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davescm
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 15, 2025
Released

Generating thumbnails

  • August 15, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 387 views

Why on opening Substance Painter do the shelf thumbnails all need to regenerated, indicated by the generating thumbnails message? Admittedly I have a lot of assets in my shelf, some of which are complex, but generating the complete set every time I open the application just adds unnecessary delays.
As a comparison, when I open Lightroom I have the equivalent to 20,000 thumbnails (previews) instantly available they are not regenerated every time. 

I can fully understand the need to generate fresh thumbnails on new or modified assets, or even on all assets if the application has been updated or the 3D engine changed. However, surely the principle of a thumbnail cache should be that unchanged assets can use a previously generated thumbnail.

 

So the idea is : To use previously generated thumbnails unless the asset is new, marked as modified, or the application has changed.

Dave

3 replies

Cyril Dellenbach
Community Manager
Community Manager
August 26, 2025

I agree it does take a bit of time though.

 

Cyril Dellenbach (Micro) | QA Support Artist | Adobe
davescm
Community Expert
davescmCommunity ExpertAuthor
Community Expert
August 25, 2025

Ah - thanks for the explanation Cyril. It does seem to take a long time to load those thumbnails hence I thought the message indicating 'generating thumbnails' was real.

Dave

Cyril Dellenbach
Community Manager
Community Manager
August 25, 2025

Hello Dave, hope you're doing good.

 

In fact, your idea is what we're already doing. Thumbnails are loaded from the local cache and not regenerated every time.

 

However, the "generating thumbnails" message from Painter doesn't change when it's actually loading the thumbnails. I admit this is misleading and we should have a different message.

 

Best regards,

 

Cyril Dellenbach (Micro) | QA Support Artist | Adobe