How to make PS1-Esque graphics with Blender 2.9 (Texture Painting)

blender is not only a tool used for modeling and animation but it can also be used for designing materials and textures not everything is done with trim sheets or texture atlases some assets are unique and require their own distinct and dedicated textures these are the main assets also known as hero assets of a project whether they are the main character or a large set piece they deserve extra attention since they're going to be the main focus of a game or animation so let's get familiar with the tools at our disposal so from a new file we'll select our default cube and go into the texture painting workspace and what we're greeted with is our default cube has now turned magenta what this means is that our current object has no texture at all so we need to add one instead of going all the way to the materials tab we can add the texture here by clicking this button we'll be given a few options as to what we want to create but we only need base colors right now i'm going to set the image the way that i want it and i want to generate for this image a colored grid i also want to make this workspace a little bit more homely for me for texture painting i tend to want my object free of any lighting so i'm going to go up here to the viewport shading properties i'm going to change it from studio lighting to flat lighting also i want a preview port for our model since we're working under flat lighting we might want to know what our object looks like under actual lighting conditions so i'm going to split the image editor half and then make the top panel the 3d viewport set the rendering to material preview and then hide all the overlays gizmos and menus and finally i'm going to get rid of the outliner we're not going to be needing it now before we actually get into texture painting i want to urgently warn you that from my experience texture painting is incredibly crash prone before you continue any further be sure to save your project as well as any images that you have edited while it is possible to recover blender projects after a crash using blender's auto save recovery function blender does not save edited images any progress that you would have made during texture painting will be lost make sure that you save often by hovering over the 2d image editor and hitting alt s to save your current image or alternatively save them individually in case you want to return to a previous state with that dire message out of the way let's talk about the tools available in texture paint mode first on the list is the paint tool not sure if much introduction is needed here for this one we have a smooth tool to blur out and soften details we have the smudge tool that pushes and pulls our colors based on the strength of the brush now the clone brush needs a little bit more nuance to describe the clone tool doesn't work like the heal or clone brush and you place the 3d cursor on the model by holding ctrl and clicking on a point in the model which sets a point that blender will sample from however we're not sampling from the actual texture itself we're sampling from the entire viewport like we're transfixing an image of the model itself across the screen it behaves differently in the 2d painting mode but we'll get to that in a bit and the fill tool in the 3d viewport fills the entire model with a selected color that is unless you're using masks the first one that's readily available is the face mask by going up here and toggling this button right here we can now utilize face masks by clicking the faces of the model we are establishing by clicking what areas of the model we want to paint on for more intricate masks there is the stencil mapping which brings us to our final texture painting tool the masking tool just like texture painting without a stencil layer image you can't paint your stencils so to set up the masking tool to be used properly we need to go into the tools properties and scroll down to the panel where it says masking and here we're going to make a new mask texture we don't want to change the generated color of the image but we do want to change the name to something we'll remember and i tend to set the resolution to be the same as the base color texture and with that done we can now use the masking tool to paint our stencil directly onto our model and if we want to change the level of the masking say we want to erase parts of our mask if we go into the tool panel under advanced we can change the mask value to zero and then we can erase our masks one thing i do to make editing the stencil layer a bit easier i go into the shader editor of the material that we're currently using and i just throw the stencil layer into the material without connecting it and if we go back to texture paint mode now we'll see right underneath our base color is the masking layer of course we can't paint on it like a regular texture at the moment due to its special designation as a mask texture but if you want to quickly clear the mask without having to erase everything by hand if you hover over in the 2d image editor and hit alt r this will reset the mask to its last saved state which in this case is empty be careful not to accidentally revert your texture that you're working on the revert cannot be undone as with most things in blender there are a litany of shortcuts that you can use to speed up your workflow you can manipulate the size of your brush by hitting f and dragging left or right with your mouse you can also change the brush strength by hitting shift f and doing the same thing if you hit w it brings up a menu that allows you to change your brush's color and blend mode as well as the size and strength of your brush you can also swap between two colors in your brush by hitting x if you want to sample colors from your scene you can do so by hovering over them with a mouse and tapping s if you're struggling to get your strokes to be smooth enough you can hit shift s and this will toggle smooth strokes and your brush will now drag behind your cursor so you can make finer adjustments as you paint and if you want to change the brush method say for instance you want to paint with lines we can hit e and we can change how our brush is handled however what you can't do by a hotkey out of the box which is rather annoying is change the shape of the brush as i work i constantly change the brush's fall off so i'm going to show you how