In this guide, we will go over how to set up our Substance Painter files and how to export a .glb from Substance Painter. We can then upload to the VNTANA platform for processing.
Texture Set Settings
Before we jump in, let’s go over one really important rule. In Substance Painter, a materials alpha blend mode is determined by the contents of the Texture Set Settings for each Material.
If the material has an Opacity Channel like seen below it will export with its alpha mode set to “Blend”.
If the material does not have an Opacity Channel it will export with its alpha mode set to “Opaque”.
To ensure export consistencies it is important to make sure the project’s material settings are set up correctly. There are 2 recommended materials to use with our projects:
- pbr-metal-rough
- It is recommended to use this asset if your asset does not require transparency.
- pbr-metal-rough-with-alpha-blending
- It is recommended to use this material if there is a material in your asset that requires transparency.
Asset Material Configuration
As mentioned above the contents of a material’s Texture Set Settings will influence how its blend mode is exported. When exporting an asset with transparency it is important to only apply transparency to materials that require transparency.
Let’s take this tent for example, the only components of the tent that require transparency are the window screens. In order to correctly export this from Substance Painter, we must ensure that our project’s shader settings are set to use pbr-metal-rough-with-alpha-blending. These settings can be found if you click the sphere with a cog icon.
After we have confirmed we’re using the correct shader, we can make sure our materials are set up correctly.
Opaque Materials
In order to ensure materials that are opaque remain opaque on export, we need to go through each material and ensure it does not have an opacity channel in its texture set settings. If there is an opacity channel in a material that does not require transparency we can remove it by simply clicking the x button to the right of the gear icon.
Transparent Materials
For materials that require Transparency, we must ensure the Opacity Channel is present in the Texture set settings.
We can now use the opacity channel in our material to apply our alpha map.
Exporting
In order to export a .glb from Substance Painter, navigate to File → Export Textures or ctl+shift+e.
In our export textures dialog, we need to set our Output Directory and change our Output Template to glTF PBR Metal Roughness.
After you have set the Output Directory and the Output Template we are ready to click Export.
Substance Painter will export all textures associated with the scene as well as a .gltf, .bin and .glb file.
We can now take the .glb Substance Painter produces and upload it directly to VNTANA.