Using Normal Maps and Anchor Points in Substance Painter

In this Substance Painter texture painting tutorial, we are going to have a look at how to use Anchor Points along with Normal maps to really speed up your texture work.
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[@chriscasebolt4419]

I have seen this multiple times now because as you said, it is very complicated. But this is the video that I always refer to for Anchor Points. You guys are awesome! Thank you for all the you do for the art community.

[@NsanePixel]

Finally. Thanks so much. No one I knew could tell me how to implement this.

[@helios4753]

great video as always. Clear to the point and incredibly helpful.

[@jamesbrady1930]

I love your videos. I been a while since I have used painter extensively. always nice to have a resource to refresh my skills when I forget something. I subbed to you gents. Always good informative videos.

[@vfxsteve]

Just started using Substance two weeks ago and I love it (and your course to get me up and running was fantastic). I’ll admit though, the Anchor points feature was the only thing that seemed so over complicated for what it actually does. All the software needs is two tick boxes in the smart mask options for ‘Use normals’ and ‘Use height’. That’s it!

[@yingbowang3068]

didn;t know anchor point before, such a powerful tool,Thank u very much

[@GuillermoZS]

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a lot!

[@dudex104]

Thanks guys, useful mini tutorial as usual

[@bradenrobins299]

I'd like to see you guys cover your workflow on creating smart materials.

[@flint3Dx]

Great tut boiz! I'd love a video on making detailed smart materials. Maybe targeted at artists who are given prompts by their director or are making smart material sets and need to collect/work from lots of reference. What and where to click is covered pretty heavily in other videos, but I'd love to hear tricks/concepts/processes from you guys about how to make a smart material stand out as realistic, stylised or similar to interesting reference images. Thanks as always!

[@Gorongirl]

Thank you! Was wondering about this.

[@andrewbyrnes6389]

I have a lace shirt, and i want to use the normals of the texture to make the lace outlines gold and leave the rest silver. To my surprise, i clicked on one of my many (many) open tabs and found this video. My favorite 3d artists once again solving my problem I have been stuck on for hours.

[@Chauxz]

I knew about this system but I never understood it. So I totally forgot about it, thanks for the short but VERY helpful tutorial guys! ^_^

[@T1mothyTee]

I'd love to see the general workflow of texturing a large asset like the facade of a building with very high detail. I especially get confused about importing either a UV map for the whole building, or separate UV maps for different sections / materials etc !! This would be soooo great

[@ferdinandkasangati5089]

for models like that, most people use Modular modeling

[@temptor7585]

i guess it depends. are you making the building for render/TV/Movie? or a video game? Video games use modular assets, and the smaller amount of materials/UV maps the better, but there is a slight trade off for doing that. Your texel density becomes smaller, and detail begins to be lost especially when displayed > 2K resolution. if your doing it for a render, i suppose you could use many different materials, getting that crisp texel density , which allows you to see micro details on materials very well.

[@MartinKlekner]

Awesome! Thats exactly what I always wondered if its even possible... I always baked my painted normals and then started texturing with smart materials. This is much more flexible!

[@FlippedNormals]

Great! Anchor points are so powerful.

[@MathiasJ89]

Great stuff. I'd love to hear more about when and why you use Substance Painter for projects. Pros and cons :)

[@martindiavolo1635]

Thx guys, have been using SP for quite a bit, ( Photoshop before) and substance painter is a game changer ( not even mentioning designer). Well done guys for adding, this software to the list.

[@FlippedNormals]

Its such a good tool - we'll definitely be coming with a lot more Painter content.

[@DominikV235]

Another great one! Thanks!:)

[@solarwindex]

Thanks, you saved my life!

[@ferozhossain3401]

Love this channel. You guys are awesome.

[@FlippedNormals]

Thanks a lot!

[@ferozhossain3401]

@@FlippedNormals No, Thanks to you Senpai!

[@ianmiller5133]

So much easier than the way I learned to do that. I used to bake out a new normal with the height information and make an entire new set of procedural maps based on that to make the edge wear.

[@aaronparrott4850]

thank you. was following another tutorial that skipped this step and his generators were magically using the normal information.

[@chrisa5301]

I would really like to see a tutorial on the "Projection Tool" and Exporting to Arnold for Maya (normal maps, AO, height, etc). Awesome vids btw guys.

[@iirokivisto6518]

It would be really intresting to hear about UDIMs in substance painter and how to use them properly and effectively. I really learn a lot from you!

[@ZombieStevo]

i would love to see you guys do some creature/character texturing. there are tons of substance tutorials on how to texture rocks and metals but hardly any on scales,skin, feathers and hair. prefarably for real time content. greetings from germany!

