I'd be interested in seeing examples of a stylised, slightly painterly look coming directly out of Substance designer/painter
I've just started looking at it as a workflow option, and while it's clear that it's going to be a big time saver, proving its place in developing the style is the next step
That's a very rigid definition of what is hand painted. I assume you would only count something as hand painted if it had static, painted in lighting? I wouldn't. Sculpting a stylized highpoly mesh is very similar to painting in lighting, you're just shifting where the work is done. Plus, it's likely the artist hand painted the input maps here (diffuse/spec/gloss).
Thanks very much for all the replies everyone. There is definitely the possibility to achieve stylized and hand painted PBR, I was just wondering whether studios actually do it and HOW they do it.
EQ: hand painted for me would mainly mean that hand drawn, painterly effect when looking at the colors of a models texture. Strokes that look like someone actually used a paint brush to achieve gradients, color shifts etc.
hand-painting the normals would go a long way toward this effect, which is what this krita plugin is attempting to do. Check it out, skip to around 8 min mark. I guess it works by picking up on the tilt of your wacom tablet, looks very interesting.
What comes to my mind is the human skin. It's somewhat complex that you can't achieve believable enough skin diffuse/albedo just by combining multiple baked texture information. So, some painting is needed to some extent.
We could spend a long time trying to define what a term like "handpainted" could mean in different contexts ... but at the end of the day, the skillset that a studio is after when posting an opening for an artist with "strong handpainting skills" is very specific - and it involves much more than just "handpainting" surface effects
So, do you think it takes a vastly different skill set to do a stylized hand painted diffuse only texture with baked in lighting, vs doing a stylized sculpt with painterly current gen materials? I think there is a lot of overlap. That's not to say that being good at one automatically makes you good at the other, but doing either well requires the same fundamental skillset imo.
I agree that when hiring hand painted probably means something very specific, though this can vary depending on the goals/art style of the studio/project. I also think what is stylized, hand panted, etc are constantly evolving terms especially as tech progresses. Dota assets are a good example, typically those are a mix of what would traditionally be considered hand painted, with a clearly stylized look, but also with more modern shaders than you would see on a flat lit diffuse only mobile game.
I also think it's important to remember that things like directional light bakes are not a new concept, we've been doing them for the last 15 years, even with assets that fit into the rigid definition of hand painted, it's just that today we have better tools and faster computers that allow us to create more detailed meshes to bake from.
TLDR; It's a spectrum, rather than a binary choice/definition.
So, do you think it takes a vastly different skill set to do a stylized hand painted diffuse only texture with baked in lighting, vs doing a stylized sculpt with painterly current gen materials?
As a matter of fact, yes Of course one skillset feeds the other (similarly to the way traditional sculpting can help someone's drawing skills and vice versa). But it is pretty clear that, say, a skilled Zbrush artist with no previous experience in straightforward "handpainting" techniques would need quite some time and practice (months ? years ?) to get to this kind of result : https://vimeo.com/5820395
But of course I do agree with your overall point : every project is different, and every engine can be used in many different ways. This is precisely why I went for the example of a job opening listing "handpainting skills", because this is probably the one case where things are very clear - that is to say, the recruiter is definitely *not* looking for a Zbrush artist doing chunky sculpts, but rather for someone who can paint convincingly shaded textures from scratch.
I do agree that the meaning of a loose term like "handpainted" can shift and evolve ; after all words are just labels, we just have to make sure that we are talking about the same thing by looking at practical examples. However, "stylized" is a pretty well defined term, and I personally don't see the need to use it interchangeably with "handpainted" because it can only lead to more confusion
So, do you think it takes a vastly different skill set to do a stylized hand painted diffuse only texture with baked in lighting, vs doing a stylized sculpt with painterly current gen materials? I think there is a lot of overlap. That's not to say that being good at one automatically makes you good at the other, but doing either well requires the same fundamental skillset imo.
