Introduction to

Substance Painter.
 In Maya:

Smoothed. Unsmoothed.
• We need to export a high ploy smoothed model to be able to use it in substance painter.
• To do this select the models in the scene and hit 1 on the keyboard > this with revert the models to their
unsmoothed preview.
• From there select the book cover and pages models and go to mesh > down to smooth and its options >
reset settings > set smoothing to 2 and hit apply.
• From there keeping the book selected go back to mesh and down to combine > this makes it one object
instead of two.

• Then assign a Blinn material to the book and then a second to the ground plane. > from there you need
to then combine all models together by going to mesh and combine.
• Once combined select everything > go to file > export selection options > set file type to and OBJ and
export.
• NOTE: substance painter is very memory intensive so may want to close maya for a faster work flow.
 • To open book model from Maya in Substance Painter
In Substance Painter: go to file > new > and set template to PBR –Metallic
Roughness (Algorithmic > select OBJ file to work on >
set document resolution to 2048 then hit okay.
• NOTE: lights in the scene are driven by HDR dome
and the 3D view works like the maya viewport and
we can see in the top right with the texture set list
that our two Blinn shaders have been carried over
from Maya > these can be renamed later.

• From there go to the texture set setting and

go down to bake mesh maps > in the window
set output size to 2048 > uncheck the ID map
as we don’t need that one > then hit bake all
texture sets > for my one I had to do two
bakes as I did not have this option.
• Then to apply the first material go to the
smart layers tab and search leather > you
want the leatherette damage material > with
this you can then drag this to the layer panel
and then you can delete the existing empty
layer in the panel.
• Then in the properties you can change the
layers attributes which the information will
then be brought up through the layer stack. >
here you want to select the leather pattern
layer and scale the texture to between 13-15
> this then helps create the height
information in the viewport.
• From there we want to center the leather texture to be on the cover only to do this select
the leather group icon and create a mask and select add white mask.
• Then select the polygon fill tool and in the properties set colour to black > select the UV icon and click on the pages mesh in the UV
viewport.
• You can also change the colour of the book by going to the base colour in the leather group and editing it’s properties.
• NOTE: to move the light in the scene you can hold down shift and right click to change light direction.

• Adding texture to pages > to add texture to pages we can use a procedural texture called Anisotropic Nosie. To plug this in we can create a
fill layer and set the base colour to an off white/cream colour and turn the metal map off > call this layer Base.
• Then create a second fill layer and call this one Details > in the details layer properties turn off the metal map and in the base, height and
roughness select the Anisotropic Nosie material.
• When it first loads in material will be very strong so will need re-scaling and toning down. To re-scale select the details layer and go to
properties > and over to scale in the UV transformation and set to 1.5 and 18-20 (make sure to unlock the scale)
• For me I didn’t end up using these settings > this due to substance glitching out whenever it exceeded a certain size causing my bump and
texture patterns to be removed and the book become flat > this may be because my Laptop is not strong enough to carry out said
operations as substance is very memory intensive.
 • From there I then turned off all the maps for the page
layers except for the colour maps > from there I then
played around with the details blend modes to achieve
the page texture > to do this I used the linear dodge
setting and lowered the opacity to 83% so it wasn’t so
strong.
• From their I then turned on the height map on both layers
and set the details to an opacity of 6 so the bump wasn’t
so strong and overpowering. > here I also had to change
the to the height layers using the drop down menu above
the layers panel.
• I then altered the roughness, remembering to change the
layers menu to roughness > from there I set the details
layer mode to lighten dodge and the opacity to around
22% and set the base layer height to 0.7.