[@EthanFilms]

Omg thank you guys!!

[@SamR-F]

Super helpful, thank you guys!

[@FlippedNormals]

Thanks Sam!

[@hippoatwork7261]

Thank you for providing it .

[@ace5]

this is great!!! thanks! looking forward to more substance stuff!

[@FlippedNormals]

Thank you! We are hard at work on more Painter tutorials

[@skasseCG]

Heighth is not a word, great video none-the-less

[@danieldeoxys]

Awesome! I always wanted to know if there was a way of doing this!

[@3DRamenArt]

Epic..this saves me time to model every detail..XD

[@schizoscope8703]

Very much thanks!

[@user-bb6sm7iy6t]

thank you guys!

[@FlippedNormals]

Our pleasure!

[@OmarHesham]

Brilliant!

[@Nitram-xw9ei]

One thing I noticed is that this only works on a "per folder" basis. In my scene, for example, I have a base metal with some bumps, edge wear, a bit of dirt, etc. That's one folder. Above that there are other folders with different materials for other parts of the model. When I try to add another, overall, dirt on top of that, it doesn't work. I found that I have to then duplicate the "Bolts" layer and paste it into the top dirt folder. As you said, good to give it a new name just for clarity, but I do it at the very end so it's a simple copy and paste. Maybe there's something I overlooked, but this is how I got around it.

[@neoqueto]

I just started with Substance Painter today and this popped up in my recommendations. Not only have I just started. I was actually wondering how to achieve exactly what you've shown in the video. Sometimes I love our AI overlords. They know what I want better than I do.

[@TruckerChaser]

Thank you very much its help me

[@HM-dk2do]

very helpful!

[@sisha009]

nice tutorial thank you

[@letteralex]

Oh wow didn't know there was another way of doing this. Currently I've been painting normal/height info, exported out only normal map and then used that one to bake a new set of curvature, ao, etc maps so that the smart materials recognize the details.

[@rayunited2010foryou]

That's exactly what I have been doing too. And it's really time consuming to re-bake the AO and thickness maps.

[@MrDemon891]

Great thank you! Honestly i also never really understand how to use anchor with normal maps! But i also was a bit lazy to search for the answer :D

[@Rex-cm1wx]

Thank you!

[@Swdgame]

this is the MOST important trick for Substance Painter, period

[@FlippedNormals]

Thank you!

[@AhmedNassef]

Damn, I always wanted to do that!!!!!

[@nokedlipudinggal8276]

Would love to see character skin texturing as we have from xyz quite a few texture sets coming in painter or would Mari still be the go to software for that?

[@png940]

great informations thamks alot

[@jayantbhatt007]

Hi In that layer 1 ( In which he painted normal map) add filter > MatFx Detail Edge Wear this will also work with normal as well as Height. Thank for this anchor Point. :)

[@DeepakRajan]

Great Content Guys!.. Im wondering if you could make tutorial on sculpting the mouth(inside) not the lips! Because i'm always having trouble with sculpting mouth(not mentioning about anatomy) in any creature i sculpt. I just couldn't fine the proper process of sculpting the mouth and retopo part(do i have to retopo with the mouth open and if so how do i get it back to normal production pose). If you guys could make a tutorial on that it will be great or even if you guys could point me to any other resources on the particular topic! Thanks

[@JustinLupica]

I’ve never used substance, but I wanna learn it so bad! Just downloaded it yesterday, so any videos on substance is appreciated!

[@IGarrettI]

Try the allegorithmic channel. They got a basics course

[@FlippedNormals]

We'll have a full introduction to Painter out in the coming months! :)

[@Papyruski]

Substance designer is great to, been learning that recently and wooowwww

[@xdeathknight72x]

This is GREAT I've searched before about getting generators to recognize painted details and everyone I've seen says to export the normal and then re import

[@joelambert7128]

xxdeathknight72xx if you have multiple layers of added ‘modelling’ I find re-importing the normal map easier, but then I’ve only used anchor points in the simple manor they showed here. Maybe I’m missing something

[@Gorion103]

I'm using mostly 'reimport' workflow over ther anchor because. If i have eg 10 s-materials on surface that i've additionaly "height painted" that means that i have to look through each node in that material and plug there anchor, with reimport i have to just reimport normal map and AO (with added HBAO from painted details) and rebake curvature etc. It have pros and cons: + as above - you dont have to set up smart masks inputs - You can't paint height details as you go - if you spot mistake in painted height i have to disable all layers, correct height and reimport maps.

[@vincentfurst1841]

Thanks a lot.

[@UNOsan]

Great video Just wanna ask is it possible to use anchor point on filters? I'm trying to use this technique on baked lighting stylized for some reason, it does not work.

