[Substance Painter] Convert Project form Metalness workflow to Specular workflow.

OccultMonk

I have found tutorials on manual texture conversion from Metalness to Specular. But within Substance Painter, how can you export or convert a project from Metalness to a Specular workflow? I know Specular > Metalness is harder then Metalness > Specular since Metalness is a more restricted workflow. But Metalness > Specular should be possible?

rollin

You can setup an export preset. But imo the specular conversion within painter is "to technical" as I personally would blend more information into it. But theoretically you could setup a custom channel and build your specular there and then use this channel for your spec map output.

If this is not what you're looking for then I didn't completely understand what you want to convert at which position in the tool chain

OccultMonk

I just want to convert an existing Substance project using metalness to a project that uses specular. If that is possible with only changed export settings, that's fine. But metalness channel is used in many layers, so how to change that to specular without redoing a lot of work?

rollin

It is possible with a simple export setup BUT - imo and from my last experience - the result will visually lack compared to setting a specular project up 

poopipe

 The only thing you should lose is dielectric reflectance values - assuming you haven't cheated the system

You can put these values into the specular level channel and feed that to unreal to make up the difference 

Fwiw.  There is no truth in the specular > metalness idea - merely in the implementations 

huffer

Don't think you can easily convert it since your layers won't have any specular channel, and adding one means having to go by one one and check/add specular. But you could do a "manual" conversion using an anchor point to get the albedo and a metalness mask and make a simple fill layer on top of everything for the specular channel (by adding gray for non-metal parts and the rest using the albedo colors). Then just export with a specular preset.

OccultMonk

Thanks, everyone.

@Huffer: That is what I thought. Also good suggestion thanks!

OccultMonk

Also reaction from a staff member on substance forum where I posted the same question: 

"You can use the Export Preset named "PBR SpecGloss from MetalRough" to do exactly that."