Original subtitles

So now we're on to the texturing phase.

And for texturing we're going to be using Adobe Substance Painter.

And we start by loading in our mesh and setting up our texture sets with the appropriate mesh maps that we've just baked out.

So I'll go through each one of these sets and make sure they're all set up correctly.

And I'll do some preliminary scene setup also, adjusting camera field of view to around 12mm

and I'll also change the HDRi to Studio Tomoko which has a nice neutral colour to work with.

This is important so we don't have any coloured lighting information distorting our texturing workflow.

If you remember in the baking video we didn't bake out the position map and I typically do this in painter so that there's no mismatch in calculation as there can be at times with marmoset.

So we'll do this now to ensure the best results.

And so we do so by going to the bake mode and selecting the position and baking it out. And I've noticed some issues and I have forgotten to offset any overlapped meshes.

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So make sure we do this before we get any further to avoid any issues.

So we just literally offset it by one in the x-axis I believe is and then the baking of the position

map will match up correctly and there won't be any issues when we bake our

position map we're not using a high poly as a source so we only really need to

use a low poly as reference so make sure you have that ticked. It only needs the

low for the position in world space to do the calculation and I've actually

just realized here that I haven't set up the other texture sets to just bake out

the position map so it's trying to bake out all the maps using the low poly as

its reference causing it to overwrite our imported

maps please do be careful not to do this and make sure you apply the correct settings for the

position map bake on all texture sets so i think we're just going to start by laying down some base

materials to get an overall feel of the asset this won't be near final but it will help us get an overall feel of the asset. This won't be near final, but it will help us get an idea of how it will look

and give us some direction of where to go.

And so we're just going to start off with the grip.

With this black material, it's very, very shiny.

And so I feel like this might be a little bit tricky to get right,

and it's going to need a lot of playing with.

And I don't think there's any issue with using the base materials that ship with Substance Painter.

I do think it is a lot better to build up the materials yourself the reason being is that when

using the pre-made materials in painter they have a very common look that is

very apparent when used and so either it will need a lot of tweaking or you'll

have to just build the material up yourself like we're

doing here with the steel it's I'm just having a look at this brushed steel

effect using a film with a directional either a directional noise pattern or an

honest isotropic noise texture. I'm also referencing a website that gives proper

values to particular metals and that website is physicallybased.info it lists all the correct albedo

values even for the substance painter and a whole host of different colour space gamuts

and different engines and so we'll be using these values for the text shrink as a base.

Whilst I don't quite know what metal this is, I'm just having a look at what looks closest or what I think looks nicest

sometimes it does just mean guessing the values but it's always better to have the actual physically

accurate values there so this metal side plate obviously has a coating on it so we'll have to make that later on.

And a lot of these have a similar metal coating so I'll be applying this to different parts. The way I layer materials in Substance Painter is really by material versus by part.

Because you'll find that in a lot of assets they share the same materials, so it makes

no sense to have multiple parts that you just duplicate the materials, because that just wastes a lot of disk space and basically chugs performance.

So I think it's more performant if you structure your substance file based on materials,

the materials that you can see, and then you can make individual alterations on new layers for above

those for the different parts

so what I'm doing here now is I'm looking at the ref and I'm noticing that

there's little white specks on the paint and I want to recreate that effects basically but before I do that I just want to add some generic AO just to

ground ground it a little bit and give some roughness variance and I'll do that

by looking in the roughness channel view and then just having a look at how that affects the overall

glossiness or roughness of the the texture

And it's really key actually to build up a really good

alpha and stencil

library There's plenty on ArtStation of I can't give any

there's plenty on ArtStation of I can't give any of the ones that I use as the mostly paid for typically from ArtStation or Gumroad and I'm looking at

there's some height differences here also.

So I'm just looking at how I can do that myself.

And then also some slight roughness variances

as in a more generic sense.

Again, this doesn't have to be totally accurate just now, we're just getting a feel of it. So I'm just playing with the idea that there's really like small micro normal information there that I can see in the reflectance of the reference now I want to try and recreate

but I might leave that till later actually

so now we're going to I think think the camera housing or maybe actually the frame panels

again, just to get this a little bit closer.

Now even though we have the ref and we want to try and get as close to the ref as possible,

it's not always necessary.

Sometimes we want to take some stylistic choices with it and

sometimes we want to change things a little bit to our own preferences and

that's okay it's just a lot about of experimentation and seeing how we can

make it interesting now the metal does have like a blue tint to it, more so than the trigger for example.

And so we just want to add some of that there.

