3D Texturing Beginners Guide [Nomad Sculpt to Procreate]

hi this is erika kazab from small robot studio in today's video i'll show you how to take a model from nomad scald into procreate for texturing there are two ways to paint a 3d model inside nomad you can use the vertex paint technique we can assign a color for each vertex or point in the mesh the color of each phase will be an average of the points that surround them the problem with this approach is that we need really high topology for the paint to look good meshes like this will have pixelated results the second method is by creating uv maps a process that applies a 2d image into a 3d object for this to work we need to unwrap this object into a flat surface like peeling an orange into a table the resolution of the texture depends of the image we apply to it so the number of polygons will not affect the outcome let me show you how to prepare a model for this inside nomad here's the model that i created in my beginner's guide the very first thing that i want to do is create a copy of this file i'm gonna open the project menu tap on save as tap on the plus icon and label this in a recognizable way next thing i'm gonna go into the scene menu where i can see all the different objects that make my model and i want to make sure that i group together all the things that are going to share the same kind of material for example this corners of the book all of them are going to be made of metal so i want to have them all together for example i got this loose pages and the block of pages as separate objects since they're going to be made out of the same material to group them together all i have to do is select both items with the checks and tap on simple merge if i solo this object by tapping on this button button then you will see that those geometries are gonna be together as just one object now i'm gonna turn on my wireframe with this bottom button again as you can see right now i have really high topology this measures are quite dense which was good while i was sculpting but it's not the best for uv mapping to fix this i'm gonna go into the topology menu and i'm gonna click on the third top icon it doesn't even have a name it just has three dots the very first thing that i want to do is decimate this object let's tap on it to see what it does in short it's creating bigger triangles bigger faces in the areas that have no detail while preserving detail where it's needed what this is doing is reducing by half the polycount you can see up here the number of faces and vertices that we have i'm going to tap it once again so you can see how it gets reduced every so often you might want to turn off the wire frame to see that the shapes are not getting destroyed right now it's looking pretty good so i might be able to go a bit lower if you focus on the outer uv on wrap section you will see there is a warning where it says that this process might take a while if your measures are higher than 100k vertices this is why we want to do decimation to help the software perform better now that this model has been optimized i'm going to tap where it says unwrap and this is what it looks like on the background we can see that flat uv map that nomad created and my model is shown with a uv checker board you can turn off the uv map at the background if you tap on this icon that just show up at the bottom if you want to see this model without the wireframe you just have to go into the shading menu and choose pvr instead of pvr uv you gotta make sure that you follow this process for every single geometry on your mesh select the next one on scene go to the multi-resolution menu maybe solo it to focus only on it just made it a couple times check that you preserve the amount of detail that you want and once you're happy with it unwrap atlas don't forget the higher the poly count the longer it's gonna take the software to calculate this use some geometries might require a little bit of preparation before i decimate them for example this straps on the spine you would appreciate the sort of rare results that i'm getting here before doing anything i want to get rid of this stretch polygons these faces that are not uniform compared to everything else in the mesh so inside the topology menu i'm gonna go into the voxel tab and remesh this you might need to change its value to make sure that the shape is preserved as you want it let's go back to the uv cap and tap on decimate but there is one more problem this nice sharp corners are getting lost to make sure that this are well preserved i'm gonna use the pinch brush and i'm gonna set it really high this is an infinite slider so i can take it much further than a hundred percent and i will go around through any corner that i want to make it look sharp what this brush is doing is attracting all the geometry together like its name say it's pinching it look at the difference between these two corners so you might want to consider spending a bit of time for nicer results you will notice that these automatic uvs are not as nice as the ones that i presented at the start to get this sort of results for optimized and production-ready assets there are extra steps to follow and you will need more robust software like blender z-rush or maya the outer uvs that nomad sculpt creates are good enough for painting in procreate but they are never production ready our patreon supporters can access this model that i created with optimized uvs ready for painting along with many other assets you can also check out my three hour course sculpting a realistic head in nomad a massive thank you to everyone who is already supporting the channel via patreon or through gumroad let's carry on it's time to send this file into procreate inside our project menu i'm going to scroll down into the export section and choose obj i want to make sure that normals is selected i'm going to tap on export obj you can save it anywhere that you want on your device or tab directly into procreate the camera navigation is the exact same as in nomad one finger in the background to rotate two fingers two pen or pinching two fingers to zoom within the brushes you will find a new section called materials in the layer section you will notice that all of those geometries that we've grouped together are set as one material you can turn off the visibility by enabling this check within this group you can add several layers when we are doing 2d painting we only need color but painting materials is a lot more complex think about different items you own of the same color some might be made of metal some will be quite shiny but not made of metal maybe the surface is polished or glossy or its imperfections make it look matte there's a lot of qualities that make materials nevertheless procreate keeps it very simple a channel for color roughness and metal only three things we can see these channels by tapping on the cube icon within a layer and to work only in one channel at a time by tapping on each inside color we are only painting pigment variations roughness will define how glossy or matte a material is white means completely rough black means not rufferal so it's glossy greytones will give you in-between results this channel only works with grayscale finally