Building a bridge between SketchUp and Substance Painter

Extensions
1

A few weeks ago I set myself a summer challenge: building a bridge between SketchUp and Substance Painter.

The idea is getting SketchUp geometry into Painter without losing UVs or hierarchy, texture it, and bring the materials back into the scene with no manual rework in between. It’s proving hard in practice, but the first results are promising and I’m starting to see light at the end of the tunnel.

I’ll try to keep posting updates here.

2

Here’s another quick video showing some of the features of the bridge I’m building

What you can see in the video:

  1. Export straight from SketchUp to Substance Painter, UVs unwrapped automatically
  2. Bake the mesh maps (normal, curvature, AO)
  3. Apply a smart material for an industrial finish
  4. Send it back to SketchUp, material applied

No manual exports, no hunting for the right file, no re-assigning materials by hand.
Still rough around the edges, but it’s looking good.

3

Very handy.

I’ve never seen anyone using Substance painter with SketchUp before. I wonder how many people do this?

How are you unwrapping the UVs?

4

It uses the auto UV unwrap provided by Substance Painter