And again just adding some generic dirt and grime just for the roughness pass as well. I just want to save these out

and have a look what it looks like in Substance Painter and in Blender. For the setup I'll be exporting albedo, normals, metallic and gloss but the

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gloss is packed into the alpha of the metallic. I typically do this because of the workflow

and shaders are up in rust and so that's just what I'm used to doing. We just have to make

sure we invert the alpha of the metallic when hooking it up in blender but please feel free to export if you're following

along with this tutorial in any format you wish and it's totally not necessary to set this up

in blender like this it's just something that i like to do it often helps me if there's myriad parts and I haven't applied them before texturing to be able to do that more easily here.

And it also helps me see any issues that I might not see in Marble Set Toolbag.

we can have a similar look at what the end result would be but I'm just gonna go have a look in marmoset now typically I I try and see the results in marmoset tool bag as I go look go along in the texturing phase. It just again like in Blender helps me see

any issues with the textures under different lighting circumstances and it

gives me a good idea of the direction of the final render that I want to make. So the setup is pretty straightforward it's similar to in Substance Painter where I have a very wide or short field of view around about 12mm. millimeters or actually no actually higher than that it's 200 millimeters

typically for renders like this and I use RTX for the ray tracing which gives really good results very quickly.

So yeah, here I'm actually using 120mm,

which is 11, I think, 11.42 field of view.

In any case, it would be a huge lens in real life.

So we're just going to apply some

base materials

for the lens as well not super accurate at at the moment, as I said before.

Just something to get an overall idea.

And actually, it's looking really quite similar already.

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with that so far.

I'm pretty happy with that so far.

Again, the goal isn't... The goal, I guess, in some way is to get it

as accurate to the reference as possible,

but also this is something that's going to be in a game

in a different context than it is in the reference.

And so what we might see in the reference might not actually be appropriate

for the end result and so you have to imagine in your mind what the context would be in this case

if it's just for a portfolio piece then even then understanding the context or the imaginary hypothetical context of the asset goes a long way, actually.

And it's actually a really good thing to have that practice in you to think ahead when you're texturing.

when you're texturing because that the lighting and the setup and the condition even though it's is quite a used object um would never be in the same context that

it would be in a game it wouldn't just sit there in a nicely lit

neutral room you know it might be being used in the field getting all dirty and grimy a lot more scratched

up so that's some things that you have to take into consideration when doing your own versions

of items it's really good practice to get it as accurate to the reference and that's what we'll

try to do but also it's totally okay to divert from the reference and essentially make it your own.

So here I'm just adding some general wear to the object, just grounding it in a bit

more reality so it's not just so super clean.

Really looking at the subtle AO.

I'm going to start by using some stencils, Grime Alphas.

Just to get some base scratching and edge wear,

just to separate that dirt pass up a little bit.

I think one of the rules here is subtlety is king really. If you build up this wear gradually rather than making I guess bold moves straight away you'll have a

lot better results a lot of details are actually very very subtle so I'm just

trying to recreate some of the the darker edges that I can see in the reference.

And these aren't necessarily scratches.

It looks like just some dirt has made its way on there.

Like it's not quite surface level scratch.

Again, it doesn't have to be super accurate just now, just

doing some

generic pass at the moment. moment

one of the important reasons why we use stencils is that these stencils have all come from real scratched objects so instead of having to manually paint we can get really good realistic results from using real

objects that are actually scratched to to get the results that we want to see

I can see that it's it's quite obvious that marking there it should be

a lot more subtle so I'll have to turn that down later

So I'm just going to have a look at this brown, wear and tear, and just kind of try and see close to it Some of these alphas are taken from actual objects that if you turn black and white you can extract a lot of scratch information from them.

And these aren't ones that I've done, these are ones that I've found on various Discord

servers or just online somewhere.

or just online somewhere.

And as you can guess, it's a lot of playing around trying to find the right one.

And that's totally okay.

And it's something that you should be doing when creating these kind of materials from scratch.

It's just a lot of experimentation.

Because eventually you will find something that sticks and that works really well

so the technique I'm using here is I have a paint layer in the black mask that's set to normal and then I have another one on top of it which is set to linear dodge which allows

me to add in additional alpha detail from another alpha it just allows me to have multiple alpha stencils

that don't overwrite each other so I can just pull different parts of it and just

have a more advanced overlay of these alphas

So essentially what I'm doing now is just getting a general idea of what wear would look like using these materials.

