How To Easily Create Handpainted Models in Blender & Substance Painter

this tutorial is sponsored by the 3d coloring book a project specifically designed to help empower artists who are struggling with texturing a substance painter and to help show you that anyone can create beautiful pieces of art with just a little bit of practice and guidance to instantly gain access to hundreds of pre-made professional level models and hours of high quality tutorials click the link in the description and begin your journey today hi everyone i am max ramirez i am a gamer student and a 3d freelance artist and today at stylus station i will show you my process for my latest pro my latest props the hand painted prehistoric fish so in this video i will show you my process from how i begin with the idea oh i've something some tips on how i've modelled my piece and i will show you how i hand painted this piece using substance painter and finally i will show you uh what uh what i've do uh how i've uploaded on sketchfab so let's start with my references so i started to so i first started by gathering references on pure ref i so i create a mood board about everything i wanted to do with this piece i wanted to to do a fish and have and i want that this fish to have a some kind of prehistoric vibe because i really like these images my main reference was this piece made by jasmine javis i aka lopolico on twitter and sketchfab it's an unpainted piece and i really like the the result as such i wanted i wanted for myself to study hand painting to study uh hand-painted texture and do the same i i i really like her work so uh you should check it out so i started to sketch the form of the of the fish i know i wanted to create something stylized i really like styles stylized and cartoonish art so i wanted to create some kind of silly fish i went at first for a a long-term fish but then i decided to uh to do a a piranha um i realized that only the fish wouldn't be very interesting so i've decided to to make a little cooking scene using a wooden plate and a knife so i went into blender to start modelling my piece to start to model my piece i went into blender so i could start to model okay here we are in blender as you can see here it is my final piece and here my uh my blocking so i will not go uh i will not go very um very gently i will not go too deep into the modeling because it's not the it's not the most interesting part at first i i did a blockout with a basic shape i've started from a cube and i use the proportional editing that you can use using o in edit mode i think that's a very useful tool in blender so yeah i use this to start to to put in shape my my piece so let's see for the fish my main idea for when i model everything is if uh the asset can be um can i can be mirrored miranda i've used the mural modifier that's what i've done for the knife here forget about this so what's that's what i've that's what i did with the knife at first i only modeled just the half of the knife then i used a mirror modifier in order to in order in order to modulate the both sides quickly also this come very handy for the uv space as you can see on the final piece when i uh when i when i try to when i want to see the texture here the uv space is shared on both side and for hand painting this is really great because you only have to paint one side of your props and and not the other but this can create some problem for example for this piece i couldn't put a shadow here because if i put a shadow here because the fish is near the ground this would have been a apparent here so you have to keep that in mind when you uh uv you when you mirror your uh your model so i also uh and that's what i've done also for the fish at first i've modeled only the alf and i unwrapped the and i unwrapped the and i unwrapped the fish then i i've collapsed the mirror modifier then i've moved my my fish in order to to have a more natural pose i've used once again the proportional editing to move to move everything um forget about that as you can see for the modeling i try to to kind and to kinda not have any uh straight line uh you can see for uh for the for the knife you can see for the uh for the fish or even for the for the wooden wooden plate or tree trunk plate there is no there is no straight line because i think it gives a more cartoonish look with uh with not with no straight straight line like this so if you want to do stylized i could uh uh i would not say i encourage you to do this but that's something i like to do when i'm when i'm creating stylized art one other mod another modeling technique i've used for this piece is one of the other model modeling technique i use is to link the object data of the same meshes for example here we have a lot of um of plane this pen will be used as um as leaf as leaf under grass it's a is a scissor grass and this is a um i would say some leaves some grass but it would be very very difficult if we had to paint each kind of grass and there is a lot so what i did as you can see here when i go into edit mod uh there all of this uh plane share the same object data in order to do this you just have to create a plane like this then you hit ctrl d uh sorry shift d you move it around your piece you can move it and change it in object mode then you select your two piece your two pieces and you hit ctrl l you make link object data and as you can see now their share the the same they should they share the same mesh and also the same the same wrap in the same wrap which means when in a substance painter we will paint one leaf here this will be reproduced here and here we can see it on the final model for example