Vertex School: Three Simple Steps To Great Textures In Substance Painter

[Music] all right now if we take a look at Larry communes satchel that he did here for his character Evelyn in the in the character artist boot camp over at GA I it's a great example of how a professional goes about developing a texture giving himself the control that he needs to art-directed while using the power of software of the software itself to the fullest of its ability all right so we're going to look here in this section we're going to look at the three steps three really simple steps that you need to take to establish a really good texture and this is to establish the itness of it right to make sure that it looks like what it is so what we're going to do is and this is really one of the general goals all the time let's just look at a color real quick we want from the color itself not from materials but from the color itself we want to have a sense that this is what it's supposed to be so we want to feel like this is actually leather all the way around and then as soon as we just throw on a couple little specular points and things like that then it just pops into life but the key right now is how do we develop the itness in three simple steps it's not as hard as you might think and I'll show you here in just a couple of in a real simple measure so the three steps are that first you start with a base texture okay a base texture that has the scale the medium color range and you'll see why that's important later so it's going to have the scale it's going to have the medium color range and by scale I mean scale of detail you're going to see that here in just a second the medium color range and it's going to have some general you know how do I say it it's going to have some repetition to it some tile abilities probably good you don't want to hand paint this because in order for us to use the software to the most advanced we're going to want to be doing this as quickly and easily as possible and so the base texture is something you could spend a day on it's something you could spend an hour on and if we're going to use the software efficiently we want to try the hour first then the next thing that you do is you're going to come in here and you're going to start to apply procedurals you're going to layer procedurals on top of your base texture so that it breaks it up and it starts to take what might have once been repetitive and start to give it a little bit more of a natural quality and then once you've got the proceed to rolls on top of that then you're going to start to layer on the maps to really fine-tune the look so you start to add some ambient occlusion you start to add some self shadowing with a normal map for example or with a displacement map or something of that nature right but these are the three simple steps this is the kind of stuff that we teach you in this boot camp I'm giving them to you right now because it's not enough to just know this you have to do it and I want you to come into this boot camp prepared that this is what you have to do but you've got to keep in mind that you got to burn the stuff into your genetic code and burning it into your genetic code requires repetition and practice and repetition so let's go and head over into Larry's version of this and what we'll do you know right off the bat you can see one of the cool things about substances it gives you all these different layer sets I'll just call it that okay so each part which is really important you have to have separation to really help something have that Ignis you got it people notice if there's one texture stretching from one part to another and that's inappropriate right they'll notice if there is a texture moving from the body of the satchel to the strap and these are actually separate pieces they will notice that so you have to have this separation and Larry's done a fantastic job of doing that so I'm going to turn everything else off and look at just this main bag then I'm going to open up that main bag and start to unpack that you've got about six layers in here and let's just zoom in a little bit and one of the first things that we have to establish when we're establishing this basic texture remember three simple steps and right now we're going to talk about the basic texture and step one is making sure that you establish the scale of detail now of course right now we're looking at this and it's got all this beautiful stuff but watch I'm going to turn them off one by one and there you go that that's the base texture that he starts with it looks like something you go into Photoshop and you kind of use one or two textures stamps and you kind of clone it all the way around to kind of add some some you know I don't know some change in in it so it's not entirely repetitive but people who are a little bit more pro at this you'll notice there's similar shapes moving throughout it and the similar shape to indicate absolutely this is repetitive there's the same size little dot all over the place okay repetitive not obvious Larry's removed it enough to where he can work with it but not so much that he had to spend several hours to make it perfect because that's not part of this you're going to use the workflow to your advantage use a software and substance works with this idea of texture plus procedural equals frickin amazing alright quit step number one let's not get ahead of ourselves step number one look at this Larry's leather bag here is got it on normal setting it's 100% opacity but you look over here to UV scaling we've got a UV scale to eight now let's undo this a little bit let's lower this and take a look let's take a sound-alike one or one point six and if you're looking over here on the left it looks kind of cool that's so the material on hey it's pretty nice it's like crocodile right but what is it this is where you got to