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Substance 3D materials for Photoshop

Learn to use the Substance 3D materials with Photoshop to create realistic 3D effects earlier reserved for 3D native applications

Topics in this article:

Substance Materials Overview 

Material Panel Interface 

Plugin interface

A. Materials and Lighting modes: Click the Materials or Lighting mode buttons at the top of the panel to reveal materials or lighting editing control panels. 

B. Search:  The search bar allows you to filter displayed results that match the text entered here.

C. Get materials: There are two huge libraries of materials on the web that can be browsed to find different materials for use in Photoshop:   one from Adobe,  and another from the Substance Community of users . At this time, only .sbsar  format materials are supported in the Photoshop plugin, so note that while additional content types can be browsed and downloaded from those sites, only the .sbsar files can be used in Photoshop.   

D. Your Materials: The ‘Your materials’ section is where imported .sbsar materials will appear as spherical previews. After a .sbsar file has been downloaded from the sites above or made in a Substance 3D application, use the ‘+’ icon in the plugin window to import the material.

E. Adobe Substance Materials: Included materials appear as spherical previews. You can scroll down the list using the right scroll bar or enter text searches in the search bar to filter the results.  

F. Adding/Deleting materials: Materials made in other Substance 3D apps or downloaded online can be added using the ‘+’ icon. Materials can also be removed by highlighting them and selecting the trash icon. See the Importing Materials and Removing materials sections below for more information.

G. Materials Properties: This section includes controls which are appended to all materials by the plugin. These include controls for resolution and repetition of the tiled material. See the Material Properties section below for more information.

H. Substance Properties: These are properties that vary for each specific material. These properties are purposely exposed by the material’s author and are adjustable. See the Substance Properties section below for more information.

I. Position: These are controls to adjust the X and Y position of the material on the canvas, as well as the rotation around the center of the document. 

J. Technical Parameters: These parameters are defined by the authors during material creation and allow you to fine-tune certain image options like Contrast, Hue, and Saturation. These are found in most Substance 3D Assets materials.

Material properties

Material Properties: These are common properties that can be found on all materials.

  • Resolution: The display quality of the material.

  • Random seed: The value used to randomize certain aspects of the material.

  • Repeat X: The value used to scale the material horizontally.

  • Repeat Y: The value used to scale the material vertically.

  • Repeat uniformly: Scales the material evenly based on Repeat X and Repeat Y values.

  • Physical size: Scales the material based on its real-world size.

Note: Repeat X and Repeat Y properties are automatically configured to the ratio of your image when applying a material to avoid stretching.

Substance properties

Substance Properties: These are the unique properties of a material that affect various aspects of its appearance. They are defined by the author of the material during the creation process in Substance 3D applications. Some examples of this would be the color of dirt on a material and the intensity of the dirt, as seen on the left image.

 

Most materials will also come with embedded presets. These are predefined “looks” for the material that can be quickly selected via the dropdown.

Position

Position: These adjust the position and rotation of the material on the material.

  • Offset X: The material's position horizontally.

  • Offset Y: The material's position Vertically.

  • Rotation: Turns the material left or right from the center of the document.

Technical parameters

Technical Parameters: These parameters are similar to the image adjustments that are native to Photoshop, but applied specifically to the material. These are defined by the author and are visible in most .sbsar files downloaded from the Adobe 3D Asset page.

  • Luminosity: The amount of light radiated by the material.

  • Contrast: The difference in brightness between light and dark areas of an image

  • Hue Shift: Adjusts the overall color of the material.

  • Saturation: Adjusts the overall intensity of the material’s colors.

  • Normal Intensity: The strength of the simulated surface details of a material.

  • Normal Format: Chose between DirectX and OpenGL normal formats.  This will change the Normal direction.

  • Height Range: The overall difference between the highest and lowest point of the simulated surface.

  • Height Position: The intensity of the height relative to the height range.

    In Substance 3D Designer, an exposed parameter can be addded to the Techncial Parameters group by entering it as the group name in the “Exposed Parameters” menu. Read the Substance 3D Designer documentation here learn more. 

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.  

Panel resizing

Lighting Panel Interface 

Lighting parameters

The lighting applied to materials can be edited in the Lighting Panel. Here there are controls to change the rotation and height of the lighting relative to the material’s surface.

  • Rotation: The radial angle of the light source on the horizontal axis. 0° positions the light at the bottom of the canvas and increasing the value moves the light clockwise.

  • Height: The radial angle of the light source on the vertical axis. 0° is parallel to the material’s surface and 90° is perpendicular.

  • Color: Controls the light source’s color tint.

  • Exposure: The intensity of the light source

  • Displacement: The difference between the highest and lowest points of the material’s surface

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. 

Blending Material Layers

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.
Blending Material Layers

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.

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