Stylized Character Model(Feedback Request)

Jaffa

Ive been working on improving my character art for sometime and I decided to have ago at doing something abit more stylized(similar to whats in DOTA or LoL) however im having trouble achieving that hand painted look. My 2d art skills are not that strong so Ive been using a substance painter workflow as opposed to doing it in photoshop, if anyone can provide any insight as to how I could improve my texturing work id appreciate any help.

Thanks Tom

Brian "Panda" Choi

The short, but admittedly somewhat unhelpful answer, is you need to treat the texturing literally as a traditional
painting.  Almost most of the lighting work needs to be done by your painting skills (not texturing skills).

A small part of a longer answer is below:  

This is what you want.  Impression of real life.  Artistic lenses at reality.


This is not what you want.  3D attempts to recreate reality.


There are artistic liberties you need to get used to, such as extremely colored shadows, baked in highlights.

You need to more or less paint EXACTLY like a concept artist or a painter would in regards to your models.

This model, which is only a diffuse/albedo map.


More or less  worked off of concept art that looked like this:


Painted in the blush on the face with soft brushes.  Highlighted the crevices of the wood and armor with straight up darker lines.  Manually painted in the highlight of the eyes with a literal white dot.


Some small, actionable things I think you can do right now:
1) Liven up our skin.  It's flat at the moment.  Right now, paint in the shadows and highlights of your skin as if a directional light was shining from above your model.  And not just that, add more reds, yellows, and blues!  Look at our own skin, see how goosebumps appear redder, or areas on your head look somewhat bluer because of heavier patches of hair?  These variations, as subtle as they are, add up to a rich complexity that is organic skin!  Blood, muscle, pus, acne, hair, and oil!


2) When you're painting shadows or highlights mostly ANYWHERE, it is not simply adding more black or white to a color to make it darker or lighter.  If you do that you're going to mute so much of the range of values.  A decent, but not ironclad, rule of thumb is this.

If it gets darker: Color edges towards cool hues (blue) as the value drops.
If it gets lighter: Color edges towards warm hues (red, yellow) as the value goes higher.

You can test this with the paintings above (not the 3D Renders), in general, any of the colors as they go lighter or darker transition in hue as well as value.

3) Grab a suitable reference from here and recreate their material definition in your work:
http://polycount.com/discussion/138341/the-great-3d-game-art-giveaway-thread#latest

Jaffa

Hey Brian thanks for your reply, theres definitely alot of useful information in there I can use to help improve my skills! Though it sounds like for this sort of character work its as much about changing how you think as opposed to just changing your workflow