As far as substance painters goes, I've been watching a lot of videos but haven't gotten the hang of it yet. I'm not sure how to get the wood grains facing the right way on all my fbx pieces.
I started using painter right before this project and I've had to learn it too. I built my wood textures from scratch for this project so I could learn how to do it. You can rotate your noises by selecting the fill layer, a transformation handle box thing pops ups on the 2D texture. You can use that to rotate the noise however you like. If half your pieces are facing one way, and half the other, you can just use multiple layers and masks to put a wood grain in both directions.
Painter is kind of intimidating because there's several ways to approach a single material. A fill layer is a material in itself and you can do an entire material (color, roughness, normal, etc) within a single fill layer. But you can also do one aspect of a material per layer. I find it easy to do that sometimes, especially with something complex like aged wood. First I start out with a fill layer that's only set to height, then I use the drop down box on the layer menu to select height as well. This lets you focus only on one thing at a time. Then you build your height (which adds detail to your normal map). Then I move on to roughness and do the same thing. Make a fill set only to roughness, then select roughness in the layer drop down. You can keep doing this for each channel of your texture until you get to color. When I finish a channel I group all the layers I used for it into one group/folder. I use a mask on that folder to select which parts of the mesh it applies to.
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I think I'm finished with this one. It's been a hell of a sprint. I might add something since I have some time left. But if not, I'm happy with where it's at now.
@kelly_caroline I have a few smart materials I have made for myself. Other than that it's a lot of just trying to find the best match for certain materials. Source had good ones where I didn't need to make my own this time around, though I would probably make the rope in the future if I were to do this again as I didn't like the parameters on this one too much.
You are correct layers are essential. Get your base materials all in first then start thinking logically about how those layers would need to be applied. For this one I put my woods and metals together. Then I did obvious material transitions metal to rust and treated wood to untreated and damaged wood. I also went outside the lines with the story of this thing. It's always good to add your own essence to a piece. It makes it stand out and be YOU. After those were all in I did color variations with the woods and metals. Focusing between physically accurate and what the concept gave me. There is a lot of different shades of wood on this thing with different saturation as well.
Then I went through the process of aging and thought about what be oldest to newest. So rust drips and bleeds onto the wood, mold builds up in wet spots, the dirt gets on the bottom of things. Used areas become scratched and remove dust and rust and debris but add variation for roughness and height values. Then delved into more subtle effects like sun bleaching/damage and dust.
Each of these passes I go through I add a couple layers of "proceduralness" mask editor and some custom grunges are sometimes enough for this and I make sure to then paint in specific areas that are different throughout the piece. That way there are multiple layers to perceive as natural wear and decay but not so procedural that it looks generic.
Just a quick texturing update. Close to finishing now, still need to finish up the other side and populate the interior parts for some extra visual details.
@TayloredChaos Your vehicle is looking great! And you'd done an amazing job matching all the details of the concept.I'd love to see a turntable of that once it's finished.
@zachagreg Thanks for posting a breakdown of your texturing process. That is some really good advice.
Hello everyone! I'm new to the Polycount community – all the work being posted here is very inspiring!
@icegodofhungary – I like the lighting in your scene, the more saturated tones fit well with the stylized approach you took. If I could give some feedback on just one thing, I think the purple particles coming from the alembic device would benefit from some shape variation. I’m curious, did you use decals or vertex blending for the variations in your floor texture? It looks very good!
This was my first time trying out the Bi-Monthly Environment Art Challenge – next time I’ll have to start posting work-in-progress images much sooner!
Overall I was aiming to match the concept, although I altered the proportions of the room to make it more comfortable for 1st or 3rd person gameplay purposes. I also removed some assets for the sake of scope management.
Some details on my asset production process: I made use of Blender’s Bevel shader to bake normal maps, bypassing the high-poly stage for most assets. I sculpted the tiling brick textures using ZBrush (influenced by Enrico Tammekänd’s workflow). For texturing, I used Substance Painter and Designer. The wood textures were created by modifying and combining multiple Smart Materials from the default Substance library, as well as materials from Substance Share. I also made use of Jonas Ronnegard’s Ornamental alphas and used some of his Smart Materials as a jumping-off point for the metallic assets.
I’ve decided to continue working on this past the February end-date for the challenge – my next goals are to finish the windows and other leftover assets, add more asset variation (especially for the bottles and books), give the environment another decal pass, and go through a lighting/particle pass.
@icegodofhungary – I like the lighting in your scene, the more saturated tones fit well with the stylized approach you took. If I could give some feedback on just one thing, I think the purple particles coming from the alembic device would benefit from some shape variation. I’m curious, did you use decals or vertex blending for the variations in your floor texture? It looks very good!
Vertex blending for the floor. Created a dirt/dust material and plain ol' vertex painting in unreal. The puddle was also vertex painting on a separate channel. I've been considering revisiting this once March/April's challenge is over. I keep seeing stuff I want to fix and change. Things I could do better.
I like yours. I would just add some positional variation to the bottles and books on the shelves. Lean some of the books over a bit. Even if it's just subtle, it would appear less staged.
Unfortunately I've not been able to dedicate time to this to keep up. But I find the piece I chose really inspiring. So I am going to keep chipping away at it in my own time anyway. Great work everyone.
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Just a quick texturing update. Close to finishing now, still need to finish up the other side and populate the interior parts for some extra visual details.
All projects that I've been following here are amazing too, congrats everyone
Challenge #65 is now LIVE! Go check it out: https://polycount.com/discussion/217980/the-bi-monthly-environment-art-challenge-march-april-65
Great work everyone.
I neglected to post here when I finished my piece, but if anyone has a chance to take a look and critique it I would really appreciate it!
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/VdPBzN