Latest Blender / Substance Painter Endeavor

[cnwfan]

This is something I started a few years ago for my RWA cloned route, but didn't get too far. I was still using 3DC at the time, and just wasn't having any luck achieving the look I wanted. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, and I thought this would be a good exercise for my Blender / Substance Painter workflow. So, I dusted off my roughly measured drawing and here's the result. Yes, this is an actual building in SoCal, and up until the early 2000's, it was my family's business. I spent many Saturdays as a young lad working there. I modified the plan slightly to include a rail loading door, and a dock height truck door, but other than that, it's pretty much as I remember it.

Besides getting the glass windows to appear half way decent, the biggest challenge is getting a half way decent alpha texture to import into the dds texture. Substance Painter is designed for PBR shader workflows, and seems best suited for the metallic roughness type of PBR shaders. This is what the Unreal and Unity engines are using. As we know, the shaders in Train simulator are older, and do not support separate metallic and roughness channels. So, to get the desired smoothness and reflectivity, I ended up merging the metallic and roughness textures from Substance Painter into a single alpha texture using Photoshop. In some cases, I also altered the normal maps in Substance Painter to get the desired effect. It was a lot of trial and error. I am bringing this up in case anyone else out there is experimenting with Substance Painter and experiencing the same issues. And if you have found a better way of handling these issues, please don't be bashful.

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On a side note, I discovered quite by accident how cool the TrainGlass shader is for windows. I didn't use this shader in the final model, but did experiment with it. I just couldn't figure out how to get a tint to appear in the glass. If someone has way of adding a transparent tint to glass, I would like to know how you did it. Anyways, I hope this helps inspire someone to try out this workflow. And if nothing else, to learn Blender. I'm so glad I made the switch.

[Logan20131]

Nice! I actually have a question on Texture export from Substance Painter, I'm trying to get my metal surfaces to export and how to arrange them in the texture maps in 3Ds Max(Similar to Blender's Texture mapping) so when I export them they have the Specular(Metallic) and Normals(Roughness)?

Thanks,
Logan Thurman

[wacampbell]

Are there any less expensive alternatives to Substance Painter. $20 per month is a little steep for me ( or am I missing a lower cost purchase option? ). I have been using Blender's own internal texture paint feature with some success.

[cnwfan]

Nice! I actually have a question on Texture export from Substance Painter, I'm trying to get my metal surfaces to export and how to arrange them in the texture maps in 3Ds Max(Similar to Blender's Texture mapping) so when I export them they have the Specular(Metallic) and Normals(Roughness)?

I'm not familiar with 3D Max, so I can only speak for what I know with Blender. Before I export the object out of Blender as an fbx object, I make sure I assign material(s) to all the surfaces. Each material will come over into Substance Painter as a separate layer that you would apply Substance Materials "Smart Materials" or standard materials to. Then, when you export the textures out of Substance Painter, it will export out a set of textures based on the template you selected when the Substance Painter project was created. For example, if you start a project with the PBR metal roughness template, then you should get a texture set that would include textures for: color, normal, roughness, metallic, height. If you use a specular template, then you would get specular texture in addition to color, normal.

Back in Blender, I go back to the materials that I've setup, and in the first material slot I enter the desired Train Simulator. Then based on the shader, slot 2 could be setup for your normal texture. To control reflectivity, I've been taking the roughness, metallic and sometimes the height texture into Photoshop and mixing the layers to get an almost dark areas where I want the finish to be flat, and not so dark areas where I want more gloss. I then export this out as a bmp file, and then import into my color texture (after saving off as a DDS file from Photoshop) as a new alpha layer using DXTBmp. Resave the color texture out of DXTBmp as a DDS format file again, take everything to source folder, setup a blueprint, preview, and hope for the best.

I usually go through several rounds of adjusting the alpha layer until I get the right amount of reflectivity in each of the object areas. To control true roughness, I'll manipulate roughness and/or metallic settings in the Substance Painter project until I get the desired look.

All this would be so much easier if Train Simulator supported PBR shaders, but they don't. Then it would be a one to one match, and we'd get the same render results we see in TSW, which is using PBR shaders. I'm not sure if I answered your question, but I hope it helps. It really comes down to experimenting between Substance Painter, 3DMax / Blender, exporting out the igs, and seeing at you get in Train Simulator. It will never be what you see when you run a render in Substance Painter using their Iray render engine. But with some experimentation, you'll find a workflow that works best for you. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. Thanks!

[cnwfan]

Are there any less expensive alternatives to Substance Painter. $20 per month is a little steep for me ( or am I missing a lower cost purchase option? ). I have been using Blender's own internal texture paint feature with some success.

Check out MindTex2 on Steam. It's a program that allows you to import a texture, and it will create normal, specular, height, environment maps. It's a far less expensive alternative to CrazyBump. You could map your textures to your Blender materials, do a color bake to get a single texture with all your color, and then take it into MindTex2 to create your normal, and other maps.

The $20/month for Substance Painter does seem high at first. But with that indie license, you also get Substance Designer, all the updates for both programs, and full access to Substance's material library. I personally think it's worth it for what I'm doing. Besides using it for Train Simulator projects, I'm learning architectural rendering using the Cycles render engine in Blender. Now that Blender 2.79 has a PBR node for Cycles, it makes mapping the texture outputs from Substance Painter a whole lot easier.

For me, I just cut out one fast food meal a week, and that savings alone pays the $20/month for Substance. Life is about choices, and as much as I love my Quarter Pounders, I'd rather invest that fast food money in something that's going to help me expand my skills. But, that's how I feel. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. Thanks!

[TheRailWorkshop]

Are there any less expensive alternatives to Substance Painter. $20 per month is a little steep for me ( or am I missing a lower cost purchase option? ). I have been using Blender's own internal texture paint feature with some success.

Wait for sale.
Steam Version -

https://store.steampowered.com/app/7445 ... nter_2018/