TEXTURES Exporting SketchUp Models to Substance Painter UV Mapping Wrapping Unwrapping

Unfortunately I’m on a MacBook Pro, so doesn’t sound like WrapR would work for me :sob:

I guess what I can’t figure out is how to break the model down into parts/groups/components once it’s in Substance Painter. Is there really no way to have this happen automatically in the export?

Looks like it’s only available for windows : (

Based on the feedback provided above, am I just out of options?

You might want to check our chipp Walters YouTube also he posts to this forum, he has a route from SU via Blender I think.

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Just found this going through the Substance Painter forums:

https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php/topic,6967.msg33914/highlight,sketchup.html#msg33914

Gonna give it a shot and try looking up Chipp Walters as well

I tried the smart UV unwrap feature in Blender following the instructions from this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scPSP_U858k

and it got me a uv map that looks like this…

I feel like this isn’t what I need, right? It’s like it’s only selecting one of the over 1000 meshes I have, even though I have them all selected?

Can’t even follow the directions from the one guy’s suggestions because step 2 is to use the BlendUp extension to import into Blender, but the BlendUp plugin isn’t available (even for purchase) anymore?

Apparently I just need to try it as a dae file according to this other posting https://forums.sketchup.com/t/blendup-to-sketchup-urgent-advise/71562

Okay, I think I figured out how to do it one “group” at a time. Here’s the structures brick facade:

Problem it I have hundreds of groups:

Am I going to have to basically explode all of my groups (and basically make my SU model unworkable) and then group by material only to make this work?

I think so, when I’ve been looking at it that what I concluded.I guess its setting up the model for rendering.
I’ll explain how I currently set my model workflow up as background.

I tend to keep a single master model file that I texture as I go, even though I might be generating NPR renders initially, I still texture hi-res for with my VRay materials as part of my workflow, it saves me a lot of time to texture as I go - it makes my model files large but I have a machine that can handle that.


design model file (rendered through SketchFX)

When the design is 95% finalised, I fork the master model file as a master_RENDER file to which I add all the context vegetation and model detail that is extraneous to the general design model - then the files get very large.


same textures as design model file but some veg added (rendered through Vray)

I has been thinking as part of a future Substance integrated workflow, at this point I would re-organise the model around UV groupings and islands. It doesn’t have to be by actual material but by logical islands i.e. ‘exterior walls’ unwrap and islands, ‘Roof’ unwrap and islands. There are lots of general UV unwrap videos on Youtube to help you get thinking about UV islands. There are a particularly good suite of Videos from Richard Yot, “Strategies for UV mapping organic meshes” (not Sketchup related as its Modo but he is excellent at explaining his methods and why) - you gotta pay for the suite but its only about 29 dollars or so and there is a section on hard surface unwraps.

Ultimately, you have to think about the requirements of the workflow, for (my) architectural stuff, I would say maybe 10-15% (being generous) actually needs to be, or I would want to, texture using Painter, most stuff is flat, new, camera position is far enough away and can be handled using decent sized tileable maps (in the above examples probably 40 percent of the textures were created in Substance Designer and the map outputs created used in Vray materials and applied in SU with standard SU and Vray mapping tools - didn’t need to touch Painter.

Also need to consider implications of changes. If the model is changed, I think you would have to re-unwrap that component go back into Painter, repaint stuff, re-generate the maps etc. So again, depends on the output you want

Also bear in mind, the Painter bit of it, I’ve only theorised, Im hoping to find time over the Holiday period to work on it.

Just as an addendum: The design model file size for the example above is 435Mb. The Render_Master model file is 760Mb. Most of this file size is attributable to the texture maps. Many maps are 2k but there are a lot of 4k Maps in there too, some even larger, particularly where I have large tilleable areas, the paving slabs are are large (pixel size) set of maps as is the brickwork where the pixel size can overcome seeing repeatable patterns within a particular shot.