to make the hotkey for it to make a hotkey go up into the edit menu and go down here to where it says preferences in the key map menu open up the 3d view then scroll down and open up image paint then scroll all the way down until you see a button that says add new after you click it and make a new key map we're going to open it up and we're going to set up the settings for it for the input we're going to click here and type in e and then we're going to toggle the shift button here so now in the event when we hit shift e this will toggle something to happen which we're now going to program in in this text field right here type in wm.call underscore panel then in the new name text field we want to type in image underscore pt underscore paint underscore curve and if we go back to texture paint mode we should when we hit shift e be able to select our falloff mode for our brush test to make sure that it works and be sure to save your preferences to keep it for later with the basic controls for the brushes established let's go into the more interesting features of the paint brushes right now it's just basic colors nothing special however we can make our own specialized brushes to make texture painting easier for instance let's say we wanted to paint this entire cube in grass in the brushes tool panel right here we can click on this button to add a new brush we'll call this the grass brush now we need to add a grass texture to our grass brush so it'll apply when we paint it so we are going to go to the textures property tab which is this one down here with the checkerboard and in this panel we are going to click the new button which will create an empty texture for us to fill out let's name this something appropriate for painting textures i normally prefix my textures with pt so i can distinguish them from my other images and now we're going to load our grass texture if you followed my seamless texturing video a while back you should already have a readily usable grass texture for this purpose and with our grass loaded our brush now does what it's listed to do now a little bit more about texture brushes texture brushes uses all of the color data of the texture itself if you change the color of the brush you'll be multiplying the texture's color with the brush's color so if you want to have a multi-purpose texture for colored cloth or patterns your brush texture should be in grayscale additionally texture brushes also retain the alpha channel of the source image when you paint however i prefer to utilize brush masks when it comes to using alpha channels brush masks work the same way as brush textures to add a texture mask click on this drop down with the brush that you want to add a mask to then load the image that you want to use the only difference between a texture and a mask is that a mask is only red for its value to determine the alpha of the brush for instance i can have a grass texture and a lizard scale mask and it'll give me grassy scales on top of this there are also different methods of mapping the textures to the brush there are five different mapping methods available to texture brushes by default the texture is mapped as tiles which is good for making a surface that seems uniform the viewplane mapping method does the opposite it stays rigid and doesn't tile at all with this mapping method we get two toggles to play with the raking option will make the brush orient itself in the direction that you pull it so if we had a scale texture we can get an effect like this and the random option will orient the brush randomly as it's dragged you can have both rake and random enabled at the same time however the random option seems to override the raking one next up is the random mapping as you might expect with this mapping method instead of tiling or staying put it simply draws samples randomly from the source texture and uses it that way we also have the rake option and random option still available which is nice this mapping method is good for chaotic brushes next is the 3d mapping method instead of being projected relative to the brush the texture is projected relative to the local z-axis of the object not gonna lie probably not gonna use this one i don't find it that useful in most any given situation and finally the stencil mapping mode this one is really interesting because we get a projection of the texture that we can manipulate right on the screen by right clicking you can move the projection by holding shift right clicking and dragging you can scale the projection in and out while scaling if you tap x or y respectively you can scale the image in that axis and by holding ctrl and right clicking you can rotate the projection if you get it all wonky and need to reset it in the brush settings you can click the reset transforms button or to make it easier you can right-click that button add it to your favorites menu and access it from the 3d viewport by tapping q this mapping method is very useful for using reference images as textures and character texturing now then when you're texturing you'll probably run into some issues that will prevent your paintbrush from working before you start you want to make sure that all your normals for your object are facing the correct way if you go into the overlay menu and toggle face orientation you can see which way all the faces are facing the blue faces are red as outside and the red faces are red as inside blender will not allow you to paint on internal faces so we need to recalculate them on a model with incorrect normals go into edit mode and hit shift n to bring up the normals menu and select recalculate outside or if this model is supposed to be the inside of a room use recalculate insight instead and these should fix the normals of your object there are other times where the brush will paint regardless of the normals one thing you should check is your brush's textures and texture mask if they are empty null textures they'll be read as a full alpha image and therefore not paint anything you will also find that you may have trouble painting areas that are sharp like this it may be more optimal to go into the 2d image editor but even then the 2d image editor is not the best for pixel art since the cursor doesn't snap to the pixels so if you're trying to do pixel art in the 2d paint mode what you should do is set your cursor fall off to custom and shape it like this by grabbing the handles and positioning them it's