[Hand-painted/Sculpt] Defining Materials
interpolator
Hey, so how do you define materials in your sculpts, do you have any special tricks and best practices?
How do you define materials in your hand-painted textures, any tricks or best practices there aswell?
Such as "Rock has low contrast and not much highlights." - "Metal has high contrast and bright highlights." ETC.
When you sculpt/texture a particular material do you have any rules of thumb? Such as always starting at X% black as the base value when texturing rock, or yeah, any techniques that help you speed up and reach consistent results basically? ^^
Here are two dumb cubes I did today, I'm not 100% sure this kind of study is useful because of the variety of contexts the materials are in, and the definition is going to be different for polished wood vs rough wood vs wood on a weapon etcetc.
Next up is going to be Metal - which I struggle with A LOT when it comes to diffuse-only, since metals definition is so tied into it's specular.
How do you define materials in your hand-painted textures, any tricks or best practices there aswell?
Such as "Rock has low contrast and not much highlights." - "Metal has high contrast and bright highlights." ETC.
When you sculpt/texture a particular material do you have any rules of thumb? Such as always starting at X% black as the base value when texturing rock, or yeah, any techniques that help you speed up and reach consistent results basically? ^^
Here are two dumb cubes I did today, I'm not 100% sure this kind of study is useful because of the variety of contexts the materials are in, and the definition is going to be different for polished wood vs rough wood vs wood on a weapon etcetc.
Next up is going to be Metal - which I struggle with A LOT when it comes to diffuse-only, since metals definition is so tied into it's specular.
Replies
as for material tips n tricks, try make some more realistic PBR studies of materials, stylized stuff always gets better when supported by good fundamentals.
http://www.warlordgames.com/head-to-head-panzer-iv-ausf-h-vs-t3485/
Actually, a lot of toys fit this description. They're going to look real no matter what because it's all based on using practical props, the artist just has to fill in the detail.
@JordanN : Cool stuff, I mean everything is based in realism anyways, it's kind of the question of what aspects to stylize and how much to stylize them, right?
I guess ultimately I was wondering if there are any rules of thumb and techniques that people who do sculpting and/or painting uses. But in the end I think most of my badly written questions can be solved with more reference? ^^
Super rough process for the wood, final step was fixing the seams. Since I'm not using 3dcoat or any other 3d painting program it's a bit more tedious. ^^ :
Like, I'm having so much trouble getting it right. I don't know if the highlights are TOO much or too little. And if the contrast is too much or too little. If the only reason it looks more like metal than rock is simply because of the bolts ^^
A lot of it is rough for sure, but I'm trying to get as much as the definition in as little detail as possible, I'm not sure if it's enought. Maybe it's time to dig up some references of brighter metals and try another iteration on the metal?
Looks waay saturated when I look at it here..
Note, that highlight here is almost white:
You should also check this tutorial about paining gold.
https://foervraengd.deviantart.com/art/Tutorial-Painting-Gold-490209106
Since they are Unlit if I made the contrast higher or made the edges brighter they would blow out under any sort of Lighting.
Maybe I should REALLY be texturing them under a proper light-setup... and not having a environment to place the materials in also makes it less reliable........... HMMMM
Thanks for the input @Jedairusz!
So much of this hinges on whether we’re talking about texturing for a diffuse-only engine, or for PBR.
For PBR all that evidence suggests that you paint in any highlights or form shading very weakly (if at all) and let the engine do its thing to generate reflections. All the cool extra detailing comes from the normal map and the roughness map (you can go pretty crazy with the roughness map). If you really want to vary your metal you give it the same low-contrast edge wear you see on wood/stone.
I think your stone looks just right for PBR and your metals are right for diffuse-only, but the highlights are blowing out in the PBR-ish renders. Wood looks okay but I would make edge wear along the cube edges thicker and more noticeable.
General rules? I guess when we’re talking about PBR, don’t try to paint in shadows. AO is very important, but keep it as a separate map. Don’t try to paint in forms bigger than hairline cracks, sculpt or model instead. Stick to a narrow range of values and instead vary the temperature of colors.
Striiiictly handpainted stuff.
I'm showing it here anyways though, if anyone else wants to analyze
I dont think you can push it further without starting to paint in actual reflections and shadows, but then again its gonna look weird when you start moving it around.
you reach a point when you just cant push materials further without starting to play with shaders. even world of warcraft uses reflections on a lot of their non-dielectric materials.
Here's the final presentation of that stupid banner btw
As for a whole topic about orb/faf textures i do not think that this is hard. Its quite easy if you understand what are you doing. First of all you need to know what matcaps actualy are. And the answer is simple, its a phong model set to camera and not to "light source". How to know which matcap to choose? Definition of materials is based on size and power of specular reflection. With this in mind there is no need for "matcaps", all you need is to make a simple phong, diffuse and specular and composite this in programs like substance or blender. Photoshop is just not good here.
Sculpt is ofc important but the more important thing is how actually cavity map looks. Cause how can you judge if your sculpt is good or bad? But even if you make a bad sculpt and your composite looks awful you can still paint it over to get nice hand painted result. Thats the beauty of this workflow.
As for placing your highlights, keep in mind that highlights are reflections of light sources. To keep an inner consistency, matching plane angles should have matching values. So, if you choose to put a specular highlight on your model somewhere, check which areas of your model have matching surface normals, and put a highlight in those spots as well. Similarly, if you put a highlight streak along a cylinder, all cylinders of similar orientation must also have a highlight streak in that same area. A common mistake for instance is to make a highlight streak on a bracelet, but not continue it in the same orientation on the arm.
When trying to sell a material for a hand-painted texture, I would recommend looking up photo reference of that material and take note of the following things:
- The color and value of the diffuse highlight areas.
- The color and value of the shadow areas.
- The color and value of the specular highlights.
- How sharp the specular highlights are.
- How sharp the transition between dark and bright areas is.
And then you try to match these qualities on your texture, ofcourse.
In the case of your metals, I think some facets need to be much brighter, and others much darker, in order to sell a reflective look. You can choose some planes to highlight and some planes to darken almost arbitrarily in the beginning, but then you apply them consistently on matching planes across the model.
As for the gem on the banner, gems have even more interesting behavior. Gems are translucent, so the lighting will pass though, creating an inner glow. Because of that, they often appear dark on top and bright at the bottom, the opposite of what you would normally expect. You'll still see a white glassy specular reflection on the dark upper part of the gem though.
I hope this makes any sense, feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to explain it more.
EDIT: I just noticed this was an old thread. I hope this helps, anyway.