Table Of ContentRealistic Asset Creation with Adobe
Substance 3D
Create materials, textures, filters, and 3D models using
Substance 3D Painter, Designer, and Stager
Zeeshan Jawed Shah
BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI
Realistic Asset Creation with Adobe Substance 3D
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To my mother Shadab Jawed and my father Jawed Ali Shah, for the sacrifices that made me who I am
and all their prayers that helped me to overcome the hardships in my life. To my wife Mehwish and
my daughters Gia and Reem for always being there for me and supporting me continuously, especially
during my tough times. I would also like to thank my employer, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd
University, for appreciating my efforts.
– Zeeshan Jawed Shah
Contributors
About the author
Zeeshan Jawed Shah is a teacher of multimedia, filmmaking, and arts. He is also a creative director,
photographer, painter, sculptor, graphic designer, 3D modeler, animator, filmmaker, web designer, and
visual effects artist. He is currently working as a lecturer in the graphic design department at Prince
Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Saudi Arabia. Zeeshan has worked on many projects.
Zeeshan has taught fine arts, web media, filmmaking, 3D modeling and animation, and visual effects
courses at the University College of Bahrain, New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) Bahrain,
and the University of Bahrain. He holds more than fifteen years of extensive teaching experience, and
his problem-based and project-based learning pedagogy has made him a popular faculty member in
the Middle East. He is also considered the pioneer of student film projects in Bahrain as the first one
to produce commercial feature-length films as student projects there.
Zeeshan was born in Saudi Arabia and went to Bahrain in 2006 to work as a lecturer at NYIT Bahrain.
He mainly taught web design, 3D modeling and animation, computer graphics, motion design, and 2D
animation courses in the beginning and then he included art history, drawing, and digital photography
to his teaching list. Gradually, he started to work on film projects with NYIT students, which were
based on his project-based learning teaching style in Bahrain.
Besides filmmaking, Zeeshan is also highly involved in interactive media and has organized various
workshops related to Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. He has been a notable member of
Bahrain’s gaming society where he participated in many game design events such as Gulf Game Jams.
About the reviewers
Chunck Trafagander has been working in video games since 2018, currently working as an Environment
Artist in AAA. In his spare time, he runs the Get Learnt w/ Chunck YouTube channel where he creates
tutorials centered around game art. He has also created several popular courses for the Flipped Normals
marketplace, contributed multiple Substance Designer tutorials on the official Adobe Substance YouTube
channel and works frequently with the CG Cookie team to deliver high-quality training resources for
their YouTube and website.
Käy Vriend is an award-winning passionate material artist and all-round Substance expert, consultant,
coach and mentor who is well-known in the game art community and one of the top Substance Artists
in the world.
He loves finding and creating synergies, advise and help building studios and contribute to the games,
film and design industry, indie and AAA studios alike.
Martin Schmitter is a talented CG generalist and content creator based in Switzerland. In his spare
time, he is also a passionate nature photographer, hiker and loves to play video and boardgames.
Blender 3D and other open-source software marked the starting point before he dived deep into the
Adobe Substance 3D pipeline. While he began to learn 3D Designer, he created the substance beginner
quicktip blog on artstation and social media to share his knowledge to the public. Then he participated
on various challenges such as Mayterials, Nodevember and Blender 52 contest.
Now he works self-employed for companies and individuals, creates multiple Substance 3D tutorial
series, he is a part of a game project and further releases materials and tools.
First of all, I would like to thank my life partner from the bottom of my heart for all the support and
love she always shows me. I would also like to thank my parents, sister, grandparents, uncle, families of
mine and my partner and friends for their support. And always remember, believe in your dreams and
live your life whether others believe in you or not. Even if it means failing and getting up again. You
can create what you want to achieve.
Table of Contents
Preface xiii
1
Getting Started with Adobe Substance 3D Painter 1
Technical requirements 2 Creating ID maps with vertex color 17
What is texel density? 3 Baking textures in Adobe Substance
Creating texture lists and ID maps in 3D Painter 26
Adobe Substance 3D Painter 7 Summary 33
Creating texture sets 7
2
Working with Assets in Adobe Substance 3D Painter 35
Familiarizing ourselves with the Understanding the different types of
Assets panel 35 assets in the Assets panel 51
Importing resources and creating Applying assets to 3D meshes 53
custom tabs in the Assets panel 38
Using normal maps to apply assets 53
Importing resources 38 Changing the Brush attributes 55
Creating custom tabs inside the Assets panel 45 Using alpha maps to apply assets 58
Summary 62
3
Working with Layers and Maps in Adobe Substance 3D Painter 63
Understanding the layer stack in Type of layers 64
Adobe Substance 3D Painter 64 Paint layer 65
viii Table of Contents
Viewmode 66 Warp projection 72
Actions 66
Applying materials on 3D models
Applying materials to 3D models and using ID maps in Adobe Substance
meshes in Adobe Substance 3D Painter 69 3D Painter 75
UV projection 71 Creating LED lights in Substance
Fill (match per UV Tile) 71 Painter 89
Tri-planar projection 72 Creating a television screen in Adobe
Planar projection 72 Substance Painter 93
Spherical projection 72
Summary 102
Cylindrical projection 72
4
Working with Masks in Adobe Substance 3D Painter 103
Creating complex masks in Adobe Creating planar masks in Substance
Substance 3D Painter 103 Painter 111
Summary 116
5
Working with Advanced Tools in Adobe Substance 3D Painter 117
Applying bitmap textures in Adobe Working with stencils and projection
Substance 3D Painter 117 in Adobe Substance 3D Painter 137
Creating a 3D logo from scratch in Using text, fonts, and the Clone and
Adobe Substance 3D Painter 123 Smudge tools in Adobe Substance 3D
Making a custom brush in Adobe Painter 144
Substance 3D Painter 128 Summary 151
6
Working with Materials and Smart Materials in
Adobe Substance 3D Painter 153
Creating a material or Smart Material Creating a material or Smart Material
from scratch in Adobe Substance 3D from an existing material in Adobe
Painter 154 Substance 3D Painter 163
Table of Contents ix
Applying stickers and decals in Using Position maps to add an overall dust
Adobe Substance 3D Painter 170 effect on multi-Texture Set 3D models and 3D
meshes 181
Adding an overall layer effect with
the position map in Adobe Substance Exporting textures from Adobe
3D Painter 176 Substance 3D Painter 190
Adding an anchor point 176 Rendering in Adobe Substance 3D
Painter using Iray 195
Summary 203
7
Getting Started with Adobe Substance 3D Designer 205
Substance Designer panels 206 Links 229
The Adobe Substance 3D Designer Disabling nodes 230
EXPLORER window 210 Manipulating 2D and 3D views 232
Graph view toolbar 233
Creating and closing a new package 210
The Substance Designer PROPERTIES panel 236
Creating and closing Substance graphs 212
Importing and linking resources 214 Substance Designer 2D and 3D views 238
Deleting the resources 217
2D VIEW 238
Saving packages 219
3D VIEW 242
Exporting nodes as separate images 222
The Substance Designer LIBRARY
Exporting Substance 3D Asset files 224
panel 243
Adobe Substance 3D Designer
The Categories section 244
GRAPH window 227
The Content section 244
Atomic nodes 227
Summary 245
8
Nodes in Adobe Substance 3D Designer 247
Working with nodes and The Flood Fill node 265
understanding the basics in Adobe The Quad Transform node 269
Substance 3D Designer 248
The Height Blend node 273
Atomic nodes 258
The Curve node 276
Library nodes 259
The Dirt and Dust nodes 279
The Tile Generator node 261
