3dsMax to Substance Painter bridge

Uzziel

3dsMax to Substance Painter bridge

This tool allows you to quickly send objects to Substance Painter from 3dsMax.
Download link

Installation
Be sure to have administrator privileges in order to be able to add files to 3dsMax sub-directories.
1. Launch 3dsMax using right click->Run as administrator.
2. Use "MAXScript->Run Script" to execute the .mzp file.
3. Click on "Customize->Customize User Interface". Click on "Toolbars" tab.
4. In "Category", select "Substance" and drag & drop "Send to Substance" in 3dsMax UI to add it as a button.
Optional: you can create your own toolbar by clicking on "New" Button.

Features
- Automatic export selected objects (and Normal maps assigned in "Bump/Normal bump" if available)
- Creation of a Substance Painter document at export location with correct normal maps/materials assignations (from scratch or using a .spp as source file)
- Automatically relaunch Substance Painter in order to get a quick preview
- Use a Substance Painter document (.spp file) as template

The script will create the folder structure (specified in the export path) and a subfolder (optional) based on the "Export name" (or first object name in alphabetic order if none is mentioned). This folder contains the Substance Painter file and all files created from 3dsMax to setup it.


Notes
This script is not a final product and can evolve/be modified in next releases.
As it allows you to replace existing (exported using the tool) Substance Painter document, be sure to backup your files in order to preserve them from potential errors of manipulation.
Don't hesitate to give me/us feedbacks or examples of how you use it

Example video (v1.0 of the bridge):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMzGQbYf3y0

More details about Substance Painter: www.allegorithmic.com/products/substance-painter

Altea

Does this allows to update an existing project mesh changing the mesh but keeping painter materials? For example in a pre existent project not done previously with this script.

Uzziel

Hi Altea, sure, here is the way to do this (even if for now it involves a manual copy):
- Export your object(s) once using the script. The object(s) material must have the same name that in your SP project.
- Replace the SP document created in the export folder by a copy of yours (rename it to use the same name that the exported one)

Then it will use it (just be sure to let "Replace SP project" disabled in the options).

In a future version we can totally imagine a "Create SP document from template" field to have the possibility to start from an existing document : )

Uzziel

New version added to support Substance Painter 2 and other things, more details below. 

Changelog 1.1

- Added: Substance Painter 2 support. The script will automatically launch Substance Painter 1 or 2 based on the specified path.
- Added: possibility to use a Substance Painter document as template (specify a .spp file path).
- Added: Multi/Sub-Object (Multi material) support.
- Updated: export path is now more flexible. The "SendToSubstance" folder will not be automatically created anymore.
- Updated : you can now choose if you want to export everything in a folder created using the mesh name or not.
- Fixed: hashtags characters in materials name are now supported. As Substance Painter automatically replace them by "_", the exported Normal maps now use the same convention.

milksnake96

Hi uzziel, this looks amazingly helpful, is this scripted in c#? 

Uzziel

Hi, only MAXScript for this one, thanks for the feedback !

milksnake96

thanks for replying this quickly, i was thinking to create a substance painter plugin to bake height maps, but after researching a littlebit it sems damn near impossible (limited API)

Uzziel

If you want to bake Height maps from 3D meshes, you may want to take a look at Substance Batchtools available here (free) : https://www.allegorithmic.com/buy/download

Nicorepe

Really usefull tool man, amazing, I was trying to get deep into developing substance tools, there are not so many great tools like this one. Good job!.

Ikben

Nice, just set it up.  Looking forward to try it out.

skitnik

When I use "Automatically create sub-folder at export location" and template file, script fails to copy the template file and uses default spp project.
If "Automatically create sub-folder at export location" is unchecked it creates the project from the template.

You can test this by creating a template file with IOR channel enabled for example and try to use the mentioned option.

skitnik

Also it will be better if SPT file is used as template instead of SPP, but this is not possible, because Sub Painter can't open templates, so we need to have project with some geometry in it