After I was finished with my models it was time to start unwrapping my UVs. I started off unwrapping my chupacabra as I felt it would be the most time consuming. I applied a checker texture before changing the vector to UV. I then added a plane before selecting it with a UV project modifier to make sure my UV islands were easier to understand. I then changed to edge selection mode before marking seams all around my mesh. As I had done this before i found this easy enough as all I needed to do was make a loop of edges around the parts of the Chupacabra that I knew would be different textures. I found my main difficulty was with unwrapping the hands as they were smaller and more difficult to work out where to place each seam. After I had marked the seams I unwrapped my mesh before averaging the island scale and packing them together. I then exported it as a .fbx file so I could work on it in Substance Painter.
After I uploaded the Chupacabra to Substance Painter I noticed strange holes near the wrists. After consulting the animation society discord I found that I needed to flip my normals. After I did this my issue was sorted and I was ready to move on to adding textures. I started off by adding a fill layer with a dark brown to use as my base. I then added a fill layer with a smart material of stylized bone to act as the texture for the teeth. I added a black mask which allowed me to paint directly over the parts of my model I wanted the bone texture to show up on. I then found a creature tongue smart material which I used for the inside of the ear and the mouth. I ended up going into the material and changing some aspects of it to be more visually appealing. I deleted the zits filter as I felt gross looking at it and it heavily clashed against the cartoony stylized details of Hotel Transylvania models. I then added a leather reptile skin material to the models stomach, underside of the tail, and the bridge around the eyes and nose. I felt this worked well in establishing the reptile influence as I felt it looked a bit too dog like before adding the scales. I also tweaked the tiling and rotation of the material so the scales around the face were more tightly packed together and followed the shape of the brow more. I felt keeping the scales as yellow paired nicely with the brown and added a sense of importance to their character. I then added a leather skin texture before painting on a dog paw shape onto its palm. As we aren’t allowed procedurally generated fur on our model I decided to use a fur brush to go over areas on the model I felt looked a bit bare. i did this on two layers with one colour lighter than the base brown and one colour darker than the base model. I felt this worked well as it added a lot of much needed depth to the monster. I then painted a black triangle around the rim of the eyes to add more variation. For my final addition to the textures I added a natural ground texture before using a black mask on a fill layer to paint around where I wanted the dirt to be on the model. I painted the majority of the dirt on the front of the model as I wanted to give the implication of the monster digging using its paws. I then tweaked the height and colour of the material so the dirt appeared less dry and more freshly applied. I then exported my textures into maps before applying them in my shaders so they would show up on my blender file. I added a texture coordinate shader before attaching the uvs to the roughness, colour and normal maps. I then added a normal map between the BDSF node and the normal image to connect the two. I then upped the strength of the normal map to 2.5. Overall I think I am happy with these textures as I feel they convey the cartoony nature of the Hotel Transylvania films.
I used pretty much the same process for texturing the pitchfork and the base the Chupacabra stands on. My main difference was that in my pitchfork model, I had to add a metallic map into the shaders as well. I also added a rust material to make the pitchfork seem more aged. For the base I used layers with black masks to create a patch of dirt surrounded by grass. I then went over it with a mud and a stone material to add more variety and to make the scene look like the goats actually lived there. I felt this worked well in sticking with the hotel Transylvania art style and adding some much needed life to my scene.
For the goats I took a different approach. I decided to take a screenshot of the unwrapped UVs and imported them into krita. I then turned the opacity down on the layer before painting onto the layer beneath the UVs. After I had painted my desired pattern and colours onto the layer i turned the first UV layer off and then took a screenshot before importing it back into blender. I felt this worked well and overall I am happy with how the goats turned out.
