The only reason I had wanted to figure out was really because was the only program in which a professional artist who had top notch work had his workflow illustrated.
Learning comes easiest when one can see a workflow then branch off and make decisions from there.
However with Substance there isnt anyone around with quality results.
Yes, Substance showcases those with great work, but there is not demo for what they actually do.
For example, on Lynda the only person that shows a workflow for Substance and the title is “Realistic” skin looks like a barbie doll…
If one was to follow his workflow the most one will get out of it would be that look and if one was to try to go for better it would result in many many questions and decrease efficiency.
Whereas if one started off with results that one would want, then the questions become filling in the gaps in between
rather than mysteriously probing through the lands of the unknown.
At this point it would be a matter of learning with better speed.
Which is why I have been asking around for recommendations for tutorials or workflows because I haven’t seen any.
(I guess this would also be where a professional artist in which you like his look, would be helpful as a face to face teacher)
A lot of the strength of Substance is for hard surface texturing–it has a lot of presets for things like metal and painted surfaces and has lots of tools for creating weathering. It sounds like you’re wanting to paint skin, which you could use almost any tutorial to look at, so I would look at some introduction tutorials for substance just to learn how to use it and then general skin texturing tutorials which will show you how to do the coloring.
Just a note though on skin tutorials–for visual effects the method will be different because they use special skin materials like what Mental Ray and Vray have, which use several layers of textures for the Sub-Surface Scattering effect (SSS) and that is not something that games go all that in depth into, these days you can just do one color for a SSS effect in a game.
Is SSS the effect that is achieved when light hits areas where the blood is closer to the skin(Gets redder in hue)
and where there is more fat(Gets bluer/cool gray)
Does Substance and have the ability to do the SSS in a game?
Also I will use Substance for skin by looking at the tutorials,
I will also use the file to try and import into UE4 and see what happens for myself.(See if I can learn anything from his workflow in and apply it to Substance or vice versa)
I completely forgot sorry it would make your life easier if you going to use it has(as of 3) an unreal shader(I don’t know why it’s called that or how to use it) it allows you to preview what it should look like in UE4 before you import it allowing you to see what features don’t work. Also if you’re intrested I found a CGsociety interview with the U4 character designers(I haven’t watched it yet so it could be a waste of time).
Yeah, it’s the effect you get when you hold up your hand to a light and you can see a red tinge in the thinner parts, it’s how light goes into some materials and the effect that creates. If you do a google search on Mental Ray Skin Material or Vray Skin Material you’ll see what that type of thing looks like and how they have several textures to create the layers of the skin.
For games, it can’t quite get there yet so there’s only just the backscatter color and not much control over it so for a game most of the skin texture has to be in the diffuse texture
You paint the diffuse/color map after you have your normal map, Substance can use the normal map to find edges so that it can automatically create weathering like worn edges, but other than that you have to create the diffuse map
Since normal maps “shape” originates from the UV Unwrap
Would the diffuse maps also originate from the UV Unwrap?(So both normal and diffuse would originate from UV and if so, then you could make the diffuse before the normal map? Just for theory sake)
Yes, the UV mapping is what allows you to take a 2D image and place it on the 3D model, so you can do the diffuse map at any time as long as you have your UV mapping set up. Note that if you change your UV’s then your textures won’t match anymore. There’s ways to fix that though–for example, UV’s have a channel so that you can have multiple UV sets–so if you wanted to change the UV’s and update the textures to match the new UV’s then you could put the new UV’s on the second UV channel and in 3ds Max you can choose what UV channel you want to be the destination of the bake, so the texture would be set to render with the first UV channel but bake to the second.
So getting the UV done correctly and early is key?
Is that why I hear people saying to double check your UV to make sure it isnt flipped and whatnot?
So would an example be,
lets say you made UV 1
Then you baked a normal map 1 with UV1
Textured normal map 1
Then said I dont think I like UV1
So you make UV2
Then you can set UV2 as channel 2, UV1 as channel 1
So that you can somehow transfer the work you did on normal map 1 onto the new “shape” of UV2?
But if your base “shapes”/UVs are completely different shapes, then how can the texture be transferred over? Wouldn’t there be cut offs or empty areas?
Say a circle is UV1, then a square is UV2
Wouldn’t there edges on all four sides of the new normal map of UV2’s “square shape” be empty?
Hey darth I just saw this recently…Head Polypainting Timelapse - YouTube
How is this guy just painting straight onto his model from ZBrush(w/out using any other programs) without making his UV and normal maps?
Once you have your low poly mesh modeled you should go ahead and unwrap the UV’s
So, I think you probably need to look at some UV tutorials as I think you might not quite understand what they are fully. Just know that they are a second set of coordinates for the vertices of a 3D model that flatten it out so you can put a 2D image onto the 3D object, you can have different configurations saved to a mesh in different channels and if you need to make a texture use a different channel then it’s possible to use the baking tools to render a new version of the textures so that they match the different channel. You’re not going to need to do that any time soon, right now I would focus on just learning the basics of UV mapping.
He is using a feature of Zbrush called Polypaint, it doesn’t paint to a texture but rather it colors the actual polygons themselves, after he is done painting it he has to render it to a texture (requires UV’s) so that it can be used in other programs. Polypainting is fast and easy, but is very limited in features, you have to have a high polygon count to get detail since each polygon can only be one color, and it doesn’t have the image editing tools that you would want like what Photoshop has.
Zbrush has an alternative texturing tool that paints directly to the textures, but–it’s not easy to use because it requires you to freeze the viewport (so you can’t rotate/pan/zoom) and then it paints over the viewport, when you unfreeze it then projects the stuff you painted onto the model from that perspective. It’s very slow since you have to freeze/unfreeze every time you want to change views.
Mudbox is better for texture painting, since you have a bunch of painting tools plus you can rotate/pan/zoom and it paints to the textures–same with and Substance.
Alright got it Ill go look for a indepth foundation to UV mapping tutorial.
So at the end of the day all his work still must be mapped…
And when you say polypainting is very limited in features, what features do you mean?
The high polygon count is also not a problem since at the end of the day we still need to bake the high poly’s texture onto the lower poly model anyway right?
It seems he can still get a very realistic face
and the only unique aspect is that he would be rendering the his painted polys to a texture, only later in the workflow.
As far as ranks those don’t exist here you can earn badges for answering questions on answer hub. You can upvvote our responses but it doesn’t do anything. If you want to reward us personally getting to see some of your top secret WIPs would be really awesome or maybe becoming an advisor
Many of the painting features in Photoshop that you would expect in a texturing tool aren’t available or aren’t possible–I’m not sure it has layers still plus stuff like color adjustment and filters and other tools like that.