool in the toolbar that allows you to paint a material by projecting it in screen/viewport space. Projection works like the Stencil and shares similar controls.
To learn more about using the Projection tool, go to the Projection documentation.
What’s Next?
You now know all about Substance 3D Painter’s paint and projection tools. Next, you can learn more about exporting your work to use in any 3D software.
Have a question or an idea?
If you have a question to ask, come and participate in the Substance 3D Painter community. We would love to hear from you.
Как в substance painter регулировать projection
29 июл. 2015 в 13:17
Projection Tool Resolution
Look at the image and you can see a huge problem with the projection tool. There’s a massive resolution loss on the image being projected, making it next to impossible to accurately project things. It actually appears that the maximum resolution of the texture displayed OUTSIDE of the brush radius, is in the range of 8 to 32 pixels MAX! Inside the brush radius, it might be something like 512.
Once projected, the texture is 100% fine.
Now, in this image, the actual projected texture is 4096. I did that because I thought maybe I could make up for the fact that it’s downrezzing the texture but in fact, it made it a LOT worse.
I didn’t bother taking a screenshot of a 2048 or 1024 projection texture, but trust me that it’s about as useless. However, those resolutions actually do show a decent image but ONLY inside of the brush radius. Outside of the brush radius, it’s about 8 pixels tops.
So I have to make my brush the size of the entire screen to line up my projection and then shrink it down when I’m ready to actually use it.
I hate to say it, but this tool is just totally garbage in its current state and it absolutely MUST be fixed and I personally think that it should be the number one priority for the development team. Not just for me and this project I have right now, but for all of us.
Considering that we have what, 4 brush tools? How can you just let a quarter of that entire toolbar contain something that is so beyond broken that it literally shocks me that nobody else is up in arms about this.
I’ve mentioned this at least 5 times now and there’s no response about it and as far as I know, the developers aren’t even aware of the problem. This can’t stand as is. This can’t fly.
This MUST be fixed and it must be fixed right now.
Please, get somebody on this.
Projection
The projection is a tool that allow to paint a material by projecting it in screen/viewport space. It shares similar controls to the stencil.
It is possible to edit the projection transformation by pressing the shortcut S :
- Use S + Left Mouse click to rotate the stencil.
- Use S + Left Mouse click + SHIFT to snap/constrain to rotation of the stencil.
- Use S + Right Mouse click to Zoom/Unzoom the stencil.
- Use S + Middle Mouse click to translate the stencil.