In this tutorial, we will look at a way to apply logos or, more generally, decorative elements, known as decals, onto the surface of objects in Substance Painter.
Video Transcript
Hello everyone! In this tutorial, we will look at a way to apply logos or, more generally, decorative elements, known as decals, onto the surface of objects in Substance Painter. Specifically, we will use brushes on Layers, but that is not all. To assign a Material to the decorations, we will use a Substance tool that I have not covered so far in my video tutorials: Anchors.
Let me show you right away what I want to achieve. I want to apply some logos to the 3D model currently visible on screen, but I also want to assign a Material to those logos. Therefore, I need a way to paint with a Texture on a Layer while simultaneously applying another Material, except for its Base Color of course, only in the areas defined by that Texture.
I imported the logos as color PNG images with transparency using File → Import Resources in the Textures section. I do not have their opacity masks, and I do not even want to create them in a drawing or image editing program because, as we will see, we can generate them directly inside Substance.
The model already has its own base Material, but the logos will need to use a different Material, with different Roughness effects and so on. Therefore, it is not enough to add a Layer, select a brush, assign the Texture to the brush Base Color, and click on the object's surface. Doing so would apply the image only to the Base Color, while leaving all the other properties unchanged from the underlying material. As you can see, the brush also leaves a halo around the logo because the opacity is uniform.
If we assign the same logo image to the brush Opacity channel as well, the situation does not improve much. Opacity will use the image colors as grayscale values, as we can verify by switching the 3D view to Opacity display mode.
We therefore need a way to apply a Material only in the areas defined by our brush strokes, while using the brush logo as the Material's Base Color. In other words, the Material should use the brush strokes in the Layer as an opacity mask. This is where Anchors come into play.
Anchors are Substance tools that essentially work as references. An object, such as a Layer Mask, a Filter, or a Generator, can use the information from another object that acts as a reference, provided that an Anchor is added to that object.
In our case, we can proceed as follows. We can add the Material we want to use for the logo. I am using a metallic material. It is not the most appropriate choice for a decoration, but I want to show you the effects on the various channels such as Roughness, Metallic, and so on. We then assign a completely black Layer Mask to it and disable the Color channel because we want to use the brush stroke Texture instead.
Next, add an empty Layer where we will place the logos using a brush. In my case, I am using Basic Hard so that the edges are not blurred. Make sure that only the Color channel is enabled for the brush.
Depending on the model you are using, it may be helpful to enable the symmetry tool so that clicking on one side of the object automatically creates a brush stroke on the opposite side, according to the selected symmetry axis.
At this point, right-click the Layer and choose "Add Anchor Point". A new item will appear, displaying an anchor icon and the same name as the Layer, although we can of course rename it.
The Layer can now be used by another object, even if it belongs to a different material.
Now switch to the Material, which is metallic in my case, right-click the black Layer Mask, and choose "Add Fill" to add a Fill Layer. Initially, it will have a uniform color, gray as shown in the Properties - Grayscale section. As a result, the metallic material will be applied at moderate intensity across the entire surface of the object.
Click on Properties - Grayscale and then click on "Anchor Points"... but something is wrong. We cannot click on that section!
I made this mistake intentionally to highlight an important point. Anchor Points must be placed below the objects that need to use them in the Layer stack. I added the brush stroke Layer after the Material I intended to use, so now I need to drag the Layer below the Material.
After doing so, it will be possible to select the Anchor Point in the Fill Layer of the Material's mask.
As you can see, the metallic material is now applying its properties, including Metallic, Roughness, Normals, and so on, only in the areas defined by the brush strokes we painted in the underlying Layer. More importantly, the Base Color is not taken from the metallic material but from the painting Layer itself.
However, we are not done with the settings yet.
If we switch to Metallic display mode, we can see that the logo is metallic only in the white areas of the image. This means that the material is actually being applied while also using the Texture as an opacity mask, which is not what we want.
To solve this problem, select the Fill Layer inside the Material's mask and change the Anchor's "Alpha Behavior" setting from "Keep alpha", which is selected by default, to "Extract Alpha". Done!
The material is now applied correctly, proportionally to the transparency of the images and exactly where the Textures painted in the underlying Layer are located.
The Anchor affects the entire painting Layer, so we can also change the brush Texture, add more images or logos to the model, and the Material connected to the Layer's Anchor will automatically be applied to those new images as well.
The reason why the flag is displayed only partially is that the image used as a Texture is rectangular while the brush is circular. It is better to make the images square by adding transparency to the missing areas in an image editing program before importing them into Substance.
So far, I have used Basic Hard to fully paint the Textures, but of course you can use other brushes as well, for example to create a hand-drawn effect or to make a logo appear damaged, partially erased by wear and tear, and so on.
To summarize, Anchors allow you to use the properties of a Layer as masks for other Materials, Filters, or Generators. If you want to apply images using brush strokes while preserving their original Base Color, but you also want to assign a specific Material to them, you can paint the images on a Layer using only the Color channel, add an Anchor to that Layer, then add the desired Material and use the Anchor as a reference through Fill → Grayscale in the Material's Layer Mask. If necessary, remember to change Keep Alpha to Extract Alpha.
Well, that is all for this tutorial! As always, feel free to leave any questions, comments, or requests for clarification in the video comments section. See you next time!