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?

Time to get back to it.

So, I went back into Maya to make a new rock. This time, I used my previous reference with my shape breakdown (mostly the main shapes in this case) to make the rock. I started with a cube, added vertices, and moved them around according to my reference.

The modeling was definitely easier with reference (shocker), since there was less guess work involved.

Next came Uving it. This time I decided to keep each rock face as its own UV island. I figured it might be easier to match the edges to everything since I will understand what each island represents better (it wont be a weird shaped blob like last time).

I tried to keep each UV island next to each other that corresponds to what face is next to each other on the actual model. The bottom mid and right islands are the top and bottom respectively. In hindsight, I should have lined the edges up a little better, it would have made my life even easier, but overall this setup worked a lot better than sewing the islands together.

Now back to painting.

I took the new uvs into photoshop and began painting out the base colour and gradients. Lighter blue colours on top blending down into darker purples.

I realized after this that i accidentally painted one of the side faces as the bottom face and vice versa which I swap later on.

Anyways, I then started adding secondary shapes.

Adding the secondary shapes went decently, but things get a little more difficult after this part. I started noticing that not everything is lining up at the seams, and I end up having to go back and forth a lot.

Also, I found a super cool new brush set that ended up helping.  You can get the brush set here; https://blog.sketchfab.com/tutorial-painting-stylized-textures/

Later, someone suggested to me that for the edges (they were a big problem), I should just outline them in the highlight colour to see how it worked. I did it really basically to test it out (thick highlight lines around all the Uv islands) and it already looked better. From here I just blended it up nicer, redid some of the secondary shapes (since the secondary shapes now just had to make sense on their own face instead of connecting them onto other faces) and the result was much nicer than round one.

And on the model (flat lighting);

I think with more refinement, I could get a even more uniform rock texture going. This one is much nicer than the previous attempt, and definitely matches my concept image more. However its still a little messy, mostly because the secondary shapes don’t hold up that well. Adding more reference for the difference faces of the rocks I think will help.

OK so before I began painting round two, I decided to go back to my concept and just test out the colours, as well as a bit of the shape language.

So I took my concept piece into photoshop and started using the eyedropper on the rocks and painting over it with the base colours. Throughout this process, I learned that the lighter colours were of course brighter, mostly cool toned blues. The shadows were mostly darker purples, and in a lot of cases where the rocks sit near the red grass, the shadows are orange or warm purples. This was actually really helpful in wrapping my mind around what colours I should be picking for base tones, highlights, and shadows.

I then blended the colours and looked at the cracks and bumps that I noticed in the stones that the artist painted. Mostly I noticed that there are very few cracks, and the ones that are there are small. The stones include “lips” (shallow horizontal edges) below the main edges sometimes, and their overall shapes are basically rounded cubes (some get a little pointed, but overall it’s a cube-like shape).

I also noticed there’s not so much “highlight lines” to accentuate the cracks so much as there are more of a gradient patch of the lighter colour’s near the cracks to accentuate it instead. Part of the reason my previous attempt was a bit messy was because I kept adding a lot of little super dark and super light lines everywhere, and focused less on gradient colour changes to carry the rock shapes forward.

At this point I remembered a video I watched had a really good tip for starting out your rock shapes and how to break down a real picture to use as reference for the sculpt. The video link is here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gicTFXZ8SQI&index=4&list=LLuuODO0v0gOHOMQtXyk8e5w&t=198s

Basically, the video says to breakdown an image of a real rock into 3 main shape types, and draw out the edges of them in photoshop. The first being the rocks base shape, the second being the middle sized shapes found within the rock, and the third are all the cracks and little dips throughout the stone.

I set out to replicate this method, so I found an image of a real world stone that kind matched my concept piece (cube like and very rounded since its near water). Then I did my breakdown;

Red – Main shape

Green – Secondary shapes

Blue – Tertiary shapes

From here I thought I would test out my new rock shape and colour knowledge and just paint over the rock in the above image in the concepts colours. This way I could see if on a 2d surface I could at least replicate a rock that could fit into the concepts world.

