[Guide] Using Daz Studio + Substance painter => Easier than you may think!

ShelLuser

Hi gang!

Some time ago I bought myself a license for Substance Painter + Designer 2022 from Steam to help me enhance my 3D setup. Before that I was using ZBrush as my main backup but although ZBrush can do a good job with texturing it also has its limits. Obviously, it's a 3D editor, not a doctor errr: painting tool perse.

Designer has already helped me to edit & enhance several of my props, but editing Genesis in Painter was still quite a challenge at first; also because of my inexperience.. and some confusion as well...  Important keywords: layers & channels!

Identifying your assets

So... in this tutorial I'll be using the awesome Sukai 8 figure, but of course any Genesis figure will do. Just keep some of the possible differences with materials in mind.

Load in your figure, enable the surfaces selection tool and click on the belly ("torso"). Open the surfaces pane and check the "Base Color" section. In specific: hover your mouse over the menu (arrow icon) to see what texture map is being used. Click the icon, select "Browse..." and then copy the current folder name. Also make sure to keep track of what texture was being used, in my example this is "Sukai8TorsoD_1002.jpg". Close the browser when you're done.

Now also take a closer look at some of the other settings. Notice "PBR Metallicity/Roughness"?  That's an important detail for later.

So... while you still have Sukai selected go to File => Export, and be sure to use the Wavefront OBJ format. Use the "Daz Studio" preset, but you can disable the "Write material library" checkbox. Now might also be a good time to save this preset.

Loading the Genesis figure into Substance Painter

So, start a new project (Control-N) and then... remember that PBR stuff? ;)

• Select the template: "ASM - PBR Metallic roughness".  (note: for Genesis 2 & 3 you probably want "Non-PBR Specular Glossiness").
• Then select your OBJ file (click "Select...").
• Document resolution: 1024, Normal map format: OpenGL.
• Enable 'Use UV Tile workflow' and be sure to select "Preserve UV tile layout....".
• Enable "Auto unwrap" and then select "Options":
  • Seams, UV Islands, Packing: Generate only missing data (default).
  • Margin size: small, UV Island orientation: unconstrained (default).
  • Max nr. of UV tiles: 4.
  • Don't enable any optimization options.
• Expand physical size: "Use mesh internal unit scale" should do... or select 1cm per unit, your call.
• Change color managerment to: Legacy.

Now load your figure by clicking OK. Now you should see a white-ish Genesis figure. Your texture set list should mention known Genesis surfaces such as "Arms",  "Legs", "Mouth", "Ears"....  but Genesis, what big ears you got?! 

Adding the textures to your Genesis figure

I'll only be demonstrating the torso because otherwise this mini-guide would turn into an essay. Just repeat the process for the other surfaces. Though I will mention some important details for general usage as well.

Press control+alt and then right click on the figures belly ("torso"). If you have both the 3D and 2D view you should see the UV map appear. If not: click on the 2D window, and press 'f'.

When everything looks fine its time to add our textures:

• Either go to File => Import resources, or use the + icon on the Assets browser window.
• Click "Add resources" in the pop-up window.
• Point your OS browser to the textures folder we copied earlier on.
• Let's be lazy: press control-a to select everything, then click open.
• Important: click on one of the entries, press control-a to select everything, then change "undefined" to "texture" for that one entry; this should change all other entries to "texture" as well.
• Import resources to: "Project".  You can also try "current session" if you're not sure about starting a whole project, but do not add this mess to your library!
• Click "Import", your assets window should now show you all the textures we loaded.

Now for some "Painter magic"....

With the torso still selected check the "Channels" overview; 2nd tab icon in the Texture Set Settings pane. To make it easier on ourselves remove the height, roughness and metallic channels (click the 'x' behind 'm)..  Now, there's a reason why I came to admire Sukai 8 so much... if you're also using Sukai 8 (or if you know that this will apply as well): add the "Translucency" and "Specular levels" channels. Optional but... yah, why not ;)  You do this by clicking the "+" icon after "channels".

Now open the "Layers" pane.

You should now see a "Layer 1". Remove it by clicking the trash icon. Then add a "Fill layer". Then go to the properties pane (shown below by default) and jump to the material section (2nd tab icon). This is where the fun begins...  You should see "Material mode" and below it ("Or") you should now see "Base color", "Normal", and optionally those other channels.

• Check your assets pane, be sure to have the textures visible. If not: click the small arrow icon on the left side and select "Project".. Then make sure you have "Textures" select (one of the icons on the right side).
• Then...  drag the texture for the torso ("SukaiTorsoD") using your left mouse button and drop it onto the "Base color" section in the properties pane.
  • You should now see the texture appear on the figure.
• Find the "Sukai8Torso02NM" ("Normal map") and drop it on...  yah: the "Normal" section.
• Find the "Sukai8TorsoSSS" and drop that onto "Translucency" (if you enabled that of course).

