[Substance Painter] Best approach texturing modular meshes?
polycounter lvl 7
How do you guys approach texturing modular meshes in painter? Let's say I have different wall panels for a building and I want the texture edges between different ones lining up just right. My only thought was to well, snap the panels or whatever together in whatever combination I need them, apply a different shader to each map, export as one file and go from there - obviously this wouldn't work on a massive building with many panel combinations but I only have a small shelter so seems doable. But what's a good rule of thumb here? Texturing each panel separately is easy enough but you'll still end up with inconsistencies.
Replies
Hey :) Rarely texture tiling modules individually. I apply tiling textures - requires tiling UVs consistent across all modules. Then, to break up and detail the large modules, a layer of detail meshes (edges, openings, damage) is added. And a blending material also helps.
Oh, just noticed this topic is painter specific, while my answer is not - sorry!
You can work with UDIMS in Painter. This'll allow you to paint a single stroke (for example) across two different texture sets, have them share a single layer stack and so on. Each UDIM tile will export as its own texture set, so there's no requirement for the game engine to also use UDIMs.
https://substance3d.adobe.com/magazine/paint-across-uv-tiles-udims-in-substance-painter/
cheeseontoast's suggestion in combination with cunning UV layouts would allow you to merge the resultant UDIM textures into a single page if that's what you require as output