I started with a base blue colour, and tried to make a gradient down from brighter blues to darker purples. Then I started outlining the secondary shapes and bringing those out, and then finished off with a bit more “highlight patches” and the darker cracks and chips.

Turned out pretty decently i think, lets see what it looks like dragged into the Concepts image to see how it fits with it!

I’d say that matches pretty nicely! From here, I go into painting round two.

Since watching the tutorial was pretty helpful because I now had some ideas on what I was doing and where to start, I figured I would just jump right in and start painting to get my beginner failures out of the way (they don’t leave), and also to really highlight some of the problems I would have going in unprepared (so I could learn how to prepare to begin with).

OK. So I made a rock in maya. I started with a cube, added some more vertices, then pulled them all around to make a rocky shape.

 

Then I set about uving it. At first I had all the uv islands separated based on what direction the rock face was pointed in, but then I thought that maybe it would be easier to paint the rock itself if there were less seams. So I connected them all. (This is a bad idea).

Also as a quick test, I decided making just a straight up cube and painting it like a rock could help me get started with painting, simply so i could see how blending edges and everything worked together (also partially as a challenge just to see how far you can paint a sharp edge to look rounded). It probably would have been smart to do this before I made and uv’d the rocky shape, but somehow I decided to do both kind of at once.

OK time to paint, finally.

So I opened up photoshop, and honestly just started throwing colours onto the cube uv set. It was really messy and the colours didn’t match anything. I kind of just decided blueish colours were best because the concept image is blueish, though it doesn’t look anything like the concept.

As you can see, its pretty messy. The bottom row I thought id connect and it doesn’t look too terrible on the model in that regard, but its not defined and the colours are all over the place. The other parts were a bit more defined and take on a 3d quality (ish) but I had no concept of what shapes i was making while painting, and that made it difficult trying to get the whole thing to come together and look like a rock, and to also make rounded edges. Also, because the auto uv’s were just putting faces together everywhere, the bottom horizontal section of the uvs is going in a different direction and doesn’t match up at all with the vertical section of the uvs… so this is why uvs matter.

Anyway, here is the finished result on the 3d model; the left has a defined section, the right has part of the bottom section. They don’t flow between each other.

So moving on to the rock shape. I started with bluer colours this time in the hopes of it becoming more uniform. I started with blocking in big shapes, and moving on to smaller ones. From there, I started to try and pop out the shapes. I noticed throughout all of this that matching the UV edges is difficult and it wasn’t going too well for me. Basically, it was a big mess again, and the shapes I was choosing for the model didn’t really match up with it and I was getting frustrated.

As you can see above, I for some reason went the “lets add tons of little rock shapes” route, which makes no sense for one large rock shape. It really makes no sense on the model too. They kinda look like pebbles.

See, it just looks weird, almost like a ground texture instead of a single object.

Here’s the model;

At this point, I concluded painting round one. Basically, I needed to figure out my colours better (something that would match my concept more), the model itself also needed help (it doesnt match concept really, nor was it based on reality). And of course, uvs needed to be better.

So really I thought I would start with the most basic method of hand painting textures that I know of and that’s just making a basic model in a 3d modeler program (maya, in this case). From there I will take a snapshot of the UVs and paint in the texture in Photoshop.

However, since I really had no clue what some tips and tricks of how to go about designing models and then painting them were (yes, even rocks), the first thing i did was go find tutorials to watch.

After google searching how to hand paint 3D objects, i came across a tutorial on Udemy.com called “Hand Painted Weapon”. Its a tutorial by Tyson Murphy (lucky for me, someone who used to work on World of Warcraft), that I took a bunch of notes from which ill post here;

     “Hand Painted Weapon – by Tyson Murphy

Maya, Photoshop

Tools

• Create Polygon tool
• Multicut tool
• Insert edgeloop
• Merge
• Mirror
• Collapse
• Extrude

Modelling

• As low poly as possible
• Outline silhouette
• Include edges -> raise them out for depth
• Mirror Half of objects, saves texture space