i only painted three type of leave and there are only a and they are only repeated and all of this mesh share the same uv space and m type of mesh i would say you can see once again in blender here where i have three mesh and only one uv space so it's very um it's it uh it it's really a time saver saver especially when you have a lot of uh a lot of foliage or or kind of mesh like this i've done the same for the teeth on on the fish as you can see here and here we can see it under the sketch fab on the sketch fab view we can see that you see all the red dots there's all of these two share the same uv space uh because i've linked their um object that because because they share the same object data um one last thing one last one last thing when you model in um in in blender for hand-painted and painted stuff it's about the the normal and your uh the normal of your of your of your mesh when after view you have you have modeled everything uh so make sure to go in object mode right click to click on shade smooth um at first it will look let me show you at first it will look like this and that's not something yeah very nice so what will we we will have to do is make sure that our autosmooth is enabled and this can help a lot for some edge edges but you can also but you can also put some sharp edge uh in order in order that the the shape of your of your mesh come out more clear here for example i select all of the all of my hard edges and i hit mark sharp and this will help you to define your mesh because otherwise it will not render as good when you will hand paint on top so i've done the same for for my fish i only put i've only put a hard edge on the at the edge on the of the fin and also here to to to define the dent also done the same for the uh for the edge of the eyes and formed and for the dorsal fin anyway you will see with your with your normal when when when it will just play with your hard edge until it it look uh fine to you uh also about the the end wrap so like i've said when you model make sure if you model something make sure that if this piece can be mirrored mirrored it mirrored it and before you collapse the mirror modifier because you will need to collapse it at the end make sure to unwrap it before uh as you can see here for the knife i already this will add for that extra space also but one more thing when you unwrap make sure that you put your seams between between two type of texture texture for for example here we have the wood of the of the knife handle and we have the bandages so in order that it could no i would say it's more easy for you when your texture that you that every type of texture are delimited uh yeah daily uh delimited by uh by your your sims seems um um one last thing um so yeah after uh i finish to model everything uh i just create a material for um for each type of um for each piece of my of my scene i've done one material for the fish one material for the knife and one mat one material for the nature if you use one material for a different meshes make sure that you unwrap make sure that you unwrap take everything in camp here for example we have some we have some some piece that's not very uh that's not uh properly uh unwrapped so after you uh and so after i finish my model i just select everything i choose to export in fbx i give it a nice name fishy knife make sure when you export to select object uh we don't care about device hit export and now your your mesh is exported you will now we can go to simpson painter to start a hand paint oh i also forgot this one but it's okay okay so now we are in substance painter ready to hand paint but first we have to set up our scene so create a new project and choose as a template pbr metal correctness with alpha blend that's very important for the document resolution you can go with 1k or 2k i prefer 2k and we're gonna select r then we're going to select our fbx and hit ok uh all right uh now we have everything uh just we just have to make sure that our envelope are okay all right okay so now we can start uh to finish the setup uh go to texture set setting and delete everything except base color and opacity you can use emissive in hand painting this will not be the case here but you can keep it if you want okay when we are gone we are only gonna use this two channel okay so now before we go any further we need to understand what is especially hand painting uh when you will and paint it mean that you will give every information on the texture using your your painting skills which mean you will give the texture information of course but also the light information and the um and the shadow information and of end shadow and ambient occlusion information which means you which means you have the control on everything even the light only with your texture so you have to keep that in mind and not use any external light i will we're gonna see that later the first thing to do is sip in substance will be to create folder uh with base color a folder with base color using black mask we're gonna use this this base color folder just to set up the color of our piece here for example let's select some some gray when we have the base color knife and we're gonna put it in a folder and this folder we're gonna add a black mask and now with this black mask we're gonna select uh select it go to a polygon fill use uv uv chunk fill and we're going to select our our metal part for the knife and so we're gonna use um we're gonna block out every color of uh of our mesh we're gonna block out every color of our mesh using folder and um and basically and a fill layer using base color so now we i just need to do this with every part of