This week saw us start by using a programme called substance painter, it’s a programme that allows me to texture the 3D object as if it were a 3D object in the real world, and updates the UV map in real-time, making a lot earlier to create realistic textures and to gel them together with seams, whilst working with a typical UV map would be a lot harder. For this exercise, we were given a premade model which is from a previous students film.

Beginning to test out this programme, I wanted to recreate something from a game I was playing at the time, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. It’s a game that has a heavy emphasis on robots and cyborgs, and I liked the designs from the game, with its heavy emphasis on darker colours and carbon fibre. 

Carbon fibre is one of the first materials I noticed, it’s a favourite material of mine as it’s used in a wide variety of items including cars and robots, so I initially started by covering the object in the material, I then began experimenting with different brushes, and found the text tool, and going back to my initial inspiration for this object, I looked into the designs in the game and found that most of the characters have danger decals on them.

I added a few caution signs on the object, and they appear on the UV, this shows how much better substance painter is compared to traditional UV mapping, as before I would have needed to halve the object and place it in the desired spot, and whilst it wouldn’t have been overly complex, when I came to bigger, and more complex messes, it would have been a mess.

One of the last things I decided to experiment with was the baking and ID mask, as this had already been done for me, all I needed to do was use the layers properly to create this look, I opted to give the leg joints this silver look first, as I knew that realistically, they’d be the ones that would benefit from stronger joints. And afterwards, I did the same for the upper piston.

Overall I feel as though this exercise taught me a lot about how to use a substance painter not to its full advantages, but certainly to the point where I can make stuff look realistic enough.

 

References:

https://www.otakuhq.com/figures/6404