Now you can mess around with the figures torso if you'd like.  Repeat the above steps for the other surfaces like the arms, legs, face, ears.. don't forget the nails ;)

Some general Genesis tips....

Find the "Eyelashes" in the texture asset list and hide them, you won't need 'm. If the eyes don't show up properly then hide the "Cornea" as well.

When in doubt: go back to Daz Studio, check the surfaces pane to see what surface has been assigned with a texture map and which not, just make sure it matches whatever you set up in Painter.

This would be a good time to save your project, especially if you've already added all the other textures.

Tip: if you're happy with the current figure and don't expect to use any of the other textures then you may want to use: "File => Remove unused resources", in order to save some storage space. You can also right click on a texture in the assets pane and then click "Delete". Don't worry: it only deletes it from your project, not the actual texture in your Daz library.

But I still can't draw?!!!

It's all in the layers...  want to draw "over" the texture(s)? Couldn't be easier: Make sure you have the right surface selected (remember: control+alt and then right click somewhere). Then just add a default layer on top of your fill layer. Your drawing tools will become right available, happy drawing!

But... who wants drawings when you have cool dynamic generators?!!! ;)

• Select the torso (control+alt and then right click on the belly).
• Add a 2nd fill layer.
• Go to the channel list in the properties window, but this time click the color selector under "Base color", select...  I dunno.. something brownish? Make sure it's a dark color.
• Close the color selector window and see Sukai looking horrible, let's fix this!
  • With the "brown fill layer" selected click on the "Add mask" icon (see the toolbar of the layers pane, hover your mouse to see their names), add a "Black mask"; the texture becomes visible again.
  • Now click the "Add effect" icon, add a generator.
  • In the properties window you'll notice "Generator" and "No generator selected", what are you waiting for? ;)
  • Try adding a "Dirt" generator and watch the magic unfold!

Now, you may notice that the default amount of generators in Painter is kinda limited.. yah, that's why you'd want Substance Designer as well: then you can design your own generators!

Adding your work back into Daz Studio

Once you're done... in my example we threw dirt on Sukai's belly... then it's time to move our stuff back to Daz Studio. Easy!

• Press control+shift+e.
• I'd use "uncheck all" (see 'menu' icon in the top section) and then only enable what you need. In this example: "Torso".
• Then click on Torso; now you'll see which channel(s) get exported. Under normal circumstances you'll only need BaseColor (probably the first listed channel).
• Click "Export".
• Then click "Open output directory" in the top right corner.
• Copy this folder name just like we did before with the "Sukai textures".

In my example it would have saved "Sukai8_Torso_BaseColor.1002.png" which contains our texture layer + the dirt layer on top.

So now hop back into Daz Studio; with Sukai still selected go back to the Surfaces pane and make sure the torso is selected, click the "Base color" icon again and once again click "Browse". This time we want to go to our Substance export directory. Click the torso basecolor texture, load it, and watch the magic unfold!

You'll probably want to repeat this for some of the other surfaces as well, and then maybe save this full material preset.

This time we added dirt.. but we could have basically added anything we wanted!  

In conclusion

Sure, it takes a bit of effort to load a Genesis figure and its textures into Substance painter, and then also set it all up for editing. But once you did then the sky becomes the limit...  especially if you also have 'Designer' at your disposal! Not to mention that the "evil Adobe" also provides plenty of (free) community assets for us to use!

SO yah... it took me all night to figure this out and once I got my fingers behind it...  I had to share. My mistake was that I didn't associate the "Material" setting in the Painter viewports with actual texture maps. For that I was focussed on "Mesh maps" or maybe single channels? I also assumed that the Fill channel was "obviously" the same as the fill option in Photoshop.

I actually used Designer to get a better understanding about the different channels, with great help from the "Base material" node.

Seriously... In Painter all you really need to do is assign the right channels (also make sure to use the proper shader). Then add a fill layer and apply the right texture(s) to the right channels. The best part is that you can easily use the Surfaces pane in Daz Studio to get a good idea. Right now I'm experimenting with Genesis 2 ("Ginger") and well...  the texture map is located under "Diffuse color". So...  I probably need the "Diffuse" channel for this too ;)   (non-PBR shader!).

Once you understand that connection... once you get the link between the Daz Studio surface section and the appropriate Substance channel then... you're pretty much home free.

Thanks for reading, I hope this was useful for some of you!

pjwhoopie@yandex.com

Wow!
Thanks for this.... you have a youtube channel (yet)?

ShelLuser

Chumly said:

Wow!
Thanks for this.... you have a youtube channel (yet)?

No, I don't really like video tutorials because videos make for a horrible reference guide. However... I definitely agree that the above can be tricky to follow, so I decided to "follow up" on that idea ;)

Because I bought Painter on Steam I decided to write a guide on Steam which explains all of the above: how to edit Daz Studio (Genesis) characters within Painter, but this time with more illustrations which should also make it easier to follow.