Baking Issue After Updating to Version 11.1

[Владислав28052544oedi]

Hello!
After updating Substance 3D Painter to version 11.1, I encountered a problem: the baker stopped working.

What happens:
When I try to start baking, the program completely freezes and becomes unresponsive. I have to force-close it through the Task Manager. The issue occurs every time, even in a new project.

My system:

• Windows 11

• GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti

• GPU drivers are updated to the latest version

What I have already tried:

• Restarting the software and the PC

• Creating a new project

Unfortunately, the problem persists.

Could you please advise what I can do to restore the baker's functionality? Are there any known conflicts or recommended settings?

Thank you!

[lisak54037502]

Having the same issue, 1070ti, 64gb ram, bake hangs at ambient occlusion, model stays dead white and the status indicator moves but no bakes are made, just blanks and the bake is hung, "cancel bake" just makes it start over again! 

[Cyril Dellenbach]

Could you try to disable the GPU raytracing baking? In 

Edit > Settings > General > Baking options

And let us know whether this helped or not?

[Владислав28052544oedi]

Only with these settings was I able to get my baking back, but I still consider it a workaround.

[bartosz_7980]

Hi, I ecountered a problem while baking an object. When baking mesh maps in Substance Painter, the process appears to complete (progress shows all maps baked), but none of the maps are actually generated (the only ones with preview are AO, curvature and thickness). The UI remains in an inconsistent state: the buttons and viewport behave incorrectly, causing overlapping and duplicating windows, with baking-mode elements persisting in Painting Mode.

In-steps:

1. I open any project in Substance Painter.

2. Enter Baking Mode and start baking mesh maps (from low-poly, high-poly doesn't matter.)

3. During the bake, the two main buttons behave as expected:

   • Bake Selected Textures → changes to Cancel Bake

   • Return to Painting Mode → becomes dimmed/unavailable until bake finishes

4. When the bake progress indicates all maps are baked, the buttons remain in the bake-mode state instead of returning to the normal finished-bake state:

   • Cancel Bake still functions and triggers a new bake.

   • Dimmed Return to Painting Mode functions and returns to Painting Mode.

5. In Painting Mode, the viewport still shows baking-mode elements. Opening additional windows or moving UI panels causes them to overlap, duplicate, and glitch, worsening the visual corruption.

• No crash occurs; Substance Painter remains open and responsive, aside from visual glitches.

• Logs show no errors related to baking.

• The problem occurs across all projects and texture sizes.

• Disabling hardware acceleration, reinstalling GPU drivers, and reinstalling Substance Painter did not fix the issue.

• The problem started suddenly and persists consistently.

Expected Result

• After baking completes:

  • Buttons return to their normal state.

  • Baking-mode elements are cleared from the paint-mode viewport.

  • UI remains stable with no overlapping windows.

  • Maps are correctly baked and appear in the project.

Actual Result

• Buttons remain in baking-mode state.

• Baking-mode elements persist in the Painting Mode viewport.

• Additional windows overlap or duplicate when moved or opened.

• Maps are not generated despite the bake progress showing completion.

Steps already attempted

• Reinstalled GPU drivers

• Reinstalled Substance Painter

• Disabled hardware acceleration

• Reset UI layout

• Tried both new and old projects

• Tried different texture resolutions

• Tested baking with and without high-poly mesh

• Tried running Substance Painter in OpenGL mode instead of DirectX

• Reset Substance Painter preferences

SPECS: 

• GPU: MSI GTX 1080

• Driver Version: NVIDIA Game Ready 581.80

• CPU: Intel i7-6700K

• RAM: 48 GB

• OS: Windows 10

• Substance version: 11.1 (newest) 

Side note: Initially, I suspected the issue might be related to my GPU drivers, because the first time the problem occurred, I’m fairly sure a window from NVIDIA appeared during the bake saying that the app had crashed and needed to restart. However, I don’t think the driver actually restarted, because everything seemed to remain active afterward.

I would really appreciate some help.

[Nachovsky]

I was also getting errores with the baking on the new version, i had to regressed to before since the CPU baking is really slow. It would be nice to be able to still use the old opengl. I don't have a modern GPU and before i could bake superfast 

[Cyril Dellenbach]

Thank you for coming back to us! This helps understanding the problem. We'll investigate and find a fix as soon as possible, but in the meantime you'll either have to rollback to previous update or bake with CPU.

I'll keep you updated on the mater.

[Cyril Dellenbach]

Do you also have a Nvidia 1000 serie GPU?

[Cyril Dellenbach]

I've merged your message with this thread, considering it's surely the same issue.

[bartosz_7980]

When I opened substance the next day it worked perfectly normal. No idea what could have caused or solved it.

[Nachovsky]

Yes i also have a 1000 series gpu, i have a 1060 6gbs.

[annellys19220768]

I have the exact same problem. I start baking, but It's not actually baking anything, and then it stops and crashes. I was trying to find any solution but I couldn't find anything to fix it. Finally I just installed an older version and that works, but I'd like to be able to go to the  newer version . These are my specs: 
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz 4.00 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB), Intel(R) HD Graphics 530 (128 MB)
System Type 64-bit operating system

Already tried: new and old projects - same result 

Model stays white and then substance painter crashes. I'd appreciate some help

[Cyril Dellenbach]

To be clear, we don't officialy support Nvidia GPU under 2000 serie. However, this 11.1 clearly burries 1000 series and this is obviously not our goal, so we're currently looking for potential solutions, but I have nothing to share at the moment.