One texture holding three black-and-white masks, one per channel. Here red is dirt in the crevices (from the AO bake), green is worn edges (from the curvature bake) and blue is patches of a second colour (3D grunge). Game engines and trim-sheet materials read it to place wear and colour variation without any extra textures.

No. Everything — baking, layers, painting, export — happens in Blender. Painter is only needed if you want to Send to Painter. If you only work in Painter, turn off Mask Layers in Blender in the preferences and the add-on shrinks to the Painter round trip.

No. AO and curvature are baked from the mesh itself, the way Painter bakes "from mesh". Mid-poly models with one-segment bevels are handled by Single Bevel, which wears the whole bevel as one edge.

They are seat counts. Individual is 1 person, Team is up to 6 people and Studio is up to 20 people. Commercial use is included in all three.

No. Turn on + Children, select the empty and press New Mask Set: every mesh under it gets one RGB mask — one texture, one Painter texture set — with their mask UVs laid out together. Clicking the empty afterwards shows and edits that mask for all of them.

Yes. Turn on One Mask for All, select the assets and press New Mask Set (or Send to Painter): they all get one mask — one texture, one Painter texture set. If their UVs overlap (each asset laid out 0–1 on its own), the add-on packs them together into a new RGBMask Packed UV map; your own UV maps are not changed.

Ignore their collections. Tick them under Ignore on the card for this file, or add names (wildcards like LOD* work) to Ignored Collections in the preferences for every file. Ignored meshes are left out of mask sets, bakes — also as occluders — and Send to Painter.

Its own: the second UV map by default, so your first map stays the texturing UVs. If a mesh has only one, a map called RGBMask is made with Smart UV Project. You can pick any UV map on the card.

No. The mask shows on the add-on's own copies of your materials, and your originals are never edited. Bakes run on temporary copies in a temporary scene. The only thing added to a mesh is the mask UV map when it has none.

It depends on the size of the asset and the resolution. It runs on the GPU when one is set in Preferences ▸ System. To tune the settings without waiting, use Preview Bake…: the curvature redraws as you drag the sliders, and Bake Maps then does the exact bake once.

Yes, with Other Objects Occlude. It is off by default, like Painter, so a prop is not darkened by the floor it happens to stand on in your scene.

It finds Painter by itself — Steam or Adobe installs, the older Allegorithmic ones, or a copy that is already running — and its plugin looks up every newer API before using it. It has been tested with Substance 3D Painter 10.1 (2024) on Windows.

The same Painter project is updated in place: the mesh is reloaded, new texture sets are set up, everything is re-baked, and what you painted in Painter stays. If Painter has unsaved work, it asks first.

If Painter was already open before the first send, it has not loaded the bridge's plugin yet. Restart Painter once — the job is waiting and starts by itself. This is only needed the first time.

Yes. Make Mask in Blender adds the RGB layers and bakes the maps, and what came from Painter stays available under Show Painter Result.

Confirm RGB Mask bakes the mask into one PNG in your RGB mask folder and plugs it into the materials, so the asset no longer needs the add-on. Export RGB Mask writes the PNG without changing anything.

Yes. Their tiling RGB mask is swapped for this one, using either the card's channel settings or the material's own.

Blender 3.3 to 5.2, from one zip. On 4.2 and newer it installs as an extension (drag the zip into Blender, or Preferences ▸ Get Extensions ▸ Install from Disk); on 3.3 to 4.1 as a classic add-on (Preferences ▸ Add-ons ▸ Install). Every version from 3.3 to 5.2 is tested.

Everything in Blender does. The Painter bridge looks for Painter on macOS and Linux too, but it has only been tested on Windows.

No. It opens no sockets, sends no telemetry and checks no licence. The Painter bridge talks to Painter through files on your own disk.