Substance 3D materials for Photoshop

Topics in this article:

Substance Materials Overview 

Material Panel Interface 

You may resize the entire panel using the Resize control at the bottom and sides of the panel. The divider between the material previews and properties can be adjusted with the divider following the Built-in Materials section.  

Lighting Panel Interface 

Applying Materials 

• Applying a Material to a layer: To apply a material, select one of the material previews in the panel while the layer is selected. This will duplicate the selected layer as a Smart Object with the selected material applied as a Smart Filter. To create additional material layers, select another layer with no materials applied before selecting a preview in the Materials tab.

• Applying Materials to Layers with Marquee Selections: If a marquee selection is made on a layer, applying a material to that layer will create a duplicate of the selected layer as a Smart Object with the selected material applied as a Smart Filter and a layer mask created from the marquee selection. 

• Applying Materials to Text Layers: Applying a material when a text layer is selected will create a new layer over the text as a Smart Object and the selected material applied as a Smart Filter. This layer will be set as a clipping mask to reveal the material only where there is text.

• Updating Materials: When a layer with a material is selected, selecting another preview in the Materials tab will replace the material in the selected layer.

Importing Materials 

The .sbsar files downloaded from the Substance 3D Assets and Substance Community Assets sites, or made in other Substance 3D applications, can be imported into the material panel with the ‘+’ icon. This will open the file explorer and allow you to select the .sbsar files on the disk. Afterwards, they will appear under the Your Materials section of the panel.

Note: Only .sbsar matterials are currently suppoted by the plugin. Other material file types such as .spsm are not currently supported.

Removing Materials 

To remove a material, hold the Command/Control or Shift keys and click on the material in the panel.  Once selected, clicking the trash icon will remove these materials. If a material used in the current layer is being deleted, Photoshop will warn you of this before asking if you would like to cancel or continue deleting the material. Default materials that ship with the plugin can be restored after they have been deleted by opening the Panel Menu and selecting "Restore default materials".

Note: User material files can also be manually removed from the following directories: 
  Windows: "%AppData%/Roaming/Adobe/UXP/PluginsStorage/{Photoshop Type}/{Photoshop Version}/Internal/com.adobe.photoshop-material-filters"

    Mac: "~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/UXP/PluginStorage/{Photoshop Type}/{Photoshop Version/Internal/com.adobe.photoshop-material-filters"

Workflows 

Blending Lighting Into Material Layers: Blend modes can be used to improve the realism of your image. In the following example, a black and white copy of the base image is placed on top of the material layers and set to an Overlay blend mode. This has the effect of transferring lighting and shadows from the base image to your material layers. A mask can be used to affect specific areas. This method can be repeated with other blend modes like Multiply to enhance shadows. 

Working With Layer Transformations: Before applying transformations, the material layer must be converted to a Smart Object. This parent Smart Object will display transformations applied to it. The material parameters can be adjusted by opening the Smart Object and selecting the material layer. Saving after making parameter changes will display those changes in the parent Smart Object. 

Another way to adjust your material layer’s perspective without converting it to a smart object is to use Photoshop’s Perspective warp (found under the Edit > Perspective warp menu item). This will allow you to tweak the visual perspective of your material layer nondestructively and see the results in real-time on your canvas.   

Adding multiple Materials to a layer: To stack multiple materials on a layer, first apply your initial material. Then, hold Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) and click on the thumbnail of the next material you want to add. This will stack it on top of the previous one in the Smart Filter stack.

• Managing stacked materials: Each material in the stack can be turned on or off individually for flexible editing.
• Editing individual materials in a stack: The Properties Panel will show a dropdown menu listing all applied materials. To edit a specific materials, select it from this dropdown or double-click on the material in the Smart Filter stack.

Finding and Creating Additional Materials 

A library of free materials that are created by members of the Substance community can be found on the Substance Community Assets site. With a Substance 3D subscription, you can also download hundreds of professionally made material assets from the Substance 3D Assets page.

Additionally, you can create your own materials using Substance 3D Designer or Substance 3D Sampler.  

Substance 3D Designer is a node-based texture authoring tool. Nodes are used to provide deep levels of creative control with unique noises and patterns. Check out Designer's Product Page for more details on Designer, as well as learning material in our Designer First Steps tutorial series.

Substance 3D Sampler transforms real-world photos into 3D materials. An extensive library of filters, generators, and effects let you quickly explore the endless variations with a familiar layer-based approach. Check out Sampler's Product Page for more details on Sampler, as well as learning material in our Sampler First Steps tutorial series and some specifics on the Image to Material capabilities.

Troubleshooting 

The Photoshop UI is frozen when changing parameters.

This behavior is expected. The Photoshop plugin makes changes to the canvas that cannot be run asynchronously, so Photoshop’s functions are paused while the image is being rendered. The higher the resolution quality, the longer the image will take to render.

On Windows, input boxes in the panel UI appear to flicker whenever I scroll.

The plugin uses Photoshop UXP tools to draw the plugin panel, which may produce some expected behaviors such as this. While flickering may occur, it is purely cosmetic and should not impact user’s ability to adjust values.

On Mac, values appear to be written over the panel when using a slider.

The plugin uses Photoshop UXP tools to draw the plugin panel, which may produce some expected behaviors such as this. Values may draw over parts of the panel, but scrolling should force the UI to refresh and resolve this issue.

Some materials take longer to update when I change parameters.

Materials with large bitmaps integrated as part of the design, such as scanned materials, may slow down the rendering time. Additionally, rendering materials at higher resolution settings will take longer to process.