The amount of frustration I was having when I worked on my rainy day boots was insane, and it was all because of the fact I have boots with special patterns on them that were NOT showing up on the diffuse maps. No matter what I did they were just non-existent. It didn’t make sense! Surely if they show up on base color, they should there too, no? No. I was frustrated for HOURS until yet again, the amazing Lev from levlevlev showed up and helped me out. So now, I share my knowledge!
For this example I will be using my Rainy Day Boots. As of writing this post they are unreleased for FiveM, but keep an eye out on my Discord for an announcement of release!
So, what we have here is a prime example of what we would see in Substance Painter. In this example I am showing the model to the left, and on the right pane, I have the display for the 2D layout/uv map set to diffuse. As you can see, there is no pattern being placed onto the diffuse map.
So how can we fix this? Why is this happening?! First, take a deep breath. I feel your frustration, and so did Lev when I was near tears. But, it is a simple, and easy fix.
Step 1: Ensure that your texture settings include diffuse.
In the side panel for texture settings you want to ensure that your project has the correct mappings. A lot of times if you don’t, when you bake your model you may get errors. This is what will help with that as well.
Step 2: Select the pattern and open the properties area, applying diffuse
When you add a PNG or whatever texture into the project your properties panel will not really have anything applied to it. You can add different elements to your PNG, but in this case, we’re going to hit diffuse.
Now, you will see that the diffuse map shows BLACK! This is NOT what we wanted!!!!! Time to run around screaming in panic! WRONG! This is no time to panic! This is time to take charge, to make this your bitch! So here’s what we do.
Step 3: Add the pattern at the uniform color for the diffuse
It’s really that simple. What you will do here is take the name of the base color pattern (in this case v_pattern9) and search it in the panel that populates, and select it. This will then apply to the diffuse layer and fix the issue where your png pattern is not showing on the diffuse map. Then you can export this as normal for application on your models. If you’re looking to learn to apply them to FiveM models, follow my tutorial here.
