Since hand painting goes beyond just using a 3d modeler and then going into Photoshop, I decided to take a break from painting seams and blue blobs and look into different methods. An interesting video I found on youtube a year or so ago while looking for something else came immediately to mind and I decided to go look for it again. Luckily, it was easy to find.
Video Link; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE0CM1C_soc&list=WL&t=0s&index=17
Basically, the video showcases a rock this guy has and how he uses the normal map of the rock to create a hand-painted looking texture in substance designer. His method is extremely easy to re-create, so I decided to give it a go.
First things first, I went and created a sculpted rock in zbrush so I can create a rock that has better normal information. I exported my previous rock from maya that I had painted on and just subdivided it in zbrush. From there, I was using a combo of the trim dynamic tool and clay buildup tool to build out my secondary and tertiary rock shapes.
Then I created a normal map in zbrush and exported that, then opened up Substance Designer.
Here’s the map. Basically I use the normal from my rock, add it to some curvature maps, blend them together, use some levels to balance the white and darks, and then add a gradient map for the colour (that I picked from the concept piece). I had to shuffle values around a bit to get things to highlight the way i wanted.
So my sculpt is pretty ugly. I did it relatively quickly so I could test out the method asap. The first curvature map adds some funny lines that don’t really translate well as anything. It kinda looks like a oil spill type film is all over it when zoomed in close. I do like how the deep cuts I made in the rock came out though, with the shadows and highlights. It would be nice to see if on a better sculpt with more defined secondary shapes cut into the base mesh if the method would look nicer.
I tried again anyways, and removed the curvature map and just kept the smooth one and plugged that directly into the levels instead of a blend node.
I played around with the levels to pull out the colours again, and exported.
It looks pretty similar, though I like it a little better than before. The oil slick look isn’t as apparent, and colours are a little better. The rock used in the video of course had tons of really defined secondary shapes, so I imagine using curvature maps works better with that type of object.
For fun I used the normal map from the low poly rock I made in maya just to see what it would look like with no secondary and tertiary shapes.
It kinda worked?
JC Hand Painting 