UVS

• Keep uvs economical, uv space used as widely as possible
• Set up so its easy to paint *MOST IMPORTANT* is ease of painting
• Align uvs to straight lines (align tool edges)
• This saves space and makes it easier to paint
• Smooth Uvs, relax/unfold
• Don’t overlap some things; light affects them differently if they are in different areas from each other (example, little spikes on sword)
• Little bit of stretching is ok when its on a non focal point, and is going to be mostly hidden
• Keep shells in direction object faces
• Small objects can be a little bigger for ease of painting, wont notice texel density difference on smaller objects
• Allows for more detail to be seen anyway
• Don’t place objects too close together, paint will bleed onto other shells
• Add uvs as material in maya and turn up ambient light so you can see how your painted texture is working without default lighting

 Painting

• Take uvs to photoshop
• Invert layer
• Blend mode to multiply
• Select empty space, invert (so all islands are selected), fill islands,
• Then go to Select, Modify, Expand (by 5 pixels)
• This allows space around your island selections so your edges don’t show in-engine
• New Layer underneath Uvs, fill with warm gray
• Add psd file to maya model so you can update regularly and see how it looks in 3D

Setting up Brush

• Use normal, round hard brush
• Pressure sensitivity -> pen pressure, minimum diameter ~45% (so brush doesn’t get too small when painting lightly)
• Use Mask Layer to keep w/in border
• Control H to hide selection ants, keeps object selected
• Uv layer opacity low, so lines don’t get in the way (~20%)

Values

• Use values to trick mind it’s a 3D object
• Think up imaginary light source, with a sword its easy to use top-down
• Planes facing light – lighter, facing dark – darker
• Blend as you go using eyedropper, or can use smudge tool
• Use darker colours first for awhile to bring out base values
• **Need a large range of value to be able to sell the object as believable**
• Switch to high value light, use navigator to see entire object
• If texture looks good flat, with no lighting, it will look good in game
• If your value changes, you want your hue/saturation to change
• Don’t just change a colour from light, and go straight down to the dark version of it. Change its hue a bit while darkening. Its more realistic and dynamic.
• Don’t value everything the same, imagine LIGHT FALLOFF
• Gives you gradients on same planes. More dynamic
• If your values are wrong/not working, adding details wont help

Edges

• Usually lightest spots
• Highlights are not always where light source is directly hitting first, its offset
• Don’t rely entirely on the colours on the canvas/concept. Sometimes a bit of spontaneity, or splash of colour, is good
• Paint Occlusion
• Darken edges where object meet
• Stay with LOOSE STROKES -> keeps values on point
• Add some wear to edges

Details

• Small, dark brush, add scratches
• Small details are good to further define light source
• Highlight edges of scratches/details
• Smudge dark colours in, looks like dents and it adds colour variation. Highlight lightly
• Make sure not to over detail, keep areas of focus
• Overlay Layers
• Gives variance in highlights (not all highlights are same)
• Multiply Layers
• Gives variance in shadows, darker right next to where light hits
• Add extra bright highlights to increase shine in metal objects (small touches)
• Colour Dodge Layer
• Brings out light areas, pops highlights
• Rough strokes
• You have to guess where objects are sticking in for ambient occlusion/ trial n error
• Filter -> blur -> Gaussian blur
• Some faces would technically be lit the same; still good to slightly change it for variation

Final Touches

Check Forms

Check Highlights

Direct reflection of light source from surface mat to eyes

Highlights located on ~45% angle between viewer and light source

Check Shadows

Define depth

Deep spots get no light; darkest moments

Detail; add more if needed

Bounce Light

Bounce colours between objects to show connection

Looks pretty good to me. Moving forward, I tried to really keep these tips in mind when modeling (low poly), setting up the uv’s (this really matters, as i find out later), and of course painting everything.

Hello and welcome to my blog! Here I will be detailing my journey through the ins and outs of learning how to make hand painted textures for 3D objects, in order to re-create the concept piece you see below this post.

I decided to start this project by learning how to hand-paint a simple rock (since as you can see, the concept piece is full of them). Basically, you will get to see the different methods and processes I followed in order to recreate a rock for this scene.

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

“The Potion Master’s House” by Chris Karbach