Missing Channel in Substance Painter
Add Height, Emissive or Opacity channels
Also known as: Painter add channel · Painter emissive channel · Painter opacity channel · Painter height channel missing · Texture Set Settings channels · Painter channel not exporting
Quick answer
To add a missing channel such as Height, Emissive or Opacity in Substance Painter, open Texture Set Settings, go to Channels and press the plus button to add it, then choose the format. New channels appear on every layer. A channel only exports if the export preset includes a map that uses it, so check the Export window as well, and add or edit the output maps there.
How to fix it
Add only the channels you need, because each one adds memory and export time. Height is useful for blending materials and for displacement, Emissive for glowing parts and Opacity for cutouts. Set the channel's format and bit depth when you create it, since it is awkward to change later. If a map exports black, check that something paints into the channel and that the preset does not point to another one.
Tools that use Missing Channel in Substance Painter
See also
Emissive Map
Texture for glowing surfaces
Displacement Map
Actual geometry from a texture
Texture Set
One material's worth of textures in Painter
ORM Texture
Occlusion / Roughness / Metalness packed into one map
Blend Mode
How a material combines with what is behind it
Substance Painter Export Settings for Unreal and Unity
Which preset, size and format to use