Like the previous project, I decided to use Substance Painter as it’s very intuitive to use and offers a variety of materials to make textures more varied.

I imported my fbx from Maya and began texturing. I started off by doing the main body, as it was the largest surface. I wanted his onesie to look soft and comfortable, so I looked for a fleece or wool material. There wasn’t an option that exactly matched what I wanted, but Scarf Wool seemed to fit the criteria quite nicely anyway. I tried out a few different shades of blue until I found one that matched the concept art, then turned the Colour Detail setting up quite high to make the wool’s stitches more defined. I wanted the woolen texture to be very visible since the sculpt itself wasn’t too detailed.

Next, I added the stars on a new layer. Since they’re part of the onesie too, I used the same material on the same settings, but changed the colour to an off-white. I didn’t want to use pure white as it often stands out too boldly. I looked through the brushes to find a star one, and used that to add the details.

On both layers, I erased the areas that overlapped the face. This took a little trial and error to do perfectly, as I would often accidentally erase part of the onesie with it. When I was done with that, I created a new layer underneath the onesie to paint the face texture.

I didn’t want to use one of Substance’s actual skin textures as I felt they would make the model a little uncanny – a mascot with bumpy human skin isn’t particularly “cute”. Looking at my options, I took inspiration from Little Big Planet. In those games, all the characters and environments are made from fabric, everyday objects, and crafting materials. It gives them a unique and charming “cobbled together” look. I thought this style might work quite well on my model since the wool pattern was already so pronounced. Considering this, I picked the Fabric Bamboo material for the face in a similar shade to the stars.

Next were the eyes. Sticking to the Little Big Planet inspiration, I made the eyes shiny like beads using the Plastic Glossy Pure material. I used black since most cute mascots have black dot eyes. The reflectiveness of the eyes also adds to the cute factor, making them look like the bright eyes of a puppy or baby.

As the final touch, I added some shading. I knew the model would be affected by the lighting in Sketchfab anyways, but a little shading incorporated into the texture would make it look more polished and professional. I did a layer of shading above the face but below the onesie, using a blue-grey tone. I used a soft-edged brush with the flow and stroke opacity set to low so the shading would look soft and natural. When the facial shading was done, I created another layer above the stars for the body’s shading. I used a dark blue colour, but I switched the layer type to “Divide” so I could see where I was painting more clearly.

Finally, I switched the shading layer’s type to “Darken”, then baked my textures and exported them to a folder.