Create a Substance Painter Export Preset for Microsoft Flight Simulator

In this tutorial, we will be taking a look at how to create a Substance Painter texture export preset for MSFS.
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#msfs2020 #msfs #tutorial
Recorded with Streamlabs OBS. Edited in Adobe Premiere CC.
© 2022 Rotornut44. All rights reserved.

[@Rotornut44]

Howdy folks! Just a little update for this video. In the tutorial, I mentioned using 8-bit for the ALBD and NORM textures. You should use 16-bit instead for all of the textures! This lessens artifacting when MSFS converts the textures to .dds format!

[@aneltoromanovic3362]

Very good one, for people that didnt use this feature. Looking forward to more Substaince Painter tutorials! Cheers

[@Sisnye]

I followed your tutorial and set everything up accordingly. I use Blender version 3.3.3 LTS, and the Asobo exporter is the 1.3.2 version. I was not sure what to do once I have the textures from Substance, so I am probably doing something wrong when I try to use the textures. I do the following: I have a model that is a single object with 5 different materials. I have them set to the MSFS Standard material. I put the ALBD.png into the base color slot, COMP.png into the occlusion/roughness/metallic slot, and the NORM.png into the normal slot. I do this for the 5 different materials and the textures show up perfectly inside Blender. I set up the Multi-Export glTF 2.0 export directories and settings then hit export. I get 27 different error messages and only the xml gets exported. If I remove the textures, export works fine and I do get the bin, gltf, xml files. Please let me know what I should do differently. Thank you.

[@Sisnye]

Okay, I am not sure what I did exactly, but I managed to export. One thing I did was changing the 8bit to 16bit texture exports in Substance. Somehow I missed this step. After using the 16bit images in Blender I was able to export. On the other hand, the textures do not show up in the sim.

[@Rotornut44]

@@Sisnye It sounds like your export options may not be set up correctly. Check that UVs and Normals are checked off under Settings > Geometry in the Multi-Export window. Also make sure your textures are in a texture folder within your project's Model Library folder. While 16-bit is the preferred format for quality, I also have some textures that still use 8-bit. It shouldn't stop you from exporting. At the top of the Multi-Export window, I usually check "Keep original" as that will prevent Blender from processing the textures again and putting them in your export folder. I just copy my Substance export sources and put them into the texture folder. If the textures still don't show up, but they do in Blender, it has to be a formatting thing or conflict with your sim. Make sure that your model library isn't building as modellib.bgl. If it is, change the name of the library in the project editor. That will change the folder name and path. Depending on the folder structure, it could conflict with another project using the same file name.

[@HangarStudios713]

Great Video! I'll give it a go and see what it does compared to the older FS 2020 templates. Question though, Do you have a setup you use for the baked maps? I have a go to that I made as a so to say "template" so that when I load that file every time I have the settings already done for the baking and just save it as the new texture(s) and it doesn't override my "template".

[@Rotornut44]

I know I replied back to you on Discord already, but wanted to drop the same info here for others to see.. I bake all mesh maps except for ID, Height, Bent Normals, & Opacity. All settings are left as default except for enabling Diffusion and Antialiasing, which I set to Subsampling 8x8 (This will get rid of the graininess in your AO bakes). Then, for scenery models only, I'll turn the floor option on under Ambient occlusion. Though, this option should not be enabled for aircraft.

[@madanelaa2427]

hi nice tutorial, have you try to export textures to msfs using udims?

[@Rotornut44]

Thanks! I have not had a use for udims up to this point, so I don’t really have any insight into that

[@TheWatchmanNews]

How come when I bring an MSFS model into Substance Painter its just all black? Yesterday is the first time I ever seen the software just for reference. I have been texturing with photoshop for years but I want to do it the right way. Is there some direction you can point me that will help me with MSFS specific files? Yesterday a nice lady was kind enough to show me a little bit about Blender and at the end of our discussion she told me about substance painter and said that seemed like a much better fit for my needs.

[@The_Fabio_Fernandes]

So, iam modeling a Hangar in Blender, want to texturize in Substance and use this preset. After that, ill need to use a Plug in on blender to compile the mesh with the maps and export to FS2020?

[@Rotornut44]

You will need the official exporter plugin: github.com/AsoboStudio/glTF-Blender-IO-MSFS/releases Before importing into Substance painter, you should add a material to each part. In substance you paint per material, so if you have the same material on multiple parts, those will be painted at the same time. When you are ready to export to the sim, you set those materials to "Standard" under the MSFS section of the material. Link the materials in their appropriate channels, join the parts together (Ctrl+J - Each loose part is a CPU call), and export it as gltf.

