/substance-3d-texturing

name: substance-3d-texturing
description: Comprehensive skill for Adobe Substance 3D Painter texturing and material creation workflow. Use this skill when creating PBR materials, exporting textures for web/game engines, optimizing 3D assets for real-time rendering, or automating texture workflows. Triggers on tasks involving Substance 3D Painter, PBR texturing, material creation, texture export for Three.js, Babylon.js, Unity, Unreal, glTF optimization, or Python API automation. Creates optimized textures for threejs-webgl, react-three-fiber, and babylonjs-engine materials.

Substance 3D Texturing

Overview

Master PBR (Physically Based Rendering) texture creation and export workflows for web and real-time engines. This skill covers Substance 3D Painter workflows from material creation through web-optimized texture export, with Python automation for batch processing and integration with WebGL/WebGPU engines.

**Key capabilities:**

• PBR material authoring (metallic/roughness workflow)
• Web-optimized texture export (glTF, Three.js, Babylon.js)
• Python API automation for batch export
• Texture compression and optimization for real-time rendering

Core Concepts

PBR Workflow

Substance 3D Painter uses the **metallic/roughness** PBR workflow with these core channels:

**Base Texture Maps:**

• `baseColor` (Albedo) - RGB diffuse color, no lighting information
• `normal` - RGB normal map (tangent space)
• `metallic` - Grayscale metalness (0 = dielectric, 1 = metal)
• `roughness` - Grayscale surface roughness (0 = smooth/glossy, 1 = rough/matte)

**Additional Maps:**

• `ambientOcclusion` (AO) - Grayscale cavity/occlusion
• `height` - Grayscale displacement/height
• `emissive` - RGB self-illumination
• `opacity` - Grayscale transparency

Export Presets

Substance 3D Painter includes built-in export presets for common engines:

• **PBR Metallic Roughness** - Standard glTF/WebGL format
• **Unity HDRP/URP** - Unity pipelines
• **Unreal Engine** - UE4/UE5 format
• **Arnold (AiStandard)** - Renderer-specific

For web engines, **PBR Metallic Roughness** is the universal standard.

Texture Resolution

Common resolutions for web (powers of 2):

• 512×512 - Low detail props, mobile
• 1024×1024 - Standard props, characters
• 2048×2048 - Hero assets, close-ups
• 4096×4096 - Showcase quality (use sparingly)

**Web optimization rule:** Start at 1024×1024, scale up only when texture detail is visible.

Common Patterns

1. Basic Web Export (Three.js/Babylon.js)

Manual export workflow for single texture set:

**Steps:** 1. **File → Export Textures** 2. **Select preset:** "PBR Metallic Roughness" 3. **Configure export:**

• Output directory: Choose target folder
• File format: PNG (8-bit) for web
• Padding: "Infinite" (prevents seams)
• Resolution: 1024×1024 (adjust per asset)

4. **Export**

**Result files:**

MyAsset_baseColor.png
MyAsset_normal.png
MyAsset_metallicRoughness.png  // Packed: R=nothing, G=roughness, B=metallic
MyAsset_emissive.png           // Optional

**Three.js usage:**

import * as THREE from 'three';

const textureLoader = new THREE.TextureLoader();

const material = new THREE.MeshStandardMaterial({
  map: textureLoader.load('MyAsset_baseColor.png'),
  normalMap: textureLoader.load('MyAsset_normal.png'),
  metalnessMap: textureLoader.load('MyAsset_metallicRoughness.png'),
  roughnessMap: textureLoader.load('MyAsset_metallicRoughness.png'),
  aoMap: textureLoader.load('MyAsset_ambientOcclusion.png'),
});

2. Batch Export with Python API

Automate export for multiple texture sets:

import substance_painter.export
import substance_painter.resource
import substance_painter.textureset

# Define export preset
export_preset = substance_painter.resource.ResourceID(
    context="starter_assets",
    name="PBR Metallic Roughness"
)

# Configure export for all texture sets
config = {
    "exportShaderParams": False,
    "exportPath": "C:/export/web_textures",
    "defaultExportPreset": export_preset.url(),
    "exportList": [],
    "exportParameters": [{
        "parameters": {
            "fileFormat": "png",
            "bitDepth": "8",
            "dithering": True,
            "paddingAlgorithm": "infinite",
            "sizeLog2": 10  // 1024×1024
        }
    }]
}

# Add all texture sets to export list
for texture_set in substance_painter.textureset.all_texture_sets():
    config["exportList"].append({
        "rootPath": texture_set.name()
    })

# Execute export
result = substance_painter.export.export_project_textures(config)

if result.status == substance_painter.export.ExportStatus.Success:
    for stack, files in result.textures.items():
        print(f"Exported {stack}: {len(files)} textures")
else:
    print(f"Export failed: {result.message}")

3. Resolution Override per Asset

Export different resolutions for different assets (e.g., hero vs. background):

config = {
    "exportPath": "C:/export",
    "defaultExportPreset": export_preset.url(),
    "exportList": [
        {"rootPath": "HeroCharacter"},   # Will use 2048 (override below)
        {"rootPath": "BackgroundProp"}   # Will use 512 (override below)
    ],
    "exportParameters": [
        {
            "filter": {"dataPaths": ["HeroCharacter"]},
            "parameters": {"sizeLog2": 11}  # 2048×2048
        },
        {
            "filter": {"dataPaths": ["BackgroundProp"]},
            "parameters": {"sizeLog2": 9}   # 512×512
        }
    ]
}

4. Custom Export Preset (Separate Channels)

Create custom preset to export metallic and roughness as separate files:

custom_preset = {
    "exportPresets": [{
        "name": "WebGL_Separated",
        "maps": [
            {
                "fileName": "$textureSet_baseColor",
                "channels": [
                    {"destChannel": "R", "srcChannel": "R", "srcMapType": "documentMap", "srcMapName": "baseColor"},
                    {"destChannel": "G",