my of my piece and we're gonna see everything uh later okay so now we have um we have put uh all of our base color for uh we have put all of our base color in our i know sorry so now i have put um every every type of texture in a folder with with a base color his grass is wood here in knife we have the end of the wood the bandages the wood etc don't bother with the red i will i will explain it later and so uh we'll be able to start uh hand paint our props but as i said uh earlier hand painting is about giving heavy information through painting which means here we have the shadow of the light of substance we do not want that so we're gonna we're gonna work everything not in material view but in base color view because uh the final view that you will upload at the end will be this one uh i mean almost this one which will just have to tweak something with the opacity but this view is only with the base color so that's why i've said i've said that you need to put heavy information through through painting so now i will show you my process for for the for the grass for example first i started with a nice classic color for the grass then since there is a something on the grass i added i add now i added a overall shadow an overall shadow layer i have you know darker i use a darker color of green let me see you by the way i've used a darker color of green and also something something less saturated sorry uh this one sorry for the brush for my uh for the brush the brush the brushes i've used uh for uh for this piece were the artistic heavy sponge and the basic soft or basic the basic art or the basic soft so i've so i've used big chunk uh so i so i took my brush and did a big chunk of of painting here i've played a lot with with a stroke opacity with hand painting it's very important that your colors blend nicely if you want them to bla to blend so don't hesitate to use the opacity of your brush or the opacity of your layer so after i've put the first shadow information i would say i've started to draw uh some grass once again i've used the same artistic heavy sponges and with not full opacity i do not recommend that but let's say 60 i've paint using a black mask the shape of the leaf since i wanted a stylized result i decided to go with a big chunk of a big chunk of of leaf or of leave on the floor i do not want it i didn't want to to make some small thing herb don't hesitate when you do stylized stuff to to make it more more exaggerated then i did the same with another color that's why i think the fill layers are very useful it's because if you want to change slightly the color of everything you can simply by using a the fill layer and i added a third uh variation grass then i added a third type of grass so now we have some uh nice nice type of grass now we have some nice type of grass but then to make them react to the light i've used another third layer with a black mask and i used a lighter color and i made the blending mode of the layer into saturation then i i i low then i lowered the opacity this will this helped me to um to create one layer sorry this helped me to create some smooth light information too smooth here for example 22 to give more depth to the to the grass um after this after this i added another shadow ambient occlusion layer once once again i've painted myself oh no for example here i've used a blur modifier i will show you with the next layer uh i use a blur modifier a blur filter uh i lower the opacity to so we can see the other layer behind and here i added a soft light on the on the on the side on the side of the grass um so once again i've i've painted this um this light but i've used a blur modifier let's see i will delete this i've only um i've only um you see um i've only painted a big chunk of light here then on the black mask i had right click add filter filter blur and i can blur it blur it out so we can create a nice transition all right so now for example at this point i think i was satisfied with with my grass but so uh i've made something to i've done some things so i can be sure about the color i took a screenshot of my piece in base color then i then i put it in a photoshop and i just simply add a black and white filter this is a black and white filter it's like because it's like illustration uh when you put your piece in black and black and white you can really see where it lack contrast so here for example even if i not finished my the rest of my piece i can see there is a lack of contrast between the tree trunk and the grass so at this moment i decided to add another dye shadow layer once again i painted some direct shadow i used the multiply blending mode multiply really help when you need to have darker color then i added a blue filter all right i will but now we are but now we still have this ugly red on the side so this thread was just a placeholder it's just to show you opacity when you when you will create your um your base base color layer you will have the opacity at 1. substance will put it at the default at one but if you want to for example here i wanted to make more nice i didn't want to have a big square for the grass i wanted to make a smooth transition so i put a layer behind and as you can see with zero opacity we don't care about the color by the way sorry all right now uh we see no difference but if we go in material we can see that it's transparent where it's where it's paint alright so we have some problem of color but we can edit out with painting with a black mask on the top and that's what i've used for uh for the leaf we're gonna see the the leaf now so now we have the our fill leaf here we've made a folder a folder using