understand what is what's the itness if you're serious about this and you're sculpting one of these and texture painting in one of these bags you went to Nordstrom's or Macy's or Target or wherever they have something similar and you bought one of those bags not just photo reference by the bag you can return it tomorrow by the bag because it's the little details that are going to make you hireable and it's the little details here that got Larry that job at Sony San Diego it's the little details that we want to make sure that you're paying attention to in the boot camp so this is a particular kind of animal hide not crocodile not elephant and Larry's done his homework and this is a bit of a better fit somewhere to round eight but when you set it to eight you barely see it right you have to zoom in to even see where all of that poor level detail and skin wrinkling is set your scale make sure that you have got your scale accurate if this is not accurate we don't pass go you don't collect your $200 it doesn't look awesome get your scale correct right make sure it's your medium color not your lightest color not your darkest color you're going to see that here in just a second and the repetition tile ability but not too much repetition not too much hand painting just enough so that when we take these next steps it's all going to work so the next step is to layer procedurals on top of this so we come in and we add some procedural that's going to start to lighten and that's the only thing it does it just lightens the color and I'm looking at my own leather bag right over here next I mean it's got the exact same effect there are areas of it that are lighter and then there are areas of it better darker and so he separated those out into two separate layers so that he can art direct those so this is I think set up as a soft light on this and he can go in and dial this up or dial this down somebody can come by look at it while he's working on it and say no sorry you know look set the opacity to twelve percent yeah that's perfect leave it at 12 percent I like what he had it at at seven we come in into the dark lair and you see the dark layers got all these extra little bits these little utilities right he's using the software to really help him get the most out of it you throwing that on as a multiply layer and here if somebody comes in and says yeah lower that keep it I you know again I like where he put it it's a really good number he could come in here and he could go clever monkey-style and try a linear burn right and this is the beauty of is because you don't have to know exactly what you want you can use the software to start to experiment and see what it will uncover for you okay that does not look like it's good that looks crazy overlay and then multiply experiment play with it because you're layering procedural on top of procedural but look what he was able to do with one basic texture slightly repetitive and then to procedurals over the top of that you cannot see the repetitive quality of this anymore it's gone and then the next stage third stage remember the third stage is to throw some maps on top of that so one of the maps that he threw on top of that B hover over it this looks like a map that he could have gotten out of let's say ZBrush or X normal it looks like a displacement map so to speak but a displacement that he's altered those areas where they're white those are going to be the areas where he really wants him to kind of push forward or he wants some sort of different behavior depending on what the settings are and what the layer is set to and and all that stuff so in this case you might be able to notice that around the satchel he's got it in the map right in this area where the UVs are he's assigned a white color alright and we can check that out we can just go into this let's turn it on and we're going to say put this at normal we're going to set that all the way to a hundred and there you go that's what the map looks like basically but he's using the map now with this black quality around the rims to basically layer on and establish just this extra little bit of detail and in many ways it's also a form of ambient occlusion because you've got some darkness on the side but he's also lightening up these areas where these things connect which is you know this is how it is it's just a style there's this lighter fabric that's kind of sewn in or used to kind of reinforce the stitching let's set that at 50 there we go and then you've got a couple more maps set up so if we take a look at let's say this next map that's hanging out in there this is the form of ambient occlusion and you might have noticed that he's already kind of painted in ambient occlusion quite a bit in the spill layer but we go in here and it's just this tiny little bit you know let's zoom in there and let's zoom in in here and see if we can notice that right here in this edge it's very soft we turn the material on where you notice it is right next to the stitching and it just separates the stitching and all of these elements from each other and adds that extra little bit it doesn't look like a lot but it's that 5% that takes the detail to the next level all right and again this is also part of the maps section so he's got that on a multiply and he's got it a hundred percent because really he's dealing with a very white texture so he's modulated this or he's just really pulled this out of ZBrush just right at the point where he wanted it and then there's one more or the exact same map but altered again right and there's at all part of the stuff that you can do inside of a substance to really just give you some amazing amazing versatility and how you handle these these textures let's see what this does yeah one of the maps one of the maps that I think is really cool the first one that we looked at let's turn these guys off it's