[@grey_box]

About stylized texturing techniques in SP please!

[@spacekitt.n]

anchor points seem very powerful but very confusing. just did a few experiments with them and i think im starting to get the hang of it. even as someone with a strong photoshop skillset im still confused(layers def dont work exactly the same in substance as photoshop)... i think ill have to work with them a lot more to truly understand it. thanks for the vid

[@esha9936]

Nice tut, thanks! But I downloaded some mats from Substance Share and the generators they use don't offer the Micro Details options. How can I add them?

[@user-mx8hu2cz1h]

How about rigging or animation tutorials? By the way, thank you very much, you all are doing great job!

[@fernandaz3227]

Hello, I have a question concerning anchor points. I noticed you only work in the shader 01_head. Is there a way to use anchor point linking textures or smart materials between shaders? I try masking a reference material, but didn't work so I wonder if you just can't or there is a different set up. It would be great help. thank you for the awesome tutorials!!!!!!!

[@chlliza]

Ty!

[@shoun_samuel]

Very useful 😉

[@laraivetic2764]

You are the true Gods, for sure. 🙏

[@valfree1855]

Спасибо огромное. Очень полезная информация.

[@Q_A_World]

amazing

[@waltage]

thank you

[@abiyyupanggalih854]

indeed useful

[@JayTraversJT]

how would you do this in a smart material though? im trying t o do it under the steel dark aged and cant seem to get it to work

[@79cjiaba]

Круто, то что надо!

[@TheAxeGrinder]

CANNOT UNHEAR "HEIGTH".

[@FlippedNormals]

Haha! Sorry about that. It has been noted.

[@maddysdaddystevem563]

@@FlippedNormals It rhymes with "Bright".

[@walleater]

its more of a heighthe :D

[@walleater]

@@maddysdaddystevem563 Scythe

[@nikelombambo]

Dude hahaha

[@Tree3D]

Are you able to get this effect with a baked normal map instead of stamping with the brush tool?

[@trataraja]

Amazing! Would love to see the optimal approach of texturing a scene with lots of assets. Should I do one asset at a time or is there a productive way to texture the whole scene at once. How to deal with UDIMS, what is the right amount of maps I should have? One per asset or per material?

[@Aussie.Owlcoholic]

I like to do it in batches. If you have a lot of objects that will be textured with similar materials (for example different sections of brick walls) I will model them all and then texture them. Some people prefer finishing all modelling then moving to texturing but I like to break things up just to keep things interesting and to start seeing results right away. What I'd do with all those brick wall sections is load one up in substance painter and start doing the normal texturing workflow but I'll rely solely on procedural texturing. Once I'm happy with each material I'll save them as smart materials and then do any manual tweaking. That way you can load up each subsequent brick wall model and simply slap on the smart material. It saves so much time and means you can rely on the fun part (manual tweaking/painting) for each model. I'll do that for each model type (brick, wood, metal or whatever) in batches of similar. materials. The other great thing is you'll have those smart materials saved and can reuse them if you ever find you need to add some more models or if you're working on a scene which needs similar materials, then you can tweak the values slightly and reuse them. As for UDIMS etc, I don't really have experience with that as I'm a game artist sorry

[@djgyrad]

can the same be done for Logos too in the same sort of method? or is this just particularly for normals only?

[@AlexSmith-qw5qg]

i am bit confused. can you please tell do i need mari then? im also watching your mari tutorials and don’t know how to collaborate these two in the work process?

[@rickkay9548]

How’s about a node -based painter since layers are too nonlinear? Unify the designer/substance workflow so painter can have an option for nonlinear everywhere

[@dafabulousdude8541]

Is there a way to use an entire normal map for this? Because the anchor point only takes information from the layer it is attached to and I can’t find a way to I sent my pre baked normal map into a layer.

[@Dhieen]

does this works if you put the anchor point on a fill layer with a black mask (like with an alpha) ? I doesnt seem to be working for me

[@Papyruski]

Can we get a proper video showing the great possibilities of linking Designer and painter together? :)

[@ferdinandkasangati5089]

by using SBRAR files

[@emeraldeelentertainment8988]

Weird, I'm not seeing a micro detail option available forv my in my grunge edge wear.

[@Artem-qq6lp]

Nice

[@rahulll_dj]

my brush does not shows alpha into it , so its hard to actually to see how it is gonna paint . How do i fix it?

[@nw5992]

Strange, if I manually add the generator, it has Micro Details as an option, but if I use a smart material, then micro details aren't there... maybe that is for optimization but it is one more thing to add to the confusion.

[@1981danielmn]

I also have been using anchor points as a way to copy mask from one material to another

[@FlippedNormals]

That's interesting! Thanks for the heads up.

