In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the process of creating UDIMs in Blender 5.0 and then exporting them to be used in Substance Painter. After exporting the finished textures in Substance Painter, you will learn how to bring the UDIM textures back into Blender as well as Unreal Engine 5.7.
Step 1: Material ID
1. UDIM stands for U-Dimension and is a UV mapping technique for high-resolution textures which allows for high texel density and cleaner texture maps
2. For convenience, you can add materials to be used as an ID Map in Substance Painter
3. For example, I will give each part of my mesh a different material which will make it easier to texture in Substance Painter
Step 2: UDIMs in Blender
1. Split the viewport and open the Shader Editor and UV Editor
2. Make a new Image Texture – naming it and choosing your resolution
3. Check the box for Tiled be able to use UDIMs
4. If you have used different materials for the ID Map, you will need to copy and paste this Image Texture onto each material
5. Open the Image Texture you just made in the UV Editor
6. Use the N-key to open the Properties panel and open the Image tab
7. You will see your UDIM Tiles displayed – currently, there is only one UDIM Tile
8. To add a new UDIM Tile, click on the Plus Button
9. If you need to delete a UDIM Tile, click on the Minus Button
10. In my case, I need a total of 6 UDIM Tiles so I click on the Plus Button and change the count to 5
Step 3: Unwrapping the UVs
1. Now you can unwrap your mesh
2. I select the first UDIM tile and will unwrap the wood first and place it on this UDIM Tile
3. One thing to remember is not to have any UV Island overlapping UDIM Tiles because this will cause shading issues and errors in Substance Painter
4. Once I have unwrapped the wood, I will make sure the UV Islands are facing the right direction
5. I now repeat this process for each part of the mesh
Step 4: Importing & Baking
1. Once you have all the UDIM Tiles ready, make sure the Image Texture is selected on each of your materials
2. Select what you want to export and export the file format of your choice
3. Drag and drop your exported mesh into Substance Painter
4. Select your Resolution
5. Make sure you have Use UV Tile Workflow checked to use UDIM Tiles
6. Now you will notice that you have each of your material from the ID Map as well as a list of the related UDIM Tiles
7. Open the Texture Set Settings and choose Bask Mesh Maps
8. Select the Texture Maps you want to bake and change the Output Size if needed
9. If you do not have a high-poly mesh to bake from, select Use Low Poly Mesh as High Poly Mesh
10. Click on Bake Selected Textures
11. When the baking is complete, click on Return to Painting Mode
Step 5: Texturing
1. I have other videos going over how to texture in Substance Painter so I won’t be going into detail in this tutorial – a link to the playlist is in the description
2. Once you have everything textured, export the Texture Maps (I will be exporting 2 separate Texture Maps – one for Blender and the other for UE)
Step 6: Importing to Blender
1.Back in Blender, make sure to have the Node Wrangler add-on activated
2. Open your first material
3. With the Principled Shader selected, use CTRL + SHIFT + T to import the appropriate Texture Maps
Step 7: Importing to UE
1.Import your mesh, materials, and textures into Unreal – I won’t be going into depth about importing and texturing but I do have a playlist with plenty of tutorials – link is in the description
2. Set up your materials
3. If you are using a version before 5.7, you may see errors on your materials – if this is the case, under Project Settings, look for Virtual Textures and enable it
You can see the video by Abe Leal for more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJAKmIlDrjA
Conclusion
You’ve now successfully created UDIMs in Blender and exported them to Substance Painter. You have also learned how to export the texture maps and bring them back into Blender and also Unreal Engine.