Output directory
Last updated on
Jul 13, 2023
Learn how to export your creations.
Once you are satisfied with your work inside Substance 3D Painter, you can export your textures to bitmap files. You can use these bitmap files in almost any 3D software. Substance 3D Painter provides a powerful export dialog that lets you customize the format and settings of the exported files.
Export Dialog
You can access the Export Textures dialog with two methods:
- Go to File > Export Textures.
- Press keyboard shortcut Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + E.
The Export Textures dialog holds three tabs, Settings, Output Templates, and List of Exports.
Settings
The Settings tab contains the primary settings for your export. Use checkboxes on the left of the Settings tab to enable or disable the export of texture sets. You can also select texture sets to adjust settings for each texture set, or disable the output of specific maps.
With Global settings selected you can adjust settings for all texture sets simultaneously. Each of the options under Global settings is outlined below.
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Click to change where to export your textures. Click the R to the right of the directory location to reset to the default directory. This path is saved per project. |
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Output template |
Select the template that defines how your textures are exported. You can customize or create templates under the Output Templates tab. |
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File type |
Change the format used to export your textures. With most formats, you can also adjust the bit-depth of the exported textures here. You can see more about supported file formats and bit depth below. |
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Size |
Size changes the square resolution of exported textures. By default this is set to Based on each Texture Set's size, but you can change this to manually adjust output size. |
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Padding |
Change the method used to fill space that not covered by UV islands. Some padding methods allow you to adjust the width of the padding in pixels, use the dropdown to the right to change this value. |
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Export shaders parameters |
When this check box is checked, Painter will also export a JSON file that contains the shader parameters. This is useful in some advanced workflows. |
Output Templates
The Output Templates tab is where you can manage your templates. Templates tell Painter how to organize your textures for export. Templates for most 3D applications are included to allow you to export your textures quickly, but you can also create your own.
Under Presets, you can see the list of templates available. Select a template to edit it, or use the + to start creating a template.
With a template selected, you can see a list of the files that the selected template exports under Output maps. You can also see which maps are exported in each file.
Use the buttons next to Create to add extra files to a template. Drag maps from Input maps, Mesh maps, and Converted maps into channels of the available files to change which maps correspond with which channel.
Note:
The background colors of each file's channels corresponds with the colored squares in the lists of input maps. You can also hover over any channel to see which input maps are associated with that channel.
List of Exports
Before export, the List of Exports tab shows the maps that are currently set to export. After export, the Console shows the current progress of your export.
You can also use the Open output directory to the upper right of the tab to quickly open a file browser to the export location.
File Format & Bit Depth
Substance Painter exports to a wide range of file formats. Currently supported formats are:
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Depending on the file format, you can change the bit depth. A higher bit depth provides a higher quality texture, but can increase file sizes dramatically.
Some applications don't support high bit depths, so a lower value may be required.
For PSD (Photoshop) files, each texture set from a project is exported as a single PSD file, containing the exported textures associated to the texture set.
What's Next?
You now know how to export your work to use in other 3D software. Next, you can learn more about Painter's commonly used terms.
Have a question or an idea?
If you have a question to ask, come and participate in the Substance 3D Painter community. We would love to hear from you.
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