🟢Discover the power of anchor points in Substance Painter to easily reuse and update layer stack parts.
🟢Learn how to create, reference, and adjust anchor points for efficient texture creation.
Learn about anchor points in Substance Painter and their usefulness in reusing layer stack parts.
🟢This class covers creating anchor points, referencing them in different layers, and adjusting properties for desired effects.
- Workflow
Make a new project and add it to the Binoculars fbx file.
Set the resolution to 2k and we want the Compute Tangent Space Per Fragment to be turned one.
Another thing we want to make sure is set up is the OpenColorIO configuration to Substance Painter.
Since the mesh doesn’t have a high poly we will make it with itself on a 4k resolution with Antialiasing set on Subsampling 2x2.
After the model has been backed we’ll add the Bronze Armor smart material and on top 2 fill layers.
The first fill layer is going to be a white color with only the roughness and color channel turned on.
The roughness set it at 0.2.
The second fill layer is a copy of the first but has a red color instead.
For now, we will hide the red layer and add a black mask onto the white layer.
On the black mask add a generator and choose the Metal Edgewear, making a few changes to the generator, the most important change is to Invert the Edgewear from False to True.
After that add a new effect called Add anchor point.
When using Anchor points make sure they are the last thing you add on your black mask so that the anchor point works properly.
Reveal the red fill layer, add a black mask, and add a Fill effect.
In the Fill properties instead of using the Resources inside of the Grayscale, we’ll use the Anchor Points.
We can see that the Anchor Point has the name of the white fill layer.
Select it and now two of the black masks will be connected with each other.
This means if we make any change to the Metal Edge Wear on the white fill layer it will also affect the red fill layer.
Inside the Anchor Point, we can adjust the levels.
If the value is 0 we can see that the white color will be completely gone.
If the value is all the way to its maximum point the white color will be more dominant.
For today we’ll set the Levels value to be around 2.
We can make our texture more interesting by adding the Add Paint effect onto the black mask of our white layer.
Make sure that every effect you add on is always below the Anchor point.
Pick out the Charcoal brush and start taking away the black mask by pressing X.
Group up the layers, name it Exercise_01, and hide it.
For our next exercise add in a new fill layer and choose a dark red color.
Adjust the roughness and rename the layer to Dirt.
Add a black mask and a Mask Editor Generator.
Inside the Mask Editor add in the Grundge Rough Dirty Texture on both texture inputs.
Adjust the Global Balance, Contrast, and Texture Opacity on both texture sliders and the Amdient Oclusion Opacity.
Make a new fill layer below the Dirt layer with only the height turned on.
Adjust the height, add a black mask, and inside the Alpha library search up the font alpha.
Double-click the alpha from the library to activate it.
If the height is too much we can always go back and lower it down.
We can change the text of the alpha inside the brush settings in Parameters.
To accurately change the rotation of your brush you can do it inside the Brush settings under Angle.
To make the stamp even more accurate stamp it on from the UV Shell.
If the text doesn’t fit the size of the binoculars, change the size of the text in the Brush settings.
On the Text layer add in an Anchor point.
Below the anchor point add in a Blur Filter.
From here you can increase the height of the layer and the blur intensity.
In the Mask Editor on the Dirt, layer scroll all the way to the end of the editor till you find the Micro Height.
Once you’ve located the Micro Height, click it and add in the Text Anchor point.
To activate it, go into Micro details and tick the Micro Height to be set to True instead of False.
Scroll back down to the Micro Height with the anchor point and invert the Levels.
In Micro Details adjust the AO Radius and Depth.
On top of the Text layer add a Paint Layer and name it Normal_Details.
Only have the normal channel turned on.
Search up normal maps inside the texture library and choose one.
Drag and drop it inside the normal channel so that it gets added to your brush.
Delete the Alpha of the brush so that it stamps the normal map without blurred edges.
Add an Anchor Point to the paint layer.
Go into the Mask Editor and turn on the Micro Normals in the Micro Details options
In Micro Normals select the Normal_Details Anchor point and switch the Reference Channel from Base Color to Normal.
In the Micro Normals Levels Invert them so that the mask influences the inside of the Normal map.
Group up the new layer we made and name it Exercise_02.
For the third exercise make a new fill layer and decrease the Roughness.
Add a black mask and in the Smart Masks library lookup Paint Old Small Cracks.
Drag and drop the Smart Mask inside the black mask.
Adjust the Invert and Level of the Smart Mask inside the Properties Generator.
Add an Anchor Point on top of the Smart Mask.
Make a new Fill Layer with only the height channel on with the height value being 0.2.
Add a black mask and a Fill Effect, inside the Fill add the White_Paint mask Anchor point.
Invert the Ancor Point Levels and add a Blur Filter.
Adjust the Blur intensity.
Add a new Fill effect, add the same Anchor point, and change the Fill effect type from Normal to Multiply.
Change the Color of the White_Paint Layer to a darker red.
If the blur is too weak you can go back and fix the intensity.
Group up the layers and name the folder Exercise_03.
For our final Exercise duplicate the Bronze Armor Smart material and rename it to Dark Bronze Armor.
Open up the duplicate smart mask folder and change the color of the Base Metal to a darker brown.
In the same layer increase the roughness value to 0.6.
Add a new fill layer and name it Paint_layer_04.
On this layer add a black mask.
In the Smart Mask library search up the Surface Warn mask and drag and drop it into the black mask of the new fill layer.
Add an Anchor point.
Copy the text layer from Exercise_03 and paste it below Paint_layer_04.
Drag and drop the Rust Coarse material on the binoculars.
Change the base color of the material to a darker brown.
Add a black mask and a Fill effect.
On the fill effect add in the Paint_layer_04 Anchor point and invert the Levels.
Add a new fill layer, change the base color to a bright orange, change the name of the layer to Rust_Glow and increase the roughness.
Add a black mask and a Fill effect.
To the fill effect add in the Paint_layer_04 Anchor points and invert the Levels.
Add a Blur Filter and increase the Intensity.
On the same black mask add in the Levels effect and lower down the value to 0.6.
Add a Fill effect, on it add in the Paint_layer_04 Anchor point and invert the Levels.
Change the Fill from normal to multiply.
Drag the orange layer below the Rust Coarse material.
In the Paint_layer_04, click on the Mask Editor and inside the Micro Height add in the Text Anchor Point.
In Micro Details switch the Micro Height from false to True.
Invert the Micro Height Anchor Levels.
Add a paint effect below to Paint_layer_04 Anchor point and use the Charcoal brush to take away some of the black mask to make an interesitng effect.
That concludes todays class.
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