Lets Texture a Gameboy Color in Substance Painter and Blender

hello today is the day we go over my process of texturing and rendering these game boy colors using substance painter and blender the goal with this project was to recreate every feature of the iconic handheld as accurately as possible all the way from the tiniest surface details to rendering the display grid at the historically accurate resolution i'll be going over all my entire layer stack inside substance painter and going over my export and render settings into blender let's do it like any good project we start out with gathering our reference if you're familiar with my work you know that i like texturing all my objects as gross and grimy as possible well maybe not as possible but i definitely like texturing all my objects with a generous but tasteful coat of grime and dust and this project was definitely no exception i start by browsing google and ebay for images of used up well-loved game boys that i can use for my research ebay is especially good for this since there is no shortage of listings for game boys and usually sellers take high resolution pictures from lots of angles which definitely helps me out a lot i'm looking for images that really highlight the main plastic texture especially then i look for images that display a nice level of wear such as cavity grime finger oils scratches etc one interesting detail i found while researching is how much the plastic gets scratched on this back surface by the countless cartridges being slid in and out over the ears recognizing and recreating more obscure details like this is what really helps bring out more character and authenticity to the texture work i feel like so definitely be on the lookout for those to wrap up the reference gathering face i'm looking for high-res images that really highlight the display surface i really want to get in there and see the pixel density and how visible the grid is close up the game boy color screen wasn't backlit so it actually has a pretty particular surface finish that's unlike modern displays we're used to today so after i feel like i have enough images or i get absolutely bored i move on to the uv unwrapping phase so to uv unwrap this model i employ my patented and very complex technique of just selecting all the game boy geometry and then proceeding to apply ue smart unwrap to it and that's it we're done moving on so here we are the fun part in substance painter with my model imported and all the mesh maps baked and ready to start applying materials i started with the main plastic material by adding a base layer where i define all the base roughness metallic and color values oh and i'm starting with the light blue game boy variant first because reasons i guess but we'll get to the red and yellow versions in their due time so after adding my base layer the next step is to break up the color and roughness channels with some liberal usage of grunge textures i add some discoloration layers to break up the color channel by introducing some dirt grunge textures to the base color i usually just pick any of the various dirt grunge textures i'm in the mood for at the time and then play around with the blending modes and opacity until i arrive with something that looks okay for the roughness channel are pretty much the same as the color except i apply a dust crunch texture instead i add a bunch of them in sub layers and then play around their blending modes and opacity levels same way as i did for the color i find overlay soft light screen and multiply are pretty good blending modes for this purpose moving on to adding the very important height to the plastic to really give it that authentic plasticy feel if you're watching closely you can see me attempt and fail at creating the texture from scratch by applying and modifying a style and 3d noise texture eventually i give up and just apply a plastic grainy material from the material library much less painful this way definitely don't be afraid to rely on the pre-made substance materials for your texturing especially when you're starting out an exercise that helped me immensely when i first started using this software was to just apply a bunch of these built-in smart materials and just go through the layers stack to figure out how they were created and maybe try and reverse engineer some other effects definitely really helpful exercise anyways i'm introducing some light grunge scratches to the color and height channel it's definitely very easy to go overboard with this effect so be very cautious unless you're going for i just whipped my game boy sort of look okay so now that i have a first pass of grunge layers and with all my base textures established i move on to introduce several layers of edgewear to the entire model i do this by employing heavy use of smart masks like the metal edges edge blur and curvature masks these basically allow me to mask out the prominent areas of the geometry and affect their color roughness and height etc i basically add a new layer apply one of these masks then play with their sliders until the masked area looks correct then i start messing with the colors and such and i rinse and repeat this process to build up the effect till i'm happy with it i add some edge wear on the overall edges of the game boy with a metal edgeware mask then i proceed to darken and lower the roughness on the surfaces around the d-pad and buttons using an edge and curvature mask to suggest some skin oil and grime build up in there next up is my favorite effect cavity grime i add a new layer and apply a sand cavity smart mask to it then proceed to play around with the sliders i want to introduce some nice brown tones to this grime that will hopefully contrast nicely with the bright blue of the plastic i layer on this cavity effect with two layers one lighter less saturated layer of grime then a darker more saturated layer this effect really