a more precise brush but if you want to add details at this level you might be better off just editing the texture in your image editor instead with all the context and tool explanations out of the way let's actually do some texture painting i have here a biplane that i modeled a while back and i wanted to go through the process of texture painting it i've already uv mapped it to my liking and if you want i'll be providing a download link so you can have a shot at texturing it yourself after the video i'll also be posting a video showing my process of how i went about unwrapping this plane for this video in case that would also interest you alright i'm going to start with the basic colored blocks i'll make the chassis red the motor white the propellers in the tire is black and the rims are subtle white then for the seats i'll make the border a dark brown and the seats a lighter brown i'll worry about the supports later the first thing that i want to paint in detail are the tires all the airplane tires that i've seen have straight treads like these so with the face masks turn on i'm going to select a sliver of the tire and then using a slightly brighter gray brush add some streaks along it then i'm going to use a dark black and darken where the tires connect to the rims speaking of the runs let's work on them next i'm basing my rims off this airplane tire that i saw with a gray brush i'm going to draw a gray triangle here and i'm going to darken half of it with a multiply brush then of course we need to add the axle where the tire is held to the frame so i'll just draw a line across here to make it into a circle now to work on the propellers i want them to look like a rough but shiny carbon steel i'm going to make a new brush and give it a stoogey texture and then set the brush's mix mode to screen i'm going to lighten up the bottom half of the blade and then i'm going to flip it to a multiply brush and go along the top and where it connects to the motor and finally all propellers that i've seen have this high visibility color near the ends of them so i'm going to swap back to the deep felt brush and give them a streak down the front for this propeller connector i'm going to give it the same treatment with a stoogey brush and darken it as it gets closer to the chassis now i'm going to work on the internal motor i'm basing my design off this picture that i saw and with a gray brush i'm going to fill up most of the bottom of the face here then i'll darken this red row of pixels to make it look like it's indenting inward after doing a little bit more shading i'm going to add the bars that support the motor to the chassis and then i'll shade it to make it look as if they have more depth than they actually do i'll also add a small bar connecting the supports together next i'm gonna be making the design that goes around the motor i'm thinking like little chrome caps so i'm gonna lay down the shadow first and then i'm gonna go over it with a screen i'll add some shadows underneath it and using a screen brush go over the highlights in red since the chrome would be reflecting the red paint and with this design of biplane that i've modeled there's a gap between the propeller and the rest of the body so i'm going to replicate that by adding a dark ring around this part now to add some chassis designs to make the sides more interesting i'll be basing my design off this biplane that i saw i'm going to be using the masking tool to lay out the design as best as i can which it took a while i had to manually paint some areas in the 2d image editor to get it to work right after all that masking here's what i'm going to do i'm going to go into the stencil images menu and i'm going to invert the mask by hitting this button now all i got to do is use the fill tool and fill it in white next i'm going to texture the flaps on the wings it needs to be able to steer after all so i'm going to go over these areas with a dark red to make it look like gaps in the material at one point when working on the wing flaps i went into the 2d painting mode and wanted to add some extra ridges to the flaps to make them stand out instead of drawing every single line i decided to use the clone tool which works differently in 2d paint mode in 2d paint mode under the advanced options we can load a specific image to project onto our image so i loaded the planes texture that i would be targeting and used right click to position it where i needed it to then with a few lines i had placed beforehand i used the clone tool to just duplicate them down the line when i got done with the bottom wing i did the same thing to the top wing next i worked on the wing supports i want these supports to utilize transparency if you haven't already you need to go into the materials panel and change the blend mode to alpha clip for it to read transparency from the image you also have to make sure that the alpha channel is plugged in i keep my shader setup simple for this video but i have a custom node that i made myself and prefer i'll make a video about it eventually with the fill tool set to erase alpha i cleared out the support beam and just so i could see what i was doing at the time i left the blending mode in opaque so i wasn't painting on an invisible canvas i just made two basic lines and then went over them with shades and highlights and i did this for all of the supports it finally we're down to the seating consoles i darken the inside like this so it looked like an unlit cavity in the plane and for the console itself i looked at a reference image and did as best as i could to get the colors as close as possible and that's that when rendered from far away the resolution is such that you wouldn't really be able to tell the difference anyway and with that we're at the end of the video if you have any questions or suggestions be sure to leave them in the comments below be sure to also leave a like and subscribe if you're interested i have a discord channel that i'd run for this kind of content as well as a subreddit thank you all for watching and have a good day

Channel: TheSicklyWizard

Views: 5,383

Keywords: Blender 2.9, 3d modeling, texturing, texture painting, biplane, uv mapping, tutorial

Id: hQasDueNwwA

Length: 15min 47sec (947 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/sammusfilm]

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[u/whogames]

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