In this class we got an introduction to substance painter where we were tasked with texturing a Warhammer. I much prefer using substance painter to the old method of texturing as it is far more intuitive and I like how it uses layers similar to a drawing program. However I did struggle to get used to the navigation controls as they are different from blender.
I struggled quite a bit when modelling the helmet as I had drew out some of my own designs but they both had visors and I really struggled to figure out the best way to model them even after some trial and error. I decided instead to do a more simple design and I picked the Helm of Yngol from Skyrim as I thought having a 3d reference to rely on would make modelling far easier than trying to use my own drawings as the perspective could be wrong on them.
Modelling the base of the helmet was quite easy as I just used a uv sphere with a mirror modifier and used proportional editing to create the general shape of it.
However, I struggle when modelling the plate around the front of the helmet as I tried to separate it from the helmet and then add a solidify modifier to create the shape of it. However I then realised that all I had to do was separate the selection of faces from the base and extrude it along normals to create the shape. I also ran into difficulty when using the knife tool to get the shape of the plate as I struggled to get rid of all of the triangles in my topology which it created. Ultimately I was able to get rid of most of them but a few still remained in the model. I worried that this could possibly effect how effective substance painter would be to use later on but I didn’t run into any issues when texturing thankfully.
For the socket where the horns sat in I simply used a cylinder which I could then extrude inwards to create the shape. As for the horn itself I first attempted to create it by extruding a cylinder for each segment but I realised this would take far too long and would not produce the shape I wanted so I instead used a Bezier curve. By using a Bezier curve I was able to easily achieve the shape I wanted and also was able to easily edit the thickness of the mesh once I converted it to get the shape of the horn. I then added the seams so I could uv unwrap.
I then went to substance painter to create my texture. The majority of adding my textures was quite simple and similar to texturing the hammer in class. However, I found that there was a nail texture which made things so much easier as I was considering having to model nails in blender which would have taken far longer. I also was able to use the slate texture as a texture for the horns.
When I imported the textures into blender I then had to plug in all of the uv maps to their respective nodes to get the texture to look how it did in substance painter. However I did find that the roughness map made my helmet look almost wet in blender when it had just looked metallic in substance painter.
I then made a quick snowy environment to place the helmet in.
Here’s my final render.
Overall I am quite happy with how the helmet turned out but in the future I want to try to use substance painter for creating backgrounds as well as for the main model texture as I feel it will look far more detailed. I also want to improve my topology in future.