This is a texture breakup filter I made for Substance Painter, built efficiently in Substance Designer to stay as lightweight as possible. It acts non-linearly over the input mask, therefore giving a more organic feel and restricting the breakup towards the edges. There are a lot of controls for the breakup itself such as aspect ratio, contrast and falloff before/after the breakup, as well as allowing the use of a custom texture.
In some ways it is inspired by fractal blur gizmos I have used before in other software such as Nuke. Using methods such as inverting and adjusting the levels of the source mask and applying the breakup to that, then mixing it back in with the source. This allows the breakup to be non-linear as I’ve alluded to, avoiding the look of a grunge texture being overlaid super evenly all over another mask. Obviously it doesn’t provide a perfect result and hand-painting is still needed for finesse, but it gives a better starting point.
Also, it is very possible to do similar things already in Painter with the use of dummy fill layers and anchor points and then compositing those further up the layer stack, but it is much less intuitive or convenient than having it wrapped up like so.
Here is a video breakdown: Substance 3D Painter – Texture Breakup Filter – YouTube
It can also be downloaded for free on my Gumroad: Substance 3D Painter – Texture Breakup Filter