Can Someone Clarify 'Hardcore Photoshop' Texturing?
polycounter lvl 6
Hello.
I've only really been doing 3D for over a year now, I started making stuff in Photoshop by rendering the UV layout and placing it in a layer. I'd make up my textures all within Photoshop with all the tools I had knowledge of. Never really made use of something like a normal map.
I then found out about bitmap 2 material, which allowed me to create more stuff, including normal maps. But at this point I could never create good, asset-specific textures. I had no ways of making textures seamless, I didn't even know about baking.
I then found out about Substance Painter and the highpoly workflow and this is where I've been the majority of my time.
Like I said I haven't been doing 3D for a very long time, but one thing that's constantly come up is the 'Photoshop' workflow. I can't find anything solid on what this is, so I can only speculate that it's working with the same Photoshop environment that I began with. But the same issues come up such as having UV seams, not knowing what the end result will look like on your mesh, having a giant mess of UV shells to work with.
I still see people like at Battlestate games who work on Escape from Tarkov, who I've seen state they use Photoshop. So how do the people who make arguably the most photorealistic weapons I've ever seen work in an environment like Photoshop. Though I see lots of benefits to the tools Photoshop has to provide of something like Painter, there's still the benefit of a 3D view, ability to easily create seamless textures, have instant feedback, work in any texture resolution and still export in up to 8k, reimport models with modified UVs and a bunch more stuff.
So what am I still missing? Are there methods that make Photoshop a better environment to texture in? Quixel? Some kind of 3D viewports? How does the gaming industry handle texturing when they have time restraints. Or do these people switch between various pieces of software for different purposes?
And what keeps people working with Photoshop, is it just the fact that they've used this workflow for a long time and they choose to stick to it?
I'd be interested to know how stuff is 'traditionally' done in Photoshop and why people still do it.
I've only really been doing 3D for over a year now, I started making stuff in Photoshop by rendering the UV layout and placing it in a layer. I'd make up my textures all within Photoshop with all the tools I had knowledge of. Never really made use of something like a normal map.
I then found out about bitmap 2 material, which allowed me to create more stuff, including normal maps. But at this point I could never create good, asset-specific textures. I had no ways of making textures seamless, I didn't even know about baking.
I then found out about Substance Painter and the highpoly workflow and this is where I've been the majority of my time.
Like I said I haven't been doing 3D for a very long time, but one thing that's constantly come up is the 'Photoshop' workflow. I can't find anything solid on what this is, so I can only speculate that it's working with the same Photoshop environment that I began with. But the same issues come up such as having UV seams, not knowing what the end result will look like on your mesh, having a giant mess of UV shells to work with.
I still see people like at Battlestate games who work on Escape from Tarkov, who I've seen state they use Photoshop. So how do the people who make arguably the most photorealistic weapons I've ever seen work in an environment like Photoshop. Though I see lots of benefits to the tools Photoshop has to provide of something like Painter, there's still the benefit of a 3D view, ability to easily create seamless textures, have instant feedback, work in any texture resolution and still export in up to 8k, reimport models with modified UVs and a bunch more stuff.
So what am I still missing? Are there methods that make Photoshop a better environment to texture in? Quixel? Some kind of 3D viewports? How does the gaming industry handle texturing when they have time restraints. Or do these people switch between various pieces of software for different purposes?
And what keeps people working with Photoshop, is it just the fact that they've used this workflow for a long time and they choose to stick to it?
I'd be interested to know how stuff is 'traditionally' done in Photoshop and why people still do it.
Replies
I don't think there's any secret that hasn't been talked about since it was the mainstream tool for texturing. I still use Photoshop, although, it's because my computer is very weak by 2018 standards. It's the only way I can get my portfolio done at this point so I have no other choice, but I wish everyday I could be texturing in programs like Mari. Looking down at a flat screen is inferior to painting directly on a model, so there really is no advantage in staying behind the tech curve unless you're like me and have no money.
But that doesn't explain why I've heard that some companies still use Photoshop, whether it's exclusively or just a few people, or is this misinformation? Only game that comes to mind that I've heard exclusively uses Photoshop is Forza Horizon. Not as if there's a lot of detail that would be split apart by a UV seam but still. When performance and money isn't an issue, what keeps everyone with Photoshop?
not true.. we used no prohotshop at all to texture rocks and terrain...
https://www.allegorithmic.com/blog/forza-horizon-3-game-substance
on other projects Photoshop is just the texture hub... cause the engine does read one Photoshop file per assets... wich contains all textures like albedo, roughness, normal...,... depending on the target platform the buildbot does create whats needed... compressing, shrinking and all kind of conversion...
but we use all kind of software to feed Photoshop... mudbox, substance, knald,....
Starting to clear things up a bit regarding the use of PS....
I mean for example when you have to paint in painted metal edge wear, the metal that shines through needs to affect the diffuse, gloss/roughness and the specular/metallic, how do you have the same scratches in your texture change in all 3 textures without keeping all the textures in a single psd file, and if you do, how do you save this? With manually 'save as' for each type of texture over and over?
and at the cheap cost/productivity ratio of substance and ddo, hiring someone at 100k a year to create your own inhouse tools for stuff like that is quickly going the way of the dodo for most studios. It's just far more cost effective to use ready made tools than having to have a team build and maintain their own set of inhouse tools that essentially do the same thing, but usually worse or clunkier.
the main benefit of using just the outputted maps is that it doesnt really matter how you get there, as long as they work. I remember seeing a documentry on the making of uncharted 4 where some texture artists were working in substance, others sculpting textures in zbrush and others using photoshop, and them saying it really didnt matter as long as the end results were great. In most cases, TIME is the one thing a production is always short on, so getting from A-Z as quickly as possible in whatever the artist is most comfortable will usually win out. you have to remember, software costs are a direct tax writeoff for a business, so in most cases they dont even feel the sting that much as opposed to how an individual artist working on their portfolio would.
The major advantage of Substance isn't really in Painter but rather in Designer and the way it enables consistency across a big team.
Anyway all of these are good tools. Substance is going to keep gaining studio ground if there's any left to gain since Adobe is persistently uninterested in catering to our specific market. But Photoshop will be technically viable for individuals as long as textures are image files.
all textures are done by hand or substance... just exported the final output to a PSD...
and all that for a special art style... that workflow depends on the project...
there are a lot of things that are much faster todo in Photoshop...
Substance gives you for some projects only 90% of a clean "art directed" texture...
the final 10% have to be done by hand in Photoshop...
So this clears a bunch of stuff up regarding different texturing software and workflows, I think I'd like to make use of both Painter and Photoshop/Quixel together like oglu mentions.
I've always felt Painter can have better speed as it offers a wide range of smart materials to minimise having to make every asset from scratch, generators to make wear and detailing much faster than with purely hand painting and lots of control with layers that have adjustable/toggle-able filters (unlike Photoshop), but Painter has always seemed to lack a few things in regards to freedom.
One other thing is also performance, I don't know how others handle their projects within Painter but mine tend to really build up in size and in lag. Painting becomes unbearable right when it's needed. I'm interested how it is in regards to Quixel? How does performance turn out once a project gets big? Instant and smooth painting is a #1 priority.
Regarding texture resolution I think something like 8k would be valuable only for showcase, the close up beauty shots are quite a bit nicer with that higher resolution. If it doesn't get in the way then there's little reason to not have 8k available to you, for whatever use. Or at least one step up in resolution from what you need.