a black mask that contained the three type of leaf that we have here and so at the bottom we're gonna use avoid avoid layer so we don't care about the color we're gonna just put it to zero and another layer at the top where we're gonna paint make sure that this layer has a nice color and use opacity one make sure that this so make sure that this layer has opacity one and we're gonna paint d leaf once again i'm using the sponge artistic artistic sponge brush heavy sponge brush and like for the rest i've put at the top one one layer one shadow layer where i painted like some kind of shadow make sure that the layer that you put on top do not go the aft uh to do not um do not exceed the exceed the border uh once again i've i've used some low opacity brush to make a nice blend like this and one another layer for the the the light and the highlight like this for example here something more oh yeah so that's the only time um it's the only time you need to go in material view because in base color view you can you cannot clearly see the the opacity all right so the rest of the the rest of the of the uh of this scene follows the same uh same workflow i i start to work the texture with some variation then i add some light some shadow and and i uh tweak everything a little but i will show you quickly uh the disposition of of the fish and of the knife i will show you the layer disposition of the fish and the knife so we have the fish here with uh with the base color um i've i've started to paint this in photoshop uh but really i followed the same workflow uh the same might set us for painting the rest photoshop is good to uh to to hand paint it's just a little difficult when you when you need to blend your texture between the seams but yeah so uh to show you my workflow first i add the fish with just some of the just some blur i've put using the soft brush then and added uh the that's the layer of the ah sorry so here for example if as for example the the process of the the mouse here we have a fill layer a shadow ambient occlusion layer one for the edge one for the light on the edge for those who who know substance it's kind of like an ambient occlusion layer and one curvature curvature light layer so it's kind of the same process but you have to um to paint them by hand you could use you could use the curvature and an ambient occlusional generator but i don't really like the the result so i prefer to do it hand painted i've done the same for the mouse one one painting for the shadow another to create more shape in the mouse once again this layer helps us to understand the form of our fish in base color then one last just fold the edges and this is just um the eye wouldn't care yeah they can be cut so yeah for the skin fish for example i added one layer with when i just sketch when i just put some clear light for my fish uh to uh i would say to um it's kind of if the light would go on it's some kind of light layer then another one when i just put a started to work the uh here i wanted to work the scale of the fish so i so i added a little uh variation uh i i added a little variation using another another blue layer i did the same here once again to create variation and to simulate the the scales then i added one layer for the for the kind of the edges another for the ambient occlusion here is the edge of the of the eye here i i went once again for the uh edge light and another one for uh like for some kind of dirt in the fish as you can see there is a lot of experimentation for this layer so i recommend you in hand painting to experiment women through the form and the through the layer and through the layers the color and the form of your mask oh i added this layer just to define the shape of the of the of the fish back you can use you know your black mask to create to refine your shape like this but you can also use the polygon fill and select oh not this layer sorry you can also use the the polygon fill just to select the the face that will be in the shadow or in the light this will and that's how your your topology can help you um then i added this white dot to uh to simulate once again the scales of the fish once again i use the image images image reference and as i saw the little scale i try to exaggerate the form of uh of the fish skin so i translated this this little little little dot by some big white dot um here this layer i've used the same process for uh at this moment sorry so at this moment i was satisfied with the fish but i go once i went once i i went once again in photoshop and i saw using a black and white filter that my fish lacked some contrast so he added one darker layer once again with the blur modifier to the variation of my on my fish and finally i added one um just one white layer to simulate the the specular light and so yeah eyes yeah for like last example uh i will show you how i will show you the process for the knife for the knife handle i just started with a base color one layer that that would simulate the um the light once again i try to play it very soft on the on the the edges one for the for the shadow i tr uh i went with a bluish darker color to give more variation once again one uh another color for the light here i use some i've used some hard edges to uh to make the light clear uh another layer for the ambient occlusion between the the wood and the bandages once again with the blur layer and a last one just oops sorry and the last one for um uh for the light on the edge and just with this uh it's not uh it's it's very fast but uh that's what i've what i've used for my final pitch since it was not the the main focus of the fdps of the art um uh don't