[@MrZRager]

this is great but how just to paint normal not by hand?

[@Casper-jq7ix]

Does anyone have a quick and easy way to only apply the edge wear on added normal/height detail, not the entire mesh?

[@FullCaber]

how do i prevent the edge wear going over the normal brush spots D:

[@robertogiordano9685]

I'd like to know if there's a way to use anchor points with UDIMs. Some months ago I tried to use anchor points on a model with UDIMs, and it didn't work, the option was always grayed out. Is it a program limitation or there's a way to activate anchor points with UDIMs? I tried this feature on a model with a normal UV set and is awesome!

[@Aussie.Owlcoholic]

I don't use UDIMs myself but the other option would be to bake the normal/height maps and reload them in as then it'll use those details in the smart masks. I assume that would work with UDIM

[@Felix-lg6cn]

hi, I was wondering if you can paint a complex AAA+ game studio quality model and make it into a serie of videos. I would love to understand the differences between a professional painter user and myself. I would like to see a person that paints something in painter while explaining the small tricks and tools on the way. Like a summary of all the Substance Painter Video that you have made, and each time when you are using a technique that you used in the past video, post the link in the video so the ones who don't understand it can pause the video and go check it. This could also be a cool demo video of what a lot of tools is capable of, impressing the viewer while sending them to the link to study the same technique. Since you ask for the ideas in this video, I figure I should suggest it to you and see if you like it.

[@Felix-lg6cn]

@FlippedNormals

[@Elusive519]

Thanks for another great tutorial! I'm sorry if this was already asked, I can't seem to find the answer... Is this technique available only for SP2018? I'm working with 2017 and I found how to add the anchor points, but can't seem to get the masks to react accordingly. It'll be really great if someone could point me in the right direction. Thanks!

[@FlippedNormals]

It should work fine in 2017 too. Are you sure that you enabled the micro height/normal maps too?

[@Elusive519]

@@FlippedNormals Thanks for the reply! The thing is, I can't seem to find that option under the smart masks I applied (tried a few different ones). I could somehow plug the anchor points into the curvature, AO etc maps, but that obviously doesn't work either. Could the placement of the micro height/normal maps be different in the earlier versions?

[@AmitKumar-uc8bz]

Add normal map baking also

[@magnificentreality100]

Maybe with the new update it changed alot because while this helped me a bit, concept wise, my UI looks totally different

[@zetsology]

Sorry for the inconvenience - We’re upgrading the site at the moment. If you need to, you can always contact us. We’ll be back in a few days. See you then! - The FlippedNormals Team OK, but how?

[@FlippedNormals]

[e-mail]

[@ezioauditore9756]

plz do premium or youtube. you guys are really awesome.

[@mae2309]

Do you go through this procedure in your introduction to substance painter video??

[@FlippedNormals]

Yes we will :)

[@mae2309]

@@FlippedNormals is that a yes you do go over this procedure or yes you will make another video going through these.. got confuced on your answer.. sorry.. lol

[@satefutingatgoogle]

Guys, can we get a blender to substance tutorial (how to properly set up maps and bake them ) ?

[@lostcrusader8053]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/o4KTiqargZqid6s It may not be much but this shows the baking process for Blender users

[@32Bivens]

Seems like instead of Anchor Point it could be called Layer Reference or something similar. Anchor Point is a weird name and that's half the reason why the workflow is confusing.

[@CentboyMidnight]

or "make my alphas looks like"

[@kidehoward93]

took a $1500 class that taught me the bogus way, ill take this video as my refund. brilliant tut guys!

[@sturm3d]

can you link multiple anchor points to one generator's micro normal?

[@Aussie.Owlcoholic]

No, but you should only need the one layer for all detail anyway. If you want to split it up you could create a folder with all the separate micro details and just anchor the folder itself (pretty sure that works but haven't tested it)

[@Aussie.Owlcoholic]

I might be wrong about the folder thing actually, but you can do it this way instead: -Put all the micro detail layers in a folder as I said before - Add another layer above the rest inside the folder with blend mode set to passthrough in normal/height (depending what you're using) - create an anchor for that new 'passthrough' layer and it'll retain all the detail from below layers

[@gower1973]

Need to try this i was thinking if there was a way to reference multiple layers, the whole anchor thing is pretty clunky

[@irvinhoost8731]

can ya'll make a video starting from the beginning

[@Defenceless_baby]

"facepalm" clicked on random tut and made my life so much easier

[@FlippedNormals]

:D Happy to accidentally help

[@Fazendojogo]

Please do some intro tutorial for painter and subs designer.

[@FlippedNormals]

Working in Painter now! :)

[@JimmeeAnimAll]