metal is self-explanatory what is made of metal it also only works but painting grayscale best practice is to either use black or white no in-betweens objects are either metallic or not if what you are looking for is to achieve imperfections simply add them to the roughness channel this is a common practice when 3d texturing if you select the general layer and a material brush you will be editing the three channels at the same time as a 3d texture artist i actually never do this i rather have the control of each individual channel a fundamental tool when doing 3d textures is the ability to manipulate the lighting environment honestly prograde makes this really difficult because i have to go into a lot of menus softwares like 3d code substance painter or marie are one click away tap the wrench icon tap on 3d and select edit lighting and environment you can tap and drag these cubes to change the location of the lighting by tapping on these cubes i can change the intensity of these lights and even add some color by increasing saturation and changing the hue but this is gonna add a red tint to anything i paint so i do not recommend it in fact in the environment section i'm gonna choose the studio setting when setting up the slides i'm not trying to make it look pretty but rather readable a good contrast between light and shadow no tinted lights affecting my color perception let's make this a skull made of gold open its channels select color choose a desaturated ochre color tap and drag this icon into your model to color it gold is made of metal so soda metallic channel has to be white my object is said to be metallic but it doesn't really look reflective that's because my roughness channel is set to white resulting in a matte not reflective metal if i choose a darker color and apply it the result is going to be much different i guess this looks golden but it looks a bit too boring because it's too perfect let's make sure that we are in our roughness channel select the brush with a cool texture let's change this color lower the intensity and add some variations use more than one brush and different tones of gray by adding variety to the roughness map this metal no longer looks perfect i'm gonna add one more layer to paint some dirt in the concavities of this skull as if it's been building up with passage of time and because dirt is not very reflective within the roughness map i'm gonna set this color really high and get rid of that reflective quality where we have more dirt let's carry on with the corner protectors select layer open the channels and for the colors i'm going to select an orange i want to go for a rusted look these are made of metal so let's set middleness to white this time i'm going to set roughness to a mid tone to make it slightly reflective i don't want to compete with the skull which is the protagonist in my book the base layer is ready let's create a layer on top to add some variations first in color the color of rust ranges from red to orange to yellow i like to lower the opacity and build up the color i'm not using any fancy brush i'm still working with this one's included in the materials section and once you're happy with this let's move on to the roughness layer i'm going to choose lighter tones i want to have clear contrast with the skull i want to make sure this is nowhere as shiny as the skull a few accents with a darker color will make it look interesting keep them subtle let's work now with the body of the book which i want to make like green later roughness i'm gonna bring this again into a grayscale leather tends to be a little bit shiny leather is absolutely not metallic so i'm gonna keep this channel black add a new layer get into the color section let's choose a darker tone of green and pick the brush called old skin this is a really cool brush that already has filled in this leather texture when texturing variation is key so maybe use the smudge tool or your eraser to break this perfect pattern think about the areas of the book that would suffer more friction within the roughness channel you also want to add some variation this is one of my favorite brushes for creating variation let's add a new layer between these two to create some variation on that leather color for the areas that are a bit more exposed i'm going to choose a lighter color as always to blend lower this opacity make sure to break any repetition pattern by using your smudge tool subtle changes of use are also a great idea don't be afraid of using a color that feels too different from the original even something like purple can create really cool accents as long as you apply it with subtlety finally why not some darker colors to those areas that would be less exposed and more likely to gather dirt see what a massive difference it makes to add this color variations in between around those unprotected edges i'm going to change the color completely as if the pigment is falling off don't get too obsessed about choosing the perfect brush most of what i'm doing is picking random brushes and experimenting the inside is gonna be mostly hidden so i don't really care about rogue paint for this side straps i also want to make them out of leather but a darker tone to create some contrast finally let's work on the pages of this book i'm going gonna hide all the other geometries that are in the way let's apply a light desaturated color as a base as for our roughness the color has to be quite light one more layer to create variations and i'm gonna use the water brushes this time instead of painting on the 3d texture i'm going to open the range and enable show 2d texture there are times in which working on a 2d texture is going to be more efficient now it's time to show off what we have done prograde is no good for that so we'll take this model back to nomad i'm gonna tap on the range icon and in the share tab choose obj wait for it for a second to generate those texture maps and once it's ready tap directly into the nomad icon back in nomad you're gonna see again this weird colorful checkerboard make sure that you turn off this button button that says uv and you will be able to see your textures if you still cannot quite see them make sure that on the shading menu you have chosen pbr uv because just pvr will not show those lovely textures i'm gonna get rid of this outline inside display settings and within this shading menu have some fun maybe change the lighting environment rotate it a bit even add some extra lights to the scene now it's a time to show off so have fun with this finally tap in the nomad icon and choose turntable and that's it as always i look forward to seeing your creation feel free to tag me in social media i'll see you soon with a new video happy texturing that's it for this tutorial if you find it useful make sure that you leave a like so other people can find it and if you haven't already make sure you subscribe as we are bringing out cg and illustration tutorials every week become a patreon and access tutorial assets bonus content a private discord and more by clicking in the link below

Channel: Small Robot Studio

Views: 2,431

Keywords: texturing, painting, paint, uv, uv maps

Id: WGixpXYPdXg

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 06 2021