SurfaceMentor

đź’ˇ Setting Up Custom Lighting in Substance 3D Painter for Better Previews

Lighting can make or break your texture presentation. Even the most detailed material will look flat under poor lighting — and stunning under the right setup.

In Adobe Substance 3D Painter, you can fully control your lighting environment to preview textures exactly as they’ll appear in your final render. Whether you’re texturing for games, films, or product visualization, mastering custom lighting helps you evaluate reflections, roughness, and color balance with accuracy.

👉 Try it yourself with a free trial of the Adobe Substance 3D Collection — and learn how to light your 3D materials like a pro.

🧱 Step 1: Understand the Lighting System in Painter

Substance 3D Painter uses an HDRI-based environment lighting system to illuminate your models.
The environment map acts as a spherical light source, wrapping around your scene to provide reflections, highlights, and global illumination.

In addition, Painter supports viewport shadows and post-effects that help you preview your material’s true potential before exporting to rendering tools like Stager, Blender, or Unreal Engine.

🌍 Step 2: Access the Environment Settings

  1. Click the Display Settings icon (the monitor icon in the toolbar).
  2. Under Environment, you’ll find:
    • Environment Map — the HDRI file providing light.
    • Environment Opacity — controls background visibility.
    • Environment Exposure — brightness of your HDRI.
    • Environment Rotation — rotates the lighting direction.

🎯 Pro Tip: Rotate your environment to see how reflections and specular highlights move across your surface.

đź’ˇ Step 3: Choose or Import an HDRI Map

Painter includes several HDRIs (e.g., Studio, Outdoor, Soft Light, Night Scene).

  1. Go to Display Settings → Environment Map → Select Image.
  2. Choose a preset or click Add New to import your own .hdr file.
  3. Try different HDRIs to test how your material behaves in diverse lighting scenarios — product designers often use neutral studio HDRIs, while game artists prefer natural daylight scenes.

💡 Workflow Tip: Keep your preview lighting close to your final engine’s environment lighting for consistent results.

🎨 Step 4: Adjust Exposure and Rotation

  1. In Display Settings → Environment Exposure, increase or decrease brightness to test material response.
  2. Use Environment Rotation to spin the HDRI and catch highlights at different angles.
  3. You can fine-tune reflections on metallic surfaces by rotating the HDRI until you see balanced specular highlights.

🧠 Pro Tip: Metallics look best with high-contrast lighting, while matte materials benefit from softer, diffused light.

🔦 Step 5: Add Additional Lights (Optional)

While Painter doesn’t have a traditional multi-light system like Stager, you can simulate directional lighting using environment tweaks and shadow casting:

  • Enable Shadows in Display Settings → Shadows.
  • Increase Shadow Opacity and Softness for realism.
  • Adjust Light Rotation and Light Elevation sliders to emphasize form.

🎯 Use this setup when previewing hero assets or product renders.

🎬 Step 6: Apply Post-Effects for Final Presentation

Painter also offers post-processing tools to refine your preview image:

  • Tone Mapping: Choose ACES for cinematic color response.
  • Vignette: Adds subtle edge darkening for focus.
  • Color Correction: Adjust contrast, saturation, and gamma.
  • Depth of Field: Focus attention on specific areas of your model.

🧩 Pro Tip: Combine custom lighting with these effects before exporting screenshots for portfolios or client presentations.

📸 Step 7: Save Your Lighting Setup

Once you find a lighting setup you like, save it for future projects:

  1. In Display Settings, click the Save Environment icon.
  2. Painter saves your HDRI and settings together for easy reuse.

This ensures consistent lighting across multiple assets — essential for teams or large production pipelines.

âś… Conclusion

Custom lighting in Adobe Substance 3D Painter helps you evaluate every texture detail with precision. By adjusting environment maps, shadows, and tone mapping, you’ll see your materials exactly as they’ll render in final production.

👉 Start experimenting today with the Adobe Substance 3D Collection free trial — and take your texture previews from good to world-class.

Ben Kemp
, , , , , , , , ,