[@The_Fabio_Fernandes]

@@Rotornut44 Are you planning a video tuto about this process?

[@chasesawyer8087]

Hey! What door texture did you use?

[@none53]

Hi, i have a question, why the roughness is too much in the sim than it seems in substance painter? Thanks

[@Rotornut44]

The sim and Substance painter render differently, so it's never going to look exactly the same. In fact, I have never seen it appear more rough in the sim, usually I have to increase the roughness or decrease metallic slightly instead. So, basically the opposite of what you are saying. Also make sure that your Metallic and Roughness channel values are both set to 1 in your modeling program.

[@DaymarusLV]

Hello there! Didn't get how you painted the model with only one material in Texture Set settings. Whenever I try to export them, I only can do it with 21 different textures, bu never getting it done with one of each type (ALBD, COMP, NORM, etc) Would really appreciate your help

[@Rotornut44]

It depends on how you have your model set up. Each material, if it has UVs assigned will produce it's own ALBD, NORM, & COMP, as you said. So if your model's UV maps are split up over multiple materials, that's just how its going to be. The only way to paint on a single material and have only 3 textures export is to have all of your UV maps assigned to one material in your modeling program. This is easy to do if your object is smaller, but if it's larger and you try to pack all of your UVs onto one sheet, your overall texel density (texture resolution) is going to be much lower. This is where having UVs split between different materials comes in handy, as you could, for example, put exterior on one and interior on the other. For most models you definitely should not have that many textures. Remember that every material, texture, and model part is a drawcall. You should always use the least amount when possible for performance reasons.

[@TheWatchmanNews]

So I have a question. This is how I have mine set up. I think I watched your video originally to set mine up. How come I can import a COMP file from an aircraft and lets say I just go straight to exporting it. Many times the original COMP file has a lot of green in it. Even if I touch nothing and export it I will get yellows and not greens. Whats going on with that? Do I have something set wrong?

[@Rotornut44]

Are you breaking it apart into AO, Roughness, and Metal channels first and then importing those 3 images in? Yellow would mean that there is little or no AO (Red channel is mostly white), and more or fully rough (More white in the green channel). If it was more green overall, this would mean that there was more AO (Red channel is darker). So, it sounds like the AO channel is just getting painted over with white. Which may be the case if you didn't add an Ambient Occlusion channel under Texture Set Settings and plug in the original AO channel from the COMP.

[@TheWatchmanNews]

@@Rotornut44 I am removing the height and adding AO in the texture sets. Forgive me if my terminology is off. I have not broken the comp file down before import. I just import the comp file and then assign it to the metal roughness and AO channels. Is that where my mistake is? I usually don't use any of the original comp file in export. I just import everything anyway for OCD reasons lol.

[@Rotornut44]

I don’t know if Substance would know what to do with the COMP if you just import it and stick it into the texture slots, so I’m going to guess that this is probably an issue. I would recommend saving each individual color channel of the COMP as a png. R=AO, G=Roughness, B=Metallic At the end of the day, if you’re only exporting Albedo, then it really only matters for what you see in Substance anyways.

[@TheWatchmanNews]

@@Rotornut44 I usually export albd and comp I just normally create the comp in substance painter. I will play with it tomorrow with separating the file. One other question. Several aircraft when I export from blender has weird artifacts and in many cases the texture and mesh are not aligned. It appears in substance painter that the model is partially off the square that the textures go on. How can I stop that from happening?

[@TheWatchmanNews]

@@Rotornut44 thank you very much man! First thing this morning I split the channels on a COMP file and then reassembled them in Substance Painter and now I am showing the greens! I sent you a couple images to your email of the other weird issue I am having. I am doing a happy dance now that I understand where I went wrong with the COMP images!

[@moschidreamer]

I am new in modelling for msfs. For what I need Substance Painter? I thought it is all be done in Blender...

[@Rotornut44]

You can texture to an extent in Blender. I’ve never done it, so I cant help a lot with the how-to, but Substance Painter is what I use for painting my models. Armor Paint is another free alternative.

[@JamesBran-d4n]

This is not accurate.

[@Rotornut44]

Please elaborate.

[@JamesBran-d4n]

@@Rotornut44This doesn't work for me, any idea why? Sorry if it came off on the wrong hand :)

[@Rotornut44]

@@JamesBran-d4n Hello. It has to be some small mistake you are making. The process has not changed since this video was made. My own template still works, and I was able to create a new one following my own tutorial here. What exactly isn't working for you? Could it be as simple as inputting the wrong map into one of the RGB slots in the template? The more specific you can be, the more I am able to help.