hesitate yes so to even to stylize the the shadow or the light to give them big shape when you need but uh be sure to be sure to um to have control between the color and the and the shape of the i would say the shape of the light and not i know it's not very clear but if everything is smooth like here or how or sharp like this um it will not it will not look as good uh as good as uh as um as if you uh use both of them ah it's maybe not clear maybe maybe we can cut cut this anyway now now i will finish the texturing and i will show you the uh zip the preset the the preset to export alright so now all right so now uh when we are finished to unpaint our piece our piece make sure that your opacity work in the material view but once again keep in mind that your main view is this one you can go in file export texture and so what i've made uh what i've made is an output template myself for when i want to export unpainted stuff so in order to do this go to output template add plush new x you have is a new export preset yes so change the name to uh and paint preset and so for the output map uh select one rgb map and drag and drop your base color here rgb and create a grayscale map and drag and drop your opacity here from opacity great channel so yeah so i have my hand painted precept so now and put the output in output directory choose your the folder that you want to export choose your template uh file type hit png png texture size select the the one that you that you that you want to kr1k padding i suggest deletion infinite to be sure that there is no problem uh between the theme you can you can click on notepadding if you want to i would say to present your text your work opening and you can export and now now i have my texture here and i can start to upload them on sketchbob so sketchfab is an amazing um it's an amazing uh website to uh uh to upload your 3d art uh so when you have your model uh just so hit hit upload upload your uh the fbx your fbx the the one that you used you used on the substance create a description and go to edit 3d setting in order to put your texture so in in the first scene be sure to click render pba and shading shadeless because if you go to lit it will create a it will put simply put light uh on your model so shareless for the background um it's how you want it's it's really about what background fit more you your peers but now the important there the important stuff will be about to upload your texture so click for example here we are normally you will have nothing but clicks click on manage manage textures and select to import all of your your texture all right and simply here you have your material select all of your material and here select your texture to use oh that's not the one for example here we have a bag um if you have opacity make sure to have opacity enable here the rest we don't care so select uh so once again you have to select your texture and this one but be sure in manage texture for the opacity that the format is luminance because if it's alpha it will create something like this so format luminance for your opacity texture then on your post processing filter i would say it's really up to you i really like like the the vinet uh vignette filter yeah i think it added a more uh really a little more on it the bloom is good to create some fake reflection i'm not a fan of chromatic aberration you can use grain but be aware to not put to don't put too much grain because you could really i would say rin uh make something not very good so here just really play with this uh i i use the sharpness for my piece because i really like the yeah the um the smaller ender to make it a more i would say a 2d look i don't know and then after that you're satisfied with your piece you can simulator what uh no no no forget it you can delete that hit save settings no i didn't pause sorry and then you have your and then you are you have your hand painted model and then you have your hand painted model on sketch web all right thank you everyone thank you for following me for this tutorial on stylize station and i hope you have a great day bye you

Channel: Stylized Station

Views: 42,150

Keywords: blender, blender tutorial, blender (software), blender 3d, blender tutorials, blender render, beginner tutorial, modeling tutorial, substance painter stylized, substance painter, substance painter tutorial beginner, substance designer stylized, substance painter timelapse, texturing tutorial, hand painted, substance painter tutorial, substance painter blender, substance painter stylized tutorial, substance painter stylized materials, substance painter stylized painting

Id: vEkstWB2H_Q

Length: 46min 58sec (2818 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I started with Substance but was disappointed about the lack of easy PSD workflow, since Adobe bought them out and all, they never improved that feature. And PS is my main painting program, plus I use gradients a lot and their gradient tool left a lot to be desired.

All those reasons made me switch to 3Dcoat, which also has some better tools for hand-painting and the PSD workflow is so much better and smoother.

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[u/Communism_is_bae]

Is substance painter free?

[u/Two_Percenter]

I'm wondering what the limitations of painting in blender 2.8+ are? I have substance painter but it speeds up the process so much when we're just able to stay in the one program. (and it's free).

[u/jpgrandi]

Love it mate! Thanks a lot for the tutorial

I'm finally picking up proper texturing skills after years of just modeling and using basic materials 😅 and this is helping me a lot!