A3D TexSync - Substance Painter Plugin

You paint in Substance 3D Painter, but the brush you actually want is

somewhere else — Krita, GIMP, Photoshop, Affinity. Today that means exporting,

editing, and re-importing a flattened image by hand. Every layer, every group,

every mask you had is gone.

A3D TexSync fixes the round trip. Edit a texture in the app you actually paint

in, hit sync, and it's back in Painter's layer stack — groups, opacity, blend

modes and masks intact. Not a flattened image.

Four bridges, one install:

• Krita — full layer/group hierarchy, both directions

• GIMP — same, via Script-Fu (layer visibility doesn't currently transfer — see Limitations)

• Photoshop — the return trip. Adobe's own Export to Photoshop covers the way out; this covers the way back, including pixel layer masks as real, editable Painter masks

• Affinity — flat PNGs (Affinity has no scripting API — this is the ceiling of what's automatable there)

Also solves a problem nothing else does: UDIM export math.

A seven-material asset with four UV tiles and five channels exports as 140 separate files. Nothing in Painter puts them back together.

TexSync's Exporter does — 140 files become 5 textures, one per channel, tiles packed correctly, in one step.

• Substance 3D Painter (tested on 12.0.3 / Qt6)

• Whichever of Krita / GIMP / Photoshop / Affinity you actually use — none are required to try the others

Copy a folder. No build step, no compiler, no external dependencies.

Works on a locked-down studio machine where nothing can be installed.

• install.bat does it for you, or copy the plugin folders by hand — both are documented.

Said here rather than found on day one:

• UV Tile (Preserve) projects have no layer stack to export, in either

direction. This is Painter's own limitation — Adobe's Export to Photoshop

hits the identical wall, confirmed by running it. The paintover route and

the Exporter both still work on Preserve projects.

• GIMP export doesn't carry layer visibility (confirmed GIMP 3.2.4

limitation). Hierarchy, blend modes, opacity and masks all transfer.

• No live auto-refresh of an already-open Krita document. Re-running

Export to Krita rebuilds it from scratch.

• Affinity export is flat PNGs, not a layer stack — no scripting API

exists to do more.

• Tested on Substance 3D Painter 12.0.3. Check the changelog before assuming

compatibility with a different version.

Full details, and everything else, in the README inside the download.

Security contact and support address are in the download. Security updates

guaranteed until at least 31 December 2031.

Need it for a whole studio at one site?

Email: a3dtools+support@gmail.com for a site licence.