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How do you export textures from Substance Painter and import them into UE5 or UE4?

Then how to use these textures to create a material?

In this tutorial I will show you how...

What you will learn:

• How to export textures from Painter with all the settings explained
• How to import the textures into UE5
• Why and how to disable sRGB on one specific imported texture
• How to use these textures within a Material
• How to apply the Material onto your Static Meshes

Video Tutorial

Exporting Textures from Substance Painter

Once you are done texturing your mesh in Substance Painter you need to export the textures.

You will get 3 different textures: Color, Normal Map and a packed texture that contains Ambient Occlusion, Roughness, Metallic.

You may also export a 4th Emissive texture if you set that up. But in this tutorial I won't cover that.

To export textures from Substance Painter go to File > Export Textures (Ctrl + Shift + E):

Choose the following settings:

• Output Directory: where do you want to save these textures
• Output Template: choose Unreal Engine 4 (Packed), this will also work for UE5
• File Type: png and 8 bit (you can choose another file format to save as)
• Size: define exported texture resolution size (Based on Texture Set Size is resolution that you were working on in Substance Painter)
• Padding: Dilation Infinite

Name of the textures are predefined by the preset.

It will be:

• Name of the mesh
• Name of the Texture Set
• Name for type of texture

You can change all of these by making changes to the preset or making a copy of the preset and defining your own name. I'll cover how to do this in another tutorial.

Once you've set everything up, choose Export.

Textures are now exported.

Packed Textures Explained

Packed texture means you will have 3 textures packed into one.

These 3 textures are:

• Ambient Occlusion
• Roughness
• Metallic

So instead of having 3 different textures, you will have 1 texture that will hold information for all 3.

Each of these textures will be packed into individual color channel.

• Red Channel = Ambient Occlusion
• Green Channel = Roughness
• Blue Channel = Metallic

To always remember which channel has what, I like using the following reminder:

• RGB = ARM

Each letter in the ARM corresponds to the first letter for type of texture it has.

Importing Textures into UE5

Let's import these textures into UE5.

If you want to know how to export/import meshes out of Maya into UE5 and what options to set, take a look at this in-depth tutorial.

To import textures into UE5, simply drag-and-drop them into UE5 Content Browser:

Color texture will be ready to use as-is. Normal Map will be automatically converted to be used as a Normal Map. Packed texture needs to be adjusted.

Double-Click on the AO/Roughness/Metallic packed texture to open Texture Editor. Disable sRGB:

This is very important to do as we will only be using individual channels as the texture input and not all 3 RGB channels.

Save it and you are done.

Creating a Material in UE5

Inside the Content Browser, right-click and choose Material:

Rename it and double-click on it to open Material Editor.

Select 3 imported textures in Content Browser and drag them into the Material Editor.

Connect each of the textures into the Material inputs like so:

• Color RGB into Base Color
• Normal Map RGB into Normal

For packed AO/Roughness/Metallic texture you have to use individual RGB channels and not RGB output.

• Red Channel = Ambient Occlusion
• Green Channel = Roughness
• Blue Channel = Metallic

Save the Material and you are done.

The material will work as is but can be expanded to include a lot more controls and properties that what we have here.

Assign Material onto the Static Mesh in UE5

Last step is to assign the Material onto a Static Mesh.

Two ways to do so: globally or locally.

• Globally: assigns the Material to every instance of the Static Meshes that will be used in the level
• Locally: assigns the Material only the copy of the mesh placed in the level

Globally

Double click on the Static Mesh to open Static Mesh Editor.

Drag and drop the Material into Material Slot within the Static Mesh Editor::

Save and done.

Locally

Drag and drop the Material onto a Static Mesh that is already placed in the level.

The material will only appear on that specific Static Mesh placed in the level.

Substance Painter Essentials and UE5 Fundamentals Vol1.

Learn more for how to use Substance Painter and UE5.

With "UE5 Fundamentals Vol1", you will learn Unreal Engine 5. I will teach you how to use Materials, how to light your environments and how to use the Modeling Mode to create your own custom Static Meshes right inside UE5.

With "Substance Painter Essentials" I will teach you how to use Painter to texture with. You'll know everything you'll need to get started and finally texture your meshes.

Get the Course »