Substance Painter Normal Baking Quality

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Hey guys,

Just wondering but does Substance Painter bake good quality normal maps like Xnormal and CrazyBump?

2

You can get perfect bakes in Substance painter for UE4. CrazyBump is pretty awful for normal map generation unless you just need a quick sloppy temporary texture.

3

Thanks @

How do you know what to set the max frontal and rear distance to when baking in substance?

And whats the cage option?
Hows it used and made?

4

Refer here for the basic information

The default max frontal and rear distance are typically very good by default. They seem to be relative to your mesh so they work for drastically different scales. The more different your high and low poly models are, the more you may have to increase it. I typically just double the value over and over until it works, from .01 -> .02 -> .04 -> .08, etc.

Substance Painter does very well even without using cages, especially if you are using Matching by name for models that are multiple parts. The frontal and rear distance options act as a cage, but you can specify a cage file.

Workflow, speed, and quality wise, I’d say Substance is the second best baking option, following Marmoset Toolbag.

5

Thanks @

how differently does Marmoset work than substance?

as I started with xnormals originally many parameters are similar like caging and the distances between meshes

6

I use Xnormal before, i abandoned it after I test baked in substance painter,

Substance is faster and the result is very pretty and solid

7

The main difference is Marmoset has some great tools for fixing projection issues and skewing.

8

Thank guys!