Again these might not be final, that means they could be, it's just again get a general gist of things

and it's really important to know that you don't have to be stuck with one

version of your texturing as you're going along you can always go back and

just redo things

which probably sounds like a really obvious thing but actually

it might not be

for some of you that are listening to this

you can take your time

you can make mistakes

and basically just play with things

see what works, what doesn't

and that's a totally valid way

of working so I'm gonna have a look at this text now I've just got some basic

text that is kind of close to it that I've made in in Photoshop and I've just

exported out as an alpha and I'm going to use anchor points to really drive

this so the first layer is literally just an empty layer with a mask. It has to be a fill layer rather than a paint layer.

And that just drives the anchor point. So in the first layer you use the stencil to paint.

And then you have a second layer for the text height and that only controls the height and then you have an initial fill layer and you add the

anchor point to that fill layer and then you can adjust the height from there

and then the third layer which is the the darker color layer is derived from the height of the text.

So you have two anchor points, one for the initial paint, typically either for the text

height to drive the colour, because if you have any blurring it can affect that or you can just go from the initial text paint

which is what I've done here

so I'm using some

fill layers, dirt layers set it to either overlay or subtract.

Typically I go with subtract just to get some variance in

the the text itself so it's not so neat but i think i don't i'm not quite keen on

that it's just some experimentation that i was doing

So even though the text isn't quite the same, it is pretty close and it's given me a good idea see what it would look like if I have some edge wear derived

from the anchor point using a high pass to help isolate the edges with the levels with the black set to 0.5 allow

me to further isolate just the edges

I'm not entirely sold on it but it's kind of nice let's just have a look at what that looks like.

Not bad.

I was really struggling with the lighting here because there's just something about

it that I wasn't quite happy with. For some reason, the black painted metal just seemed a bit too dark for my liking.

So I do spend some onto the text ringer.

I'm not going to go too detailed right now on these knobs, but I do want to have a look

at this radial detail.

So I'm just going to use the anisotrophic radial just to get some of that effect.

It's not quite the same but it's similar. I think to get it exactly

right with the Anisotropic you would have to use a particular shader which is

a little bit more of a complex setup.

So I'm just going to try and use some stencils here that we've got. These are actually made by hand in Photoshop, which was literally just a line, a few lines

in fact, horizontal lines. I think it's using the polarized

polarizer filter which generates them in a circular pattern with some grunge

overlaid on just to create those effects. I'm just overlaying some darker specks and grunge, just layering it up.

Layer on I'll do this but it actually has a like a powdered coat to it and substance

painter has a nice way of doing this using a flaked normals which we will do later

so just building that grunge up there I kind of like. It's not exactly to the ref, but again, it's just my own preference really.

Yeah, I'm really liking that so far.

And I'll again preview in Blender as well.

Just because it's just different light setups, different environments can reveal a lot about

the asset that might not be obvious in one engine. So we're going to take a look at this flash camera made in Japan text.

And we'll find something that's similar to it at the moment, not exact.

So I typically save these in PSDs just so it makes it easier to edit and save. And it's pretty good compression as well.

So again, same setup as before.

Initial text layer.

Absolutely nothing on there. It's literally just for the mask really. And then we have a height which then grabs that. Through a fill layer grabs that anchor point.

I think I was actually on the wrong one there. So this is Ray's text it looks like it's sort of worn away to the left of it.

I'm not entirely convinced of that at the moment.

It needs some work.

So let's try a bevel modifier.

Just seeing it.

I've always found the bevel modifier really difficult to work with and it feels like a

very specific use case it's an odd version of the bevel blur filter

it works but only in some instances I find so again we're just gonna isolate

those edges around the text using that high pass and levels method.

Just to get some AO grunge there.

And now let's just do some edge wear on the Pretty basic setup here for now. Nothing too fancy.

If you do use a lot of anchor points it will add to the performance hits of

painter. of painter So there are some raised details here and I'm just gonna try and sort of emulate it a little bit just to see what it's

like I'm not really convinced by this at all let's just let's just go with it let's see what we can

can do from here it's always worth checking out the different channels to see how they're affected in a more isolated sense. That's kind of nice. Still doesn't feel quite right. I do like how it's giving me some variance in the model though.

So what we can do is just copy and paste that to the other texture sets

What we'll do is we'll revisit this a little bit later on

Yeah, not totally convinced by that sometimes it's worth because it is it's too abrupt. It's too in your face. So

Really toning it down actually is a lot better

Than having it so in your face

Yeah, not too convinced by that Just having a little bit of a play with the rendering Again just toning things down. Let's change this up a little bit with this just so it's a little bit more accurate.