this one because if you look at that again let's set this back to normal and set that back to a hundred notice how it's got this kind of little wrinkling baked into it and so when we put that back at 50% and we put that back at a soft light which one that on and off it adds this really beautiful modeling to the work it adds this kind of plainer quality that happens right in here and then it adds a little bit of you know just this kind of leather folding upon itself and pushed in a certain way so that the wrinkles get kind of embedded in it in its structure and that adds depth and and life to it so keep in mind you know if we come back to these two these elements he put the base texture in there he put procedurals right and these are again still in this kind of 2d fashion is a 2d procedural that kind of modifies it but when he comes in here into the maps he takes a moment to kind of within the map itself kind of give it some self shadowing and a little bit of modeling to really give it I don't know just that extra genetic law or whatever you want to say it just really adds a little bit more life to the texture in my opinion if you come there it's like okay you know it's pretty generic it's a substance painter it looks like you did a texture needed procedural but then you throw the maps on and the maps are really what helps take it to the next level because the maps are coming from the sculpt the maps are coming from what you've done in Marvelous Designer what you've done in ZBrush what you've done in Maya they come from the manual work that you've done to really give this the quality that it should have right and it tastes it to that next level you got to have these three steps these three simple steps to take your texturing to the next level and if you do that using the tools powerful as substance painter then sky's the limit now let's take a look at the texture that Larry developed first characters face again this is his character out of the game Art Institute boot camp and we're in substance painter and the key things that we need to look at is we need to be mindful of a base texture any sort of procedurals that you can add on top of that in any sort of maps that you can throw in there to give it its specificity specific to your model as opposed to say just some basic 2d textures and procedural that anybody could develop right the maps you got to keep in mind this is the uniqueness this is what's going to make it yours so I'm going to go into just a color mode here and just pressing C on the keyboard and let's just get rid of everything and see if we can understand or start to reverse engineer this texture all right let's open this up and open up that kind of layer set that's in there there you go got a whole bunch of this let's start with this this skin face layer set that he's developed for us here and then we can go in and we can explore and see what the other elements add so I've removed those and again I'm going to come through and just remove everything it's taking a moment to update you can see the red bar down at the bottom he starts with the simplest of base textures there's no poor detail in this at all actually what he ends up doing later on is he puts the poor texture in in these fill layers up here if you hover over them there's an ambient occlusion there it take a little bit to see that but he's got what could pass or appears to be a cavity mask here that's going to really just highlight in fact that's what people have gotten the best results out of its using cavity masks generated at the ZBrush to really high like the poor detail not a normal map not a displacement map but cavity maps those can be very powerful to add the extra level of detail you see how you get the poor in there alright and if you really want to see one of them let's just come in here I'll turn this one off and just set it to normal set that opacity all the way up and you've got a gradient on there to just give it some subsurface quality but there you go alright so but this this sits on top of a whole bunch of other stuff and so we want to kind of unpack that first and then we'll come back and take a look at all of this let's take that back to about 25 and then turn those off all right let's get ourselves back into the scale set and so the first or the texture set so the first thing that we wanted to look at with the base texture is the scale but the scale we've already got because he establishes that with the cavity map okay so the next thing that we're looking for is we're looking for a medium color we're looking for simplicity is not going to take us too long you don't get simpler than this this is using the software to the best of its ability use this basic color right and then he's throwing in a little bit of red let's just turn that on let's go into that and it's showing us that this is a paint layer so he's manually painting these using alphas let's just get rid of this log some alphas inside of here he's adding in some blue okay let's get rid of the red so you can see where the blue is it's very light okay but notice he's got the opacity very low so he might paint it darker I've just said it in almost a hundred but just because you paint it there doesn't mean that that's where it needs to stay you know art direct these pieces get them where you want them to be okay let's get into the ears a little bit of red in there Gaming at all paint layers so he starts with a really basic skin tone he establishes the red he establishes blue which is actually desaturation that's really the kind of key component there if you take a red and you desaturate it it starts to look blue in comparison to the other Reds but you know let's get into the whole color theory discussion at another point then he comes in and starts to add in these other elements now notice that these other elements I said this fractal some let's turn