Though trying to paint our characters in substance painter was discussed earlier on in our development stages, we’ve decided to texture them more realistically in substance instead to save time while still getting good results.
After UV unwrapping my worm and checking (the checker texture is so large because I had to apply it manually, not because the UVs are exceptionally small), I was ready to try taking it into substance painter. This didn’t end up being as easy as I hoped it would be; most of my UVs appeared to have exploded when I brought them into substance despite looking more so as they should in Maya’s UV editor, causing every texture I applied to transmogrify into something reminiscent of 1970’s interior design. This was the case for everything bar my hat.
After some cries for help via Discord Alec suggested I try exporting the textures and applying them to my model in Maya to see if that would correct the issue. I believe I was using a ‘creature tongue’ material here.
It did not. Instead he ended up looking cool but suspiciously as though he was wrapped in bacon. Thankfully though Alec was able to take a closer look at the file and found this simple solution to my problems:
From here I was able to play about with and test different textures on my character. I was pleased with the colour scheme I had composed previously in Maya and didn’t want to deviate too far from it, so largely kept it the same.
I altered and re-sized my UVs before I started texturing to make sure they were at a more appropriate scale.
And here’s how they look applied to my model. I went through a few different materials for the skin in particular, but found that the texture of a rubber tire seemed to achieve a good balance somewhere between visceral, tactile and appealing for an earthworm gunslinger living in the desert.
When I applied and rendered these textures in Maya for the first time on my rigged and posed model it was very exciting to see. The result exceeded my expectations and it made me very happy to be able to view a character I had designed, modelled and textured rendered like this.
With this rendered still I used a film-emulating photo editor to apply some ideas we’d been thinking of by way of colour grading and editing to enhance the feeling of the genre.