I agree that when hiring hand painted probably means something very specific, though this can vary depending on the goals/art style of the studio/project. I also think what is stylized, hand panted, etc are constantly evolving terms especially as tech progresses. Dota assets are a good example, typically those are a mix of what would traditionally be considered hand painted, with a clearly stylized look, but also with more modern shaders than you would see on a flat lit diffuse only mobile game.
I also think it's important to remember that things like directional light bakes are not a new concept, we've been doing them for the last 15 years, even with assets that fit into the rigid definition of hand painted, it's just that today we have better tools and faster computers that allow us to create more detailed meshes to bake from.
TLDR; It's a spectrum, rather than a binary choice/definition.
to be honest, it's rather hard to find people who can paint, but i can train anyone to use our tools to create what looks like handcrafted textures from polypaint and a bunch of other bakes.
It was this lack of proper artists which forced us into creating workflows to create the wanted results. And i am no exception to this, i never properly learned to handpaint stuff in a way like b1ll or pior or Bobo. I always found ways to cheat myself around that, settlers 7 for instance was based A LOT on the concepts and given colorepallette.
By now it is usually better to hire an illustrator if we want really painterly textures, or for diffuse only jobs.
The basics might be similar but polypainting in zbrush based on a sculpt with the proper forms is so much simpler than painting all that lighting and shading and so on from scratch.
Haha, well I agree, if your definition of what hand painted is is what b1ll and pior can do, it would be hard to find suitable artists. But that's sort of like saying it's hard to find anyone who can do concept work because most artists aren't as good as Craig Mullins.
I think we're on the same page in terms of finding illustrators for this sort of work. I don't think it's really the workflow that is a restriction but traditional/fine art skills. If I wanted someone to do painterly stuff those are the skill sets I would look for rather than traditional hand painted texture experience.
Anyway my main point was there is a lot of range between traditional hand painted and current gen automated/procedural (quxiel/SD) type workflows. It's not a 0 or 1 proposition and I don't think it does anyone any good to get married to a specific workflow.
I do agree that the meaning of a loose term like "handpainted" can shift and evolve ; after all words are just labels, we just have to make sure that we are talking about the same thing by looking at practical examples. However, "stylized" is a pretty well defined term, and I personally don't see the need to use it interchangeably with "handpainted" because it can only lead to more confusion
Oops didn't see your post. Yeah, I think we're on the same page here as well. I also think it's important to separate stylized, which is more of an art style thing and extremely vague (but at the same time well defined, basically anything that isn't purposely striving for realism could be labeled stylized), and hand painted, which is a workflow specific thing and somewhat more specific. You can do realistic hand painted, you can do stylized proceedurally generated textures, these concepts certainly are not mutually inclusive. I'll admit to not helping the matter here by using terms in ambiguous ways. =P
While I do like 100% fullbright diffuse hand-painted stuff, I really like the hybrid stuff like DOTA2. And I LOVE the 100% hand sculpted, stylized, fully realtime lit PBR stuff.
I'm trained as a painter, and while I can produce the hand painted look that some clients want, I prefer assets that can exist and work in many lighting scenerios because dramatic lighting is something I try to capture in my concepts and illustrations; dramatic lighting scenerios simply can't exist or won't look right with 100% diffuse unless they are painted that way.
hand-painting the normals would go a long way toward this effect, which is what this krita plugin is attempting to do. Check it out, skip to around 8 min mark. I guess it works by picking up on the tilt of your wacom tablet, looks very interesting.
Thanks for mentioning it! I didn't want to respond yet, because I wanted to give you guys an example of something I made with that, and I was away from my desktop past few weeks.
I haven't quite figured out how to do the AO sensibly, but you can get quite far with an edge detection algorithm from the normal map and using that as the base. And then of course there's still the roughness maps, etc.
The brush engine has been merged and it'll be the the next version of Krita, together with JedTheKrampus' normal map blending mode.