adds a lot of character especially around the connection ports area of the game boy where there's a lot of deep recesses in the geometry this effect does have the potential of looking very uniform and unnatural though so be on the lookout for that if this happens try breaking it up with some manually painted on detail or you could also try setting some kind of grunge texture set to subtract over your mask to break up the uniformity a little bit there's also filter layers like warp or blur slope which can also help with this i quickly add directional scratches around the back cartridge area using drip and directional noise textures i mess around with their scale to make sure they look like scratches from cartridges being slid in and out after i feel like i'm tentatively happy with the effect i move on to one of my favorite parts of the process putting all the race and recessed text detail on the model this is stuff like the nintendo logo the start select text volume text etc i start by making all the alphas in photoshop i create a 2k by 2k file and start creating all the alphas i'm going to need special thanks to a random reddit thread by the way for pointing out that itc avant garde is the closest match to all the text detail in the game boy definitely saved me a lot of time trying to search for a matching funk myself after i imported the alpha center painter i set up two layers one for raised and one for recess detail i add a fill layer set to affect the high channel and then add a mask with a paint subfill layer so i can start painting on my alphas i'm really just eyeballing their size and specific location here so definitely nothing too stressful once all the alphas are painted i start messing around with the height slider to get the recessed and raised height to be where i want it to be i end up adding a bevel and blur filter over the paint layer and the mask to round out the height surface detail since it was starting to look a little unnaturally sharp the next step is to add grime to the height detail we just painted i add an anchor and then reference that in a new layer apply a blur filter to it then add the original anchor point back and set it to subtract this way i have masked out all the areas around the height detail but not the areas of the height detail itself pretty cool trick for the labels in the back i find a high resolution image of the back of the game boy and extract the label section in photoshop then position that correctly in the uv layout then import that as a png into substance painter and then finally apply it on a fill layer after all the text and logo detail is in place i move on to texturing the screen lens i apply a simple black glossy material then create an alpha of the square window and this little battery hole thingy i then paint that into a paint layer and then send a paint layer to affect the opacity channel so that only the relevant areas are transparent for the button plastic i pretty much do the same process as all my other materials i start with a base layer to settle the base color roughness metallic values then i add some grunge layers to break up the color and roughness channels using dirt grunge and dust crunch textures to add grime in the crevices i just use the trusty cavity smart masks that come in substance painter same as we did with the main plastic texture throw the race detail in the buttons like the arrows in the d-pad and the a and b and the a and b button it's basically using the same process we create the alpha masks in photoshop and put them into substance and then paint them on manually some of these turn out really sharp so i add a bevel and blur filter effect to the paint layer that contains all the painted alphas this created a more plasticy rounded edge look to the high textures which is a lot more authentic in my opinion at this point i am almost done with the texturing work and all that's left is tweaking all the grunge edgewear and cavity grime layers i applied earlier in the process nothing too fancy at this stage just messing around with some sliders and maybe duplicating the cavity grime layers to build up the effect a little more the final thing to do at this stage is to create the extra two plastic colors that being the yellow and red variants to create those i just go back to my base layer and simply change the base color on that and then go through my entire layer stack going through every color slider and just tweaking those settings just to fit them better with a new color and that pretty much marks the end of the texturing process and substance the final main feature i want to add for the animations is to have the intro for pokemon gold and silver to be playing in the display to do this i find some of the footage in the intro on youtube screencap some of it using nvidia shadowplay then import that footage into after effects and add a grid filter effect to simulate the pixel density on the real game boy screen and yes for those wondering i did research the correct resolution for the game boy color display and made sure to match that in this effect back in blender i imported the png's into an image node then plug that into the base color of my display material i like the scene with a simple three-point lighting setup add a turntable animation and it's done definitely went a little easier with the overall wear on this one than my previous game boy project not sure which direction i like better i do find it really enjoyable to go hard with the texture work so it definitely took some amount of self-control on my part well hopefully you enjoyed this video and do feel free to ask any follow-up questions in the comments and i will get to them see you next time [Music] you

Channel: sab_3d

Views: 16,808

Rating: 4.9730096 out of 5

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Id: omUe1v-rr30

Length: 11min 32sec (692 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021