Some updates:

For some reason now if I try to export my SKetchup file as Dae and upload it directly into Substance Designer I get the following error code:
53%20PM

I guess the change is that it’s no longer saying anything about missing UVs, but “expected different index count in <p< element”. Anyone have any idea what that means?

here’s the link to the Dae file (too big to upload directly)

here’s the material folder that is generated along with it when exporting Dae from SU

I’ve been emailing back and forth with the SketchFab folks a bit and they suggested I do the following:

So I imported a glTF file of the SU model that had been uploaded to SF into Blender. The result looks like this:

not sure why, but I can’t view the texture UV map when I try in blender though… but it seems to work if you look at what shows up in Substance Painter below

Something a little wonky with the faces, but it works. Then I selected all (press A), space bar, manually type in “smart uv unwrap”, and create a UV unwrap for the whole thing all at the same time.

Then export from blender as Dae and import the dae. file into Substance Painter and SUCCESS the model imports! Remember to delete the starting cube from blender or else the import will fail.

The result looks like this:

Since I’m never to SP I’m still trying to figure out how to select specific meshes to apply my texture made in substance designer, but I wanted to provide some form of update.

  1. anyone have any idea how to get those weird faces sticking out of the exterior to go away?
  2. anyone have any idea how to select individual groups/meshes in this?

So here’s what happens when I try to apply my texture from Substance designer to the imported model in Substance Painter:

throws computer out of the window

Someone please give me some direction here. The meshes aren’t separated. The Texture isn’t working. I’ve basically been doing this and nothing else for the past 4 days. I really gotta figure out how to get this thing to work

From what I understand, its ALL about the unwrap and then the subsequent back and forth workflow. If you don’t got a good unwrap and therefore good UV’s, you are where you are now. SU is probably about the worst in terms of UV handling so you need an intermediate step. No silver bullet I’m afraid. There is no way that trying to do the whole mesh at once is gonna work.
Honestly, look at the Richard Yot video, he does like a whole 2hours 52 minute video on hard surface strategies.
I don’t think anyone has done this with SU and Substance yet, particularly on the Mac side, so this is frontier stuff currently I think.I’m hoping to have a better direction after the holiday period.

cheers
rob

Welp, I’m now posting this in the Blender forums. Maybe someone there has a workaround?

I read a dozen or so posts that danced around needing to “smart UV project” multiple objects/groups simultaneously, yet individually. I think there’s a way, might involve texture atlasing?

Between the SketchUp, Allegorithmic, SketchFab, AND Blender forums, there’s got to be a way to solve this problem.

I have no idea. Pray for me? Sacrifice a small child to the computer gods on my behalf? Losing my mind here.

That tutorial cost $30.00. It’s also for a program called Modo, which I’ve never used (and costs nearly $2,000 to purchase). You really think it will solve my problems?

No.
I meant it’s worth the 30 dollars for the video because it’s extremely useful in terms of explaining things about UV islands and unwrapping and strategies for for doing so (regardless of the application) and helped my understanding of things that are simply missing from other UV Unwrapping videos. That’s all.

Somehow, you need to establish a UV map for use in painter, you also need to create those UV map(s) in a logical, practical way that allows you paint the texture maps however you need and somehow get that into back into Sketchup. Doing the whole thing in one go just isn’t the way to go and isn’t practical.
The video explains how to break any model down, unwrap elements and create strategies to manage the UV island and maps, Richard uses Modo but these are universal concepts and it really helped me understand what I was trying to do and where my initial thinking and understanding of the problem were flawed.
I still haven’t sorted it out due to time constraints but I think I know where to start.

There may be way using sketchUV or thrupaint as these plugins (certainly sketchUV) allow you to with limited flexibility, define Uv’sfor an object, save, export and import UV’s from/to Sketchup.

tried using a .Dae file exported directly from SketchUp into Blender, using the select all -> Smart UV Project -> export as .dae. -> import into Substance Painter and I’m getting basically the same result as I was getting from the SketchFab import into blender strategy, except the model seems to be a little sharper in the SU->Blender->SP version. Also the component functions in the windows seems to be intact as you can see in the GIF. When I paint over one of them, it paints over all of them.

Strange that non of the metal textures seems to be painting on…

Still open to (read: desperate for) suggestions!

Okay, may have made some progress. When uploading the .Dae file from Blender into SP, deselecting the “create a texture set per udim tile” resulted in a model with a different UV image layer that shows all of my textures in the texture set list in the upper right hand corner. Now I just need to figure out how to auto convert those to layers or something so that I can apply textures to the entire group/component without texturing other parts of the model at the same time

Okay, wanted to provide some updates:

Okay, so basically when I was importing the .Dae file from SU into SP I was checking the “create texture set per UDIM title” option and then uploading the folder of materials that SU created along w the DAE. file during the export process.