What I should have done really is actually separated, well have a second version of the

gun that's exploded.

So a complete version and an exploded version in the same file.

That way with TextRing you can do it a lot easier.

You can see all the parts as individuals I'll have a look later at separating the mesh out but yeah you do

have to be a little bit careful with that because if there's anything

projected it can have some issues with it

I'm really liking a look at this so far

yeah sometimes the scale can produce some odd results we have the depth of field so if it's not the right size because the depth of field. So if it's not the right size, because the depth of field is based on real physical values from a real camera in my tool bank, you're going to have some issues material for the housing using that powder coat I was

talking about before.

And again just really making it a little bit more subtle and this is really

driven from the normals versus the roughness and I'm really liking that

result that's a lot more accurate to the reference

Let's just have another look at this text, see if we can adjust it a little bit more. I'm just playing with the levels and the highpass just to adjust the AO dirt.

I'm using a dirt alpha on a subtract I think it is, just to subtract some so it's not so even I am playing with the I think this is a little bit more like it but we'll be playing with the the height

details on the actual mesh on the frame

mesh on the frame. Again as I said before it's really good to experiment using a triplanar as well so it's all even across the seams. We will look at this a

little bit more later on.

Now just doing it across the other...

Doing the same details across.

Do the same details across.

Just so everything's consistent. I'm a bit happier, more happy with this now. These things do take some tweaking but it's worth it in the end. I found a font that was a lot closer to the original

I'm a lot happier with that. So we're just going to improve the overall look of the lens and it does have a brushing effect so we're just going to use the Matte Effects Matte Finish Brushed Line, Normals Only, and we can just reduce the overlay of that to quite

a degree.

And we can use that Physically Based Info, Dot Info, should I say, to get some realistic materials for the base of it.

That's quite close to how I want it.

Let's have a look at that in Marvel set.

Yeah, that's looking a lot better. That is that brushed effect adds so much to it.

Actually in the ref there's a little bit there's some difference to it as well so I'm just gonna add some

like almost like a Oh darkening but only in the color so only using the color

channel just to add some generic darkening we're using that matte finish

power to coat again but just on that one segment that has it like

in the reference last do some further isolation of that by masking out some of the UV it's really

good to have this variance in there because it just looks a little bit more

cohesive and realistic.

We do need to work the roughness values a little bit more. So what's better than using some fingerprints?

Which is a bit of a trope in video game art, but actually they add a lot to the believability

if used correctly. And already it's looking way more realistic and we want to add some

general like dirt and fibers so I'm going to play around with what works

best and we can take two approaches to this because I actually kind of want it to be closer to.

Just the cavities, really, so we can take two approaches, we can add it in and then just push out, which I'll do now, or we can.

Alternatively, use or in conjunction to this.

Alternatively use, or in conjunction to this the believability of it a bit

more.

It's been used, thinking about the context that it exists in, at least in my mind. Again using that levels adjustment just to make the contrast in the alpha, fill alpha

a lot more accurate to how I want it to be.

I use the colour picker on the photo just to get a sort of similar colour grime.

Not happy with that at all.

That looks horrible.

That's a bit better.

Although it's a little bit strong, you can turn it down a little bit by putting it on multiply.

There you go, it's looking a lot better. Again in the reference you can really see the fingerprints in the reference. Even though it's a bit of a trope,

it's real. You actually do see them, especially on chromatic objects like this.

And if you notice in the ref, the screws are actually quite rusted.

So we're just going to use the default rust material just to add in that detail it's actually a really nice

just aesthetically pleasing difference there in contrast to the chrome color contrast when we add those the dials in decals in using some stencil work just

to add in some natural looking splotches of rust yeah that's looking a lot better

that is now really liking the look of that.

It's always good to have a play with the HDRIs. It just refreshes the eyes to what you're seeing, to how the materials react to different lighting conditions.

Sometimes you can get some tunnel vision. So it's always good to refresh your eyes with different HDRIs.

I even have different colour backgrounds, black, white, yellow and blue.

So I'm pretty happy with the progress here of our base materials.

I've gone a little bit further than just the base but it's good enough for now

gives me a good idea of the direction that I need to go in

so just doing some texture work on the lens hood is actually black, it's not chrome. So getting very close to finishing the base materials for this now.

Not quite happy with the lens but it will do for now.

It's kind of hard to get the lens right without a proper lens setup.

But with that said, pretty much finished with the base materials now and so in the next

video we'll wrap up the texturing and then we can start on the beauty shots.