Substance Painter - Baking in SP produces black maps

Auldbenkenobi

Hey everyone,

I'm having an issue with Substance Painter in trying to bake in the software. I only seem to get pure black maps. I'm making sure the naming conventions are identical and that the high and low are properly overlapping. I've even tested it in Marmoset to make sure they weren't messing up on export from Max, and they baked fine in that. I've checked and double checked the baking options, like setting it to use name conventions and what have you. 

Anyone else experienced similar issues? As far as I can tell I'm doing everything as it should be done, but I've no luck in finding a solution. Those I've found online haven't worked either.

Any help is ace!

Zack Maxwell

I've only ever had that issue when I accidentally broke the relative scale between the high and low poly. Usually because I had to adjust the low to look right in engine.

Ashervisalis

Wow, I was just googling for this myself.

I've had the issue more often than I haven't had the issue. I've had a few models with maybe 2 or 3 meshes which it worked with, but the majority of the time I've had to give up and just explode the mesh. Just tried with an exploded mesh and it's still producing black normal maps. I feel your pain, anybody who could help us would be much loved.

My scales match up, meshes are perfectly on top of each other, UVs don't overlap. I'm lost for answers.

Auldbenkenobi

@Grimwolf
Almost certain it can't be that in my case, as I said, I tested the meshes in Marmoset and they baked fine. I could bake them in that first then bring them into Substance Painter but it'd be useful to just do it all in the one package. 

@Ashervisalis
Every mesh I've used I've had this issue, I'm yet to have it work properly.

Ashervisalis

Here's a few ideas;

- Whats your mesh size? I've created a few objects and forgot to resize them, and then I've been trying to bake something that's less than an inch in size.
- Maybe try assigning a new material to the mesh in Maya/3DS/etc and use that.

I did both of these and was able to get my mesh the other day and they baked out nicely. It'd be nice if Substance Painter's baking system gave you a warning that your mesh is super tiny like XNormal does. I still can't get bake by mesh name to work for me though. It's worked a couple of times but the rest of the time I just get the usual black maps.

Matt Fagan

Try re-importing your exported geo back into your native app and double check that the uv's on the "to-be-baked" model is present. Sometimes models with uv's get exported without them. This can lead to black bakes at times. If not this, Scale would be my 2nd case for troubleshooting. Third troubleshoot would be to make sure you have the proper high-poly referenced in the baking options.

Auldbenkenobi

Thanks guys, I'll come back once I've tried some of these ideas.

Ashervisalis

Any updates? I'm baking out black maps when I use 'Map by mesh name'. It is happening every single time I use that function on different models. I've tried using both FBX and OBJ.