How To Fix Overlapping Baking Issues in Substance Painter

In this super short and to the point tutorial, I will be showing you how to baking issues in Substance Painter. The specific issue I will be addressing is objects baking on top of each other. This is is a super quick fix to an unbelievable irritating problem for most game artists, and I hope it is helpful for you to add to your arsenal.
Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction
0:20 - Example Asset
0:57 - Using Maya to Explode the Mesh
2:46 - Baking in Substance Painter
3:00 - Side-by-Side Technique Comparison
3:13 - Outro
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#GameDesign #GameDevelopment #3DModeling

[@QuinnKuslich]

Me casually hoping the YT algorithm picks this up.

[@xylvnking]

hey i'm finding it a year later on my homepage! good stuff.

[@claudiobeck3510]

my god is this the only way to solve this? makes me wanna cry. thank you for posting this tho, it helps a million

[@apologise2bisons]

no this is the old way. u just have to name separate objects with _low and _ high suffix and in the painters bake setting enable option to bake separated by mesh name (select normal map and there are few drop downs ull see).

[@danielletchford9281]

AMZAING!! Found this so useful! I'm so going make this my default Pipeline for when I'm baking in Substance Painter!

[@Mar-wr4fm]

Thank you for this video! Very clear and nicely edited as well, I left a like to support :D

[@QuinnKuslich]

Thank you!

[@louiecreates]

OH GOD THANK YOU SO MUCH XD THIS HELPED TONS. SUBSCRIBED!

[@botondszilagyi3713]

Could not figure out for the life of me why my textures looked incorrect on my mesh, and then i realised i previously moved my UV's like an absolute fool. Thank you for this video, it was incredibly useful!

[@lanaeab.1676]

Hey man thanks for the video. This is exactly how I do it, and just used it to show someone the "explosion" method!

[@ankitekka8413]

Life saver. Thanks a lot😘

[@alinarangi7826]

hi Quinn thanks for your awesome tutorial

[@Chase3d304]

super clean and straight to the point video awesome job and thank you.

[@QuinnKuslich]

Glad I could Help!

[@lennychilcott999999]

cheers! also just had a thought, you could export the mesh maps from the exploded bake then import them into a project with the geo back in the right place, that way you dont have the bleeding but also can work on something that resembles the actual asset

[@virex0x]

thankyou! was for a while thinking about something like this, note if you already started or maybe like me you are even done painting, if you keep 1 part of your model in the original placement, you can do project edit and load up the "exploded" model and rebake everything keeping your work!

[@AlexTsekot]

Isn't the 'bake by mesh name' specifically a feature in SP that was made to avoid doing exploding? Would it not be easier to just name all your rocks with the correct suffix of _Low and _High and just keep the model together? I'm confused, I stopped exploding models years ago using Marmoset to bake but I'm pretty sure you don't need to do it in painter either

[@vzdragon]

There are times where you still want to do this. I always use mesh by name but in one instance I had a cable that was wrapping around my model and it was projecting that onto the body (which had a different name) for the bake. You probably could take the time to dial in the projection setting so the ray doesn't intersect, but the objects were really close and it was just easier to explode since it took less than a minute and immediately fixed the issue

[@tushar9068]

I TRIED THAT BUT IT DIDNT WORKED FOR ME DONT KNOW WHY ......I NAMED THEM PROPERLY BUT IT WAS GIVING ME WIRD OCCLUSIONS

[@ivanolarte3287]

how do you apply it to your original one tho exporting the maps and using them to texture the original whit out baking im a bit lost tho

[@JasonAdank]

Great tip! Im always getting projection errors in the bake textures process when I start a project in substance. Its really annoying that this issue hasnt been solved for literally years. I like your approach, though it has the downside of not creating occlusion of nearby objects (in the non-exploded state) which is important when youre creating dirt layers in your substance materials for your model...

[@QuinnKuslich]

You are so welcome! I am working on a new tutorial for baking meshes by name

[@vzdragon]

You can still get AO using this method. Just add a box behind the pieces you want to have AO after you exploded them. The bigger you make the box the more intense the AO will be

[@JasonAdank]

@@vzdragon yeah thats an interesting idea. Though the projection errors may come back as a result of allowing geometrey to be in close proximity again. Its a bit of a circular problem really. I just wish some company would come up it ha way to prevent projection errors entirely so we dont have to resort to hack fixes. So far, literally every base texture baker Ive tried has this problem.

[@Sapphew]

i thought it's much easier to do with naming and baking by mesh name, or just use marmoset toolbag - there's an automatic option to load meshes to bake groups by their names.

[@swaroop2193]

thank you

[@shiv3375]

Can you please elaborate " apply to the unexploded mesh" do you mean that copy the maps of the exploded baked mesh and paste with the unexploded one right?

[@rogue3d303]

supper helpful video and sick editing. one question I'm a but confused how you applied the exploded bake to the original?

[@QuinnKuslich]

Well as long as the UVs still match, You just put your low poly into unreal and drag on the textures that you got from the exploded bake

[@QuinnKuslich]

Think of the exploded mesh as a temporary thing exclusively for baking you still want to keep a low poly together in the arrangement that you want in game

[@elenagori6858]

and how you rebuild your model? Sorry, I'm still learning

[@Rex-xj4dj]

how did you separate the mesh??

[@reallyfunfacts]

thanks for the tip. I don't understand the "apply to your low poly mesh" in the "baking in substance painter". how do I bring it back to original form to the one that didn't explode?

[@iamandreja]

UV maps do not change when you explode the thing. After you're done with baking, just apply maps that you baked to un-exploded model.

[@gage9600]

really nice btw.... is there any difference in the shader layout that both mesh look so different??? cause de overlaping issue should not modify...for example de Curvature map that is visible in de right one. cuase i prefer the shading work in the left one hahahah

[@QuinnKuslich]

Yeah, I’m using a master material inside the project, So I can vertex paint on some wetness, moss and dirt. For the sake of getting to Torio at the time I just didn’t finish up the painting. I’m also wanted to illustrate the objects not being baked on top of each other

[@gold_twisted]

What if I wanted the meshes to have shadows affecting each other, but not the normal, metallic, and roughness? possibly the color and AO?

[@skytale9613]

Create two scenes for each baking scenario (one exploded, on combined). Or use bakers which can handle this (like Maya's Turtle), but still the final quality with exploded meshes will be most of the time better.

[@kmetandrey3946]

What the problem to download Marmoset and doing it for 3 clicks?

[@QuinnKuslich]

I’ll try marmoset, can I get it for free?

[@JasonAdank]

marmoset generates errors in the occlusion bake as well.

[@TRIMRKR]

orrr just use use marmoset because substance continues to ignore artists

[@artogerilyagames4955]

It's better to bake in marmoset that you can explode each one of them.

[@Donovann09]

What is that strange method ??? Not helpful at all....

[@skytale9613]

Pros using this technique for over a decade ;)

[@pearlkim9314]

FIRST

[@QuinnKuslich]

Not even remotely first

[@pearlkim9314]

@@QuinnKuslich pog first