Weapons project 3 - Getting to grips with substance painter

So after all the hassle last week with the high poly and the reconcepting I finally got into the texturing stage and baked had all my maps baked out.

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This is the first time I've made a high poly model which actually worked, thank god. The normal map came out reasonably well and it makes the model look remarkably smoother. I added some basic material separation to the model inside substance painter just to get an idea of what it might look like.

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The next stage was just making sure everything had the right materials. This required some repainting of the ID maps to fix baking issues plus adding in separation according to normal map details, for example the vent on the side of the saw.

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 The decals were very fun to create, I created them all in photoshop and then used projection tool in painter to lay them onto the model, as you can see I did this with the dice above and the stickers below. The stickers I enjoyed in particular, I was very tempted to try and get them printed off as actual stickers! 

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 Texturing is admittedly my weakest area, so I got a lot of feedback form the tutors on what to do with it. I was told to include more wear in areas where it will get put down or hit along with some more general wear. This was quite a hard thing to do as if I went too far with the grunge then it might kill the look of the gun but it still needed some extra eye-candy, I continued to add wear and then take bits away to keep the gun within the semi-stylized ballpark. This is something I may end up correcting more for the polish week.

After some more polish I moved the gun over the marmoset and did my renders, the rest here is just an art dump. :)

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Project Conclusion

This project has been quite an interesting one and a massive learning experience, it was a real lesson in management and I have learnt some technical skills that I have been looking to learn for ages. I planned this as a warmup project to learn some new techniques, before moving onto the bigger environments. The high poly workflow and using things like substance painter will become extremely useful when it comes to the high poly sci-fi environment.

My next project however will be quite different. I will be working on a low poly, hand painted environment so I can go back and learn some more basic texturing skills and quick asset modelling. There are some basics like colour and form I need to brush up on too, a handpainted project seemed like the best way to do that. Good preparation for FMP I hope. :)