off all these other guys and just see what does this do let's turn its opacity all the way up looks like noise doesn't it again using the software to the maximum power basic texture like a basic skin tone a little bit of red a little bit of blue a little bit of stuff around the ears okay another fill layer with a screen layer mode that's doing the light right so he's repeating this pattern that he's got of in one layer do dark in another layer do light so that you can blend these to really make them work to really give the sense of a high and a low that you like alright and again you sit on top of all this other stuff that you're doing to help create this modeled quality alright but let's do this one at a time let's take a look at this next layer what's this next layer ok so again look at that the screen is set to 5% let's take that all the way up he's taking a variation on the white and you can tell that the values are clamped a little bit more so this is a little bit harder edge in here as opposed to this one where it's all a little bit softer and he's got levels on here he's got a bunch of stuff working in here it's really good he's just going in and layering procedural on top of a procedural on top of procedural to help them discover what it is and then we got on top of that this guy again super low opacity but let's take a look at what it is and there you go right which is again very similar to a texture that's been cloned you use the clones is just clone stamp inside a Photoshop to just kind of replicate it all across the model and establish some kind of basic quality to it it doesn't need to be all dramatic like that that's probably a little closer to what it was right but we throw it in as a multiply and what that's going to do is take the dark areas the light areas are going to get ignored but the dark areas are going to go in and just add that extra little bit of depth in there take that all the way down to thinking edit at five and all we're trying to do is just move the needle so basic texture add in a little bit of painting on top of that add in your procedurals on top of that right and then come in and add your map this is this is another little bit of a paint layer that's thrown in there a little bit of red but here we come into the fill layers now the fill layers are going to be the maps right so you see the UV scale UV scale and these are being scaled to one because they're matching the UV set they've been generated in ZBrush or something of that nature so if we turn these guys on this has been sculpted and worked inside of ZBrush he's got the ambient occlusion up here at the top I believe that one is and that it's got a gradient of red as does this one which is two cavities and it's got a gradient of red as well and the gradient of red really adds in that extra quality a little bit of subsurface scattering a lot of times when people do skin or they do textures they try to find the right setting how do I do sub-surface how do i do subsurface right and when you are really texturing you're not trying to do it right what you're trying to do is make something look awesome that's it right what do you have to do to make it look awesome there are so many things happening inside this game engine with subsurface scattering being tweaked here or faked here the light isn't necessarily you know based on photons and you know everything is changing and developing and those it'll evolve throughout the pipeline the goal for you isn't to do a quote unquote right the Gopher used to make it look awesome and so in order for you to make it look awesome you've got to be able to kind of work the system let's put this back into an EM so you're looking at the materials work the system and become a master of working the system because that's what's going to give you job security not that you knew exactly how to do it and you understand the math behind it and all of that is a different job I mean there that absolutely works for a different job where you're dealing with the programming side of it but not using substance in this particular case what we want to do is we want to be able to develop a beautiful realistic texture that doesn't require us to copy some photograph but uses the system the software a formula or in simple terms just a workflow that takes simple things layers on them on top of each other to achieve complexity that's what you want right if you can do that and if you can show people you can do that and you can talk about it like I just talked about it you can put out YouTube videos you can explain your textures you can do toxic substance with painter event then the sky's the limit for you my friend and that's what we want to do in this boot camp is we want to make sure that you get in and you start to learn how to do this and develop your capacity in your understanding so that you're not just another Mouse jockey but you know how to work the system and you're focused on just the things that move the needle that's the kind of stuff that companies hire that's the kind of stuff that we want you to be able to do all right so I hope you found this lesson useful on painting make sure to apply for your place in the bootcamp today make sure you get in there because spaces are limited and we are waiting to talk to 15 minutes on the phone with me can save you years so make sure you apply today special thanks to Larry kameen for letting me use his model and congrats again Larry on getting that job you are going to be awesome and you have worked hard for it my friend all right everybody else make sure you apply today I look forward to talking to you remember 15 minutes can save you years [Music]

Channel: Ryan Kingslien - Vertex School

Views: 58,980

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Id: ykIrTlBu4bg

Length: 27min 14sec (1634 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 17 2017