Replies
rising thunder is also a pretty good example of stylised pbr graphics
I've just started looking at it as a workflow option, and while it's clear that it's going to be a big time saver, proving its place in developing the style is the next step
EQ: hand painted for me would mainly mean that hand drawn, painterly effect when looking at the colors of a models texture. Strokes that look like someone actually used a paint brush to achieve gradients, color shifts etc.
I agree that when hiring hand painted probably means something very specific, though this can vary depending on the goals/art style of the studio/project. I also think what is stylized, hand panted, etc are constantly evolving terms especially as tech progresses. Dota assets are a good example, typically those are a mix of what would traditionally be considered hand painted, with a clearly stylized look, but also with more modern shaders than you would see on a flat lit diffuse only mobile game.
I also think it's important to remember that things like directional light bakes are not a new concept, we've been doing them for the last 15 years, even with assets that fit into the rigid definition of hand painted, it's just that today we have better tools and faster computers that allow us to create more detailed meshes to bake from.
TLDR; It's a spectrum, rather than a binary choice/definition.
As a matter of fact, yes
But of course I do agree with your overall point : every project is different, and every engine can be used in many different ways. This is precisely why I went for the example of a job opening listing "handpainting skills", because this is probably the one case where things are very clear - that is to say, the recruiter is definitely *not* looking for a Zbrush artist doing chunky sculpts, but rather for someone who can paint convincingly shaded textures from scratch.
I do agree that the meaning of a loose term like "handpainted" can shift and evolve ; after all words are just labels, we just have to make sure that we are talking about the same thing by looking at practical examples. However, "stylized" is a pretty well defined term, and I personally don't see the need to use it interchangeably with "handpainted" because it can only lead to more confusion
to be honest, it's rather hard to find people who can paint, but i can train anyone to use our tools to create what looks like handcrafted textures from polypaint and a bunch of other bakes.
It was this lack of proper artists which forced us into creating workflows to create the wanted results. And i am no exception to this, i never properly learned to handpaint stuff in a way like b1ll or pior or Bobo. I always found ways to cheat myself around that, settlers 7 for instance was based A LOT on the concepts and given colorepallette.
By now it is usually better to hire an illustrator if we want really painterly textures, or for diffuse only jobs.
The basics might be similar but polypainting in zbrush based on a sculpt with the proper forms is so much simpler than painting all that lighting and shading and so on from scratch.
I think we're on the same page in terms of finding illustrators for this sort of work. I don't think it's really the workflow that is a restriction but traditional/fine art skills. If I wanted someone to do painterly stuff those are the skill sets I would look for rather than traditional hand painted texture experience.
Anyway my main point was there is a lot of range between traditional hand painted and current gen automated/procedural (quxiel/SD) type workflows. It's not a 0 or 1 proposition and I don't think it does anyone any good to get married to a specific workflow.
Oops didn't see your post. Yeah, I think we're on the same page here as well. I also think it's important to separate stylized, which is more of an art style thing and extremely vague (but at the same time well defined, basically anything that isn't purposely striving for realism could be labeled stylized), and hand painted, which is a workflow specific thing and somewhat more specific. You can do realistic hand painted, you can do stylized proceedurally generated textures, these concepts certainly are not mutually inclusive. I'll admit to not helping the matter here by using terms in ambiguous ways. =P
I'm trained as a painter, and while I can produce the hand painted look that some clients want, I prefer assets that can exist and work in many lighting scenerios because dramatic lighting is something I try to capture in my concepts and illustrations; dramatic lighting scenerios simply can't exist or won't look right with 100% diffuse unless they are painted that way.
The image files are quite large and non-standard in size(for one, they aren't square), but I think it'd be enough to toy with:
http://i.imgur.com/5el2227.png(Normal map painted with that plugin)
http://i.imgur.com/jBo8bRg.png(Color map)
I haven't quite figured out how to do the AO sensibly, but you can get quite far with an edge detection algorithm from the normal map and using that as the base. And then of course there's still the roughness maps, etc.
The brush engine has been merged and it'll be the the next version of Krita, together with JedTheKrampus' normal map blending mode.
Here's the texture set on a sphere in Toolbag.