Professional Texture painting workflow.

melviso

I have been painting my textures myself for sometime now and it has become something I really enjoy.
I know there are artists who prefer to paint their textures in layers and some that paint their textures in one go without layers like this guy:

https://vimeo.com/28014827

I am kinda curious that if he paints everything for the diffuse in one layer,how does he create his specular map? Does he go over it again from scratch in photoshop using the diffuse as a reference, darkening the areas that have no specular and vice versa. I am guessing he desaturates the diffuse map and goes in to manually edit the map to the appropriate specularity with a brush?

For me, I work in layers and the amount of layers build up really quickly and even though they are named, going in to look for a particular layer hidden among folders can be a pain,not to mention, bump, diffuse, gloss group of layers all in the same psd file.

I am thinking of trying this approach where u work only on one map/layer for diffuse, bump, specular, reflectivity as u paint rather than a lot of layers as u can curtail a lot of bulk that way, not to mention the huge file size especially when painting 8k texture maps.

Would appreciate any input from professional texture artists. I know some ppl may mention substance designer, ndo and crazy bump but my focus primarily is on texture painting by hand.

Thanks

Burpee

I don't think zBrush is really used in a pro environment ( might be wrong ) but usually hand-painted texture worked great in a software like 3DCoat when you have layer blend mode. Give you so much more control.

Eric Chadwick

melviso wrote: »

I am guessing he desaturates the diffuse map and goes in to manually edit the map to the appropriate specularity with a brush?

Yep, that's the most likely method. You want those pores in the specular maps.

Workflow depends on each artist. Some love a more procedural workflow. Some love to paint more. Some have tons of layers in a huge mess, and thrive this way. Others are very organized and minimal. All the best ones are good painters though, in my experience.

melviso

@Burpee ZBrush is used a lot in professional studios for texturing. There are a lot of artists who prefer the polypainting as they do not need to worry about uvs until after retopology and for concept sculpts for visualization purposes before the final design is locked down.

@Eric Chadwick Yes, I agree as well.Tried the approach and I think I am gonna go back to layers. Especially as I can work non destructively and go back to re-edit maps or change certain features. Just realized workflow with layers is kinda faster and saves u a lot of time especially when u need to change stuff.
Also I wanted to ask about viewport canvas. Is there a way to save png files or a map with transparency from viewport canvas? I don't get why the background layer cannot be turned off. It gives u the psd option though but it would be cool if u could just save a png with transparency straight form viewport canvas.

Eric Chadwick

If you use Layers, you get transparency for each one.

melviso

I know, my problem is when u leave viewport canvas mode by right clicking, it saves the layers down to the background layer which has no transperency so even if u save as a png, the alpha map isn't stored.

itzaspace

Mudbox and photoshop works very good for painting textures and materials, mudbox have the funtion to be linked in photoshop, so if you want to do something in your texture in photoshop it will be updated into mudbox in real time.
There is a video showing it.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yM_e7rRVtg[/ame]
and is really easy to use.

melviso

Thanks itzaspace, that was quite helpful.