Once some of the 3D models had been finished and I was sent the fbx files, I was able to start texturing in Substance Painter. I chose to use Substance since I was already familiar with it and found it very intuitive to use. I was also able to make use of the different materials and brushes included in the program to make detailed textures relatively easily.

 

From the start I was having issues with some of the UVs. The UVs of some buildings were not unwrapped, I contacted the modeller about this but I also tried to fix some of the issues myself. I imported the fbx files into Maya to inspect the UV maps, I saw that the UV shells had not been unwrapped or laid out properly. To make applying the textures easier down the line I had chosen to use one material per object rather than a different material for each part of the object/each shell. This meant that the UV shells would need to be laid out beside each other on one grid square of the UV editor and not overlapping eachother. I used the autoseams tool to cut seams in the UVs, then used the UV unwrap tool, and finally the layout tool to get the UV layout I wanted. When I’d done this for an object I’d export the fbx again and bring it into Substance Painter for testing. While the layout tool is useful for quickly organising the different shells in a UV map, it doesn’t consider the size of each piece – for example on one building model, the door handles took up more space on the map than the walls did. This resulted in low-quality pixelated textures since a large part of the model had been shrunk down so much on the UV map. To fix this I went back to Maya and reorganised some of the UV maps by hand so that the pieces were appropriately sized. Rhys (one of the 3D artists) also helped me to fix this issue.

 

After the UV maps had been fixed, I began to texture our assets. There were two texture artists – me and Dan – but due to poor communication on my part I didn’t know this at first and thought I was the sole texture artist. Once that was cleared up, I made sure to contact Dan about who would be doing which asset. To make the most of our time we had begun texturing before the 3D models were all finished; we would receive a model and texture it while the next model was being built. I ended up being responsible for the following 3D assets: Rhy’s layered modular building, Harry’s modular building, the “honeycomb shaped” building, the cat cafe, the vending machines, trashcan, grate, pipe, and cola can.

 

Since I wasn’t using separate materials for each segment of the buildings, to avoid wonky edges I had to use black masks. I created separate folders for each part of the model I wanted to isolate, then added a different colour layer to each folder to differentiate them on the model. I applied a black mask to each folder separately and used the UV chunk fill to quickly select the area to be isolated. From there I could add layers to each folder to paint on that part of the model.

 

I began with Harry’s modular building since it was the first model with working UVs I had been sent. The model was split up into several parts to allow for customisation, which meant we could reuse assets without it being too obvious. It included a door piece, bottom middle and top wall pieces, bottom middle and top corner pieces, and variations of the wall and corner sets with windows included. I decided to use the concrete material for these models, I started off with a cream-white concrete wall and used Substance’s various brushes to add imperfections and cracks in the walls. I also used an airbrush tool to add a little shading to the bottoms of the walls to stop them from looking flat – there would be lighting added later in Unreal too, but I wanted to make sure the dark areas of the build were defined. I used a dark grey/black colour for the trimming around the bottom and top pieces to give a little contrast, then also added shading and imperfections to them. 

 

For the windows I used a plastic material as I liked the glossy shine and thought it could represent glass. I had decided to make the windows of every building opaque to save time so we wouldn’t have to worry about the buildings’ interiors. Using a watercolour-like brush with lowered opacity I added some shading to the windows around the edges too. I also added a new layer and used a stamp to add a crack to the window, setting it so that it affected the height map only to make it look like a real crack. 

 

Next up was Rhy’s modular building. This one wasn’t split into sections of walls and corners like Harry’s was, instead it was split into layers like a layer cake. It had only 3 parts: the base (with the door), a middle section, and a smaller connecting piece with an indent for billboards. These parts could be layered on top of eachother to make different heights of buildings. To make this building look a little different from the last, I chose a darker colour and a metallic material. For the detailing I used a brush to create small spots of dirt, using the rust material since the building looks metallic. I also used an airbrush to add scuff marks around the bottom of the building where it’d be touching the ground, plus I used a vine material to add weeds growing at the building’s base. I used the same technique for the windows as the last building (using plastic for a glossy texture and making the colour lighter in the centre) but I made it purple like the windows of a nightclub. I also used a dirt-spot brush on the windows and set it to only affect the roughness to make smudges on the glass which wouldn’t be reflective. For the doors, I experimented with a wooden material, but it didn’t fit with the futuristic theme. I didn’t want to use a plain metal texture either since it would be a bit bland. Looking through the different material options, I found that the carbon fibre texture worked surprisingly well. I used a large brush size which made the details in the material larger too, the door ended up looking like a fancy entrance to a nightclub or bar.

While I was waiting for some UV problems with the buildings to be fixed, I worked on the smaller props. For the grate and the pipe I used a simple steel texture, dragging it from the content browser onto the model. I added a little rust to the corners for detailing and moved on, not wanting to spend too much time on the small props. For the soda can, I textured the metal bits on the tops and bottoms and put arrows on the label to show where it should be applied in Krita.

 

The next building I worked on was the hexagonal one, which I had designed earlier. I chose a dark colour for the walls since I wanted most of the colour in the scenes to come from the posters and lighting, but I added some purple to the ridge around the roof and on the windowsills to avoid the colours being too bland. I used the same technique as before for the windows, adding rough spots on the glass for variation, but there was something wrong with the UV and I couldn’t mask one of the windows to colour it cleanly. We’d already had a lot of trouble with UV maps so I decided to leave it, we could just hide the blank window from the camera when we make the videos. For detailing I added some shading around the windows and roof and some dirt marks to the concrete, then some small weeds growing from under the roof.

 

When all the textures were done, I took them into Unreal engine along with the fbx files to begin putting together my scene.