I think that was leading to the index count problem - I’ll explain why in a sec. When I deselect the create texture set per UDIM title the file imports with the texture sets separated by material (at least that’s what it seems like?)!

When I look at the names of the texture sets that were created there’s more than when SketchUp exported into the material folder. There are 43 Texture sets, but only 25 textures get exported from SketchUp. One specific example is the brass doorknob material. There is a texture set labeled Brass-material in the Dae. import, but there’s no texture labeled Brass in the SU texture exports.


Does anyone know why Sketchup wouldn’t be exporting all of the materials/textures? I’ll likely make a separate post to figure this out and link it back here.

With that in mind, I’m just skipping importing the texture files themselves during the .Dae import and am applying the textures manually within substance painter itself.

Of course, this isn’t happening seamlessly… When I first apply my endless brick texture the scale is way off.

When I scale it down it seems to correct itself, but only while it’s loading/computing. While loading it looks like the

When it finishes loading it looks like this:

No amount of adjustments seems to correct the problem. That said, it takes like 5 minutes for every adjustment to load, so it’s hard to tell if I’ve really exhausted all the options.

Just to test the texture in SketchFab (and to see if i could maybe fix the problem in SF directly), I tried uploading the file to SketchFab, but got the following error message.

Somehow my file is 350mb and my current pro account won’t allow me to upload it.

Any idea why this file would be so bulky all fo the sudden?

I tried reducing the pixels from 4096 to 2048 (keep in mind my computer is now running impossibly slow) and the bumps just sort of mesh together like this:

Down to 1024 looks like this:

512:

You get the point.

Can anyone tell what the problem is just by looking at this?

As a remind, the texture itself is supposed to look like this:

Some updates from the Allgorithmic forum where I posted a question related to the most recent problem:

CAGameDeveloper:
"Are you able to provide your Substance Designer file so I can review and port it over to Painter for testing?

I looked at your painter file, but the material itself wont carry over so I cannot see the details on resolution.

Outside of this, I did review your model and I’m not sure what kind of workflow you’re using, but your house has so many object ids, the normals are not facing correctly on many spots, and the geometry looks like this was all built using CAD software. Your UVs also take up so little density in the 0-1 space.

If you did a retopo over this, and cleaned it up, you could organize everything much better and reduce the object count, plus textures. Since you’re barely using any density per map, why have so many texture sets? Out of the 25+ texture sets you’re using, less than 1% in total of the combined space is being used on average, and these are 4k maps. I would honestly suggest correcting your workflow before moving forward.

If you have any questions let me know."

Me: “Absolutely! Here you go! Just FYI I created it following the instructions in this tutorial:” File attached.

CAGameDeveloper:
From what I can see you have a few issues.

  1. Please review my prior post, your density on your UV maps is way too low… Just to make an example, I took your material and applied it to my wall mesh, but made sure the UVs took only a small part of the space in a 4k map, and here is what I get:

Now if I increase the UV size to fill more of the space I get this:

I also believe your material is outputting at 512x512 which may also be an issue. I normally make my materials at a higher res.

  1. Your UV density takes up such a small amount of space for the amount of area you need to cover, so of course the detail is going to be poor:

  1. The res size of your material, in joint with the fact you’re using low amount of your available 0-1 space is why you’re getting horrible visuals.

If I lower the density even more, I get this:

Update:
I’ve been trying a lot of things and gone down a lot of rabbit holes, none of which have really led me anywhere.

In a “i give up” move, I tried opening the substance in substance player and exporting bitmaps as jpegs along Diffuse:


Glossiness:

Height:

Mask:

Normal:

Specular:

I then uploaded the individual “bitmaps” (?) as textures in the corresponding materials menu in SketchFab:

The model is produced is this:



The size of the bricks is all wrong of course and if you look closely there’s repetitions in the overall texture (which defeats the entire purpose of creating the endless texture, right?), but I guess it’s the closest I’ve gotten to what I’m going for so far.