• Adding the Dirt > then create a new fill layer > set the base to a murky brown colour > made sure to have just the roughness and
colour maps active > then applied a whit layer mask > selecting the mask, I then added a generator adjustment and in its
properties I set the generator to Dirt and adjusted the dirt level accordingly, being careful not to lose the textures in the process
as substance kept glitching out if detail was too high or too low.
• I then created a folder > named it pages and placed all my page layers into the folder.
• Some how I managed to lose my pages bump/ height, this my be down to either not putting in the right settings on the right
channels or having something off that should be on. Not quite sure where the problem lies but will go back and revise later.
 • To get the gold leaf texture in materials
Adding the Gold Leaf. find the Brass pure texture and drag above
the leather folder in the layers panel. From
there you will need to import the gold leaf
detailing to the texture resources.
• To do this go to import resources > find
your gold leaf detailing file > set search
name to Book and the folder to texture
and in the import resources to – select
current session and hit import. > gold
detailing will appear in the texture tab
‘bank’.
• From there select brass folder > add white
mask > on mask apply a fill layer and in its
properties bring in the gold detailing by
searching book > this mask may be the
worng way round - or in may case the
book will turn white with a faint outline of
the detailing – this can be fixed by adding
a filter to the mask and inverting it.
• Then to change the height of the gold so it
debosses into the book, on the height
channel adjust the slider till you have
something you are happy with.
 Texturing the Ground/Table.

• In your texture set list select the second Blinn shader and add the chest
stylised smart material to the layers panel > delete existing blank layer from
panel.
• Then apply a filter to the material > in properties select transform and drag to
the top of the group.
• In the properties go down to rotation and set to 104 degrees to offset the
wood grain to the book. > here you will need to drag the grunge layer to above
the transform layer as the transform distorts the grunge so it doesn't sit right
with the books position in the scene.
 Exporting:
• To export go to file > export textures > set the configuration to Arnold (AiStandard) > file type will be a
8 bit PNG with a size of 4096 (4k map) > once filled in hit export > this may take some time as there are
a lot of maps to export.
• Once exported save scene and close substance painter as it will slow maya down if both are open.
Settings used to set up maps exported from Substance Painter.
 In Maya:
• Revert to mesh models before smoothing process in the beginning.
(can do this by either undoing the last steps or bay reopening the
scene without the smooth changes).
• Add in a sky dome light from the Arnold lights menu > in the
colour channel set it as a file node > go to file node and bring in
HDR map from the source images directory.
• Up the samples to 3 in the main attributes > and go down to the
view port tab and set the radius to 0.1 so that we don’t see our
HRD image in the viewport to distract from what's in the scene.
• With this done we no longer need out fill light so
we can hide this light in the layers box (layer 2). >
Do a quick render to check lighting.
• From there add two aiStandardSuraface’s one to
the book and its pages the other to the
ground/table plane. Label one book and the other
table.

Adding the Displacement to the Book:

• To add the displacement to the book go to the Ai
shading node by clicking the box with the arrow on
the right hand side. > then in the displacement
channel add in a file node > and then input the
book height map into the file node > make sure to
check ignore colour space rules > set to Raw and
make sure alpha as luminesce is on.
• From there in the in the covershape node go to the
Arnold tab and down to displacement > set height
to 0.2 (0.1 for table) > bands padding to 1 > scalar
zero value to 0.5 and turn on the auto bump >
render section in render view to check texture.
• Repeat process displacement on pages and repeat
whole displacement map plug in for table surface.
Before After.
Adding the Other Texture Maps:
• Then to bring in the others maps create file nodes
for the base colour and metalness channels > in
the colour plug in the book colour map > in the
metalness plug in the book metalness map and
make sure to turn on ignore colour space rule >
set to raw and make sure alpha as luminesce is
on.
• Then to bring in the roughness map go to the
specular tab > set roughness channel value to 1
and plug in a file node > in the file node find the
book roughness map and turn on ignore colour
space rule > set to raw and make sure alpha as
luminesce is on.
• Repeat colour and roughness map inputs for the
table. > Adjust specular weight and colour as
needed for both book and table textures.
• NOTE: using displacement maps increase render
times so to avoid long render times you can swap
out the height maps for normal maps by plugging
them into the bump channel and turning on
ignore colour space rule. Setting to raw and
making sure alpha as luminesce is on and altering
the flip R/G to get the textures to be visible in the
Arnold render view.
Arnold Render Outcome.
Composite Outcome.