Substance Painter
Substance Painter is a software used to paint and apply texture to 3D objects made in Maya or other programs. In this lesson we looked at the software at a surface level: moving the camera, applying materials, layers and navigating the software.
After learning the camera controls I moved onto layers. Layers are similar in operation to Photoshop. They allow you to edit your model without affecting existing work. For example, you could have a metallic texture and put a rust effect on top of it without affecting the base texture.
In the bottom shelf there is a selection of different materials, brushes, stamps and other options for texture editing. After experimenting with this for a while it seemed apparent that the software was more suited to using fill layers on each section of the model, with only a small reliance on hand painting.
Normals
Normals are stamps that create 3D looking effects. They are used as they make smaller details more simple to create, simplify the model and don't affect the number of polygons.
Substance Painter comes with normals pre-installed, but you can make your own using Maya.
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I used a plane primitive and simply selected edges and moved them into place to create a shape. In order to make this into a normal you have to follow a few steps:
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Change the settings as shown above in the Render Settings. Make sure to set Renderable Camera to front.
Select this option and make sure the square fits the whole screen.
This will a render of the normal. Take a screenshot of it using the snipping tool and be careful not to include any of the black border. Before it can be used you have to invert the green in Photoshop.
Go to channels and select green, then go to Image > Adjustments > Invert. Select, RGB and save.
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In Substance Painter, go to File > Import Resources and select the file. Be sure to change it to 'texture'.