Bake Artifacts in Substance Painter
Spots, streaks and skewed detail after baking
Also known as: Substance Painter baking problems · Painter bake black spots · Painter bake streaks · Painter bake skewed · Substance Painter bake wrong · Painter normal bake artifacts
Quick answer
Bake artifacts in Substance Painter appear when the baking rays hit the wrong part of the high-poly model. Lower Max Frontal Distance and Max Rear Distance so rays only reach the matching surface, bake by mesh name so each low-poly part sees only its own high-poly partner, and use a cage or explode the parts if they overlap. Check for overlapping UVs and bad normals, and raise Antialiasing to remove jagged lines.
How to fix it
Name the meshes with _low and _high suffixes, set Match to By Mesh Name, and keep the parts of the high-poly slightly apart from each other when you can. Start with a small distance and increase it only until the details appear, since a large value picks up neighbouring geometry and creates streaks. Inspect each baked map on its own, especially the normal and ambient occlusion, before painting, and rebake after any mesh or UV change.
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Tools that use Bake Artifacts in Substance Painter
See also
Baking
High-poly detail → low-poly texture
Bake Cage
Envelope mesh that controls ray distance
Match by Mesh Name
Bake setting that pairs low and high poly parts
Max Frontal and Rear Distance
Ray length settings in Painter baking
Mesh Maps
Maps baked from the model that drive generators
Normal Map
Per-pixel surface detail