This week I have started texturing the bed model in substance painter.
texture sets and materials
In substance painter a texture set represents the material you assign to mesh in your 3D application. Each individual material becomes a texture set with its own dedicated layer stack in the channels. When you export each texture set results in a set of bitmap files with a file for each channel of the set. Texture sets can be enabled and disabled in the texture set menu using the eye icon. Each texture has its own layer stack
materials and channels
Material can be broken down into individual channels each channel represents a material property: base color, metallic and roughness. Fill layers can act as a material layer stack as they can fill one or more channels with a texture or a uniform value.
baking
Baking is a step where you save or bake geometry information from your mesh into texture maps. Baking can speed up the process a lot. The information stored into the maps is used to create procedural effects and it can even help with your material placement.
paintable layer and fill layer
Paint Layer : This type of layer can be painted on with brushes and particles.
Fill layer : This layer cannot be painted on, instead you can load a material into it, to fill the channels. (You can also manipulate the transformation to repeat the material for example.)
Van Gogh painting style and the 3D model
Van Gogh is well known for his brushstokes of thickly laid-on paint. This technique is called Impasto. An artist lays a thick layer of paint on canvas, brushstrokes get more noticeable, adding a special texture to the painting. Vincent liked to use a thick, undiluted flat color with a brush or a palette knife.
This following video describes in depth the process of Van Gogh style evolution over the years. It was very interesting to see what inspired his work and how he developed his own “voice”. During the presentation the simultaneous contrast is mentioned in regards of the painter artworks: it refers to the way in which two different colours affect each other. The theory is that one color can change how we perceive the tone and hue of another when the two are placed side by side. The actual colors themselves don’t change, but we see them as altered.
This is a close up picture from the “bedroom in arles” painting. As it showed the paint is very thick and dense in some parts which is what I am would like to render in the 3D texture.
I first imported the bed model as a fbx file into substance painter: substance painter recognise the different texture attributes created previously in maya, so I have assigned to the different parts of the model different textures according to their material
I first applied a base colour according to the colours of the painting itself
I after started working on the bed wood paint texture using an alpha material with a paint brush to simulate the brush strokes. I also included some height information to simulate the impasto technique used by the painter.
I have first experimented with different brushes to see the look and the amount of detail I was able to reproduce.
This first attempt was a bit coarse and the dark brown edges I had created were too dark and resulted in a “fake” outlook. I first created a layer with light yellow brush strokes and after created one on top with a light red: I tried to pick the colours according to those in the painting
Using a similar process I started again but this time using a different brush and height information. I kept the dark edges at first but they were to predominant in the texture.
I after smudged the edges and added a light desaturated green to them as well.
I also started texturing the blanket, the pillows and the mattress.