Sea Sadness: Texturing Workflow in Substance Painter

Introduction

Hey! My name is Ayagaure Sánchez, but everybody calls me Ayi or Sanschesss as most English speakers would say. I was born in the North of Spain (Asturias) but my whole family comes from the Canary Islands. I have moved around a lot during my life, all over Spain and abroad. I studied journalism and worked on magazines and TV for a couple of years until I found 3D. 

I've been working in 3D for 10 years now - I started back in Spain first doing architectural visualization and then jumping into games at Mercury Steam (Castlevania Mirror of Fate and Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2), doing some freelance for Iron Belly, then going to Splash Damage (Gears of War Ultimate and Gears 4), helping out at Unity (Adam Demo) and finally joining MachineGames where I am currently at (Wolfenstein 2 New Colossus and Wolfenstein YoungBlood).

I have been working as an environment, texture, and prop artist and also have been doing some level design, so I have a clear idea of how a whole level is done from its granular elements.

Sea Sadness Mat: Idea

Sea Sadness started as a “would be cool to join the contest, let's do a doodle…” but also because of that challenging punch feeling I get every time I join an online competition. I am not that good at finishing stuff at home, having deadlines usually helps me. If not, I get lost in being too picky, thinking it is not good enough or losing my interest after doing initial blockouts. My unfinished project folder is way too big at this time, and I doubt I will finish most of them. So yeah, it was a perfect excuse to force myself to deliver something, and it was also very contained, so I could spend time doing one of the things I enjoy the most, texturing! It is nice to look right and left and see the amazing stuff other people are doing. That also forces me to go full throttle and be extra critical with my own work. Healthy competition is always exciting.  

I knew I wanted to do something related to the sea and weathered materials. The diver was quite a popular theme last contest, so I tried to stay away from it but look for similar stuff inspired by Bioshock material palettes. While checking references, I ended up looking at Chadburn telegraphs and thought they had the perfect elements to transform into MeetMat material. It didn't have a face at the beginning, but messing around with pictures in Photoshop, I kitbashed what looked like a sad expression. I quite liked it because every single entry on the last one had happy faces, and this was definitely different. I decided to use that accident to try to tie other elements into it and tell a small story. And that's how the seagull poop came in, not only as a cool visual feature but as a reason for Mat being a bit sad.

I had a clear vision of what type of materials I wanted to include, and that was metal and wood. Both have interesting weathering processes, so I thought that could definitely result in something visually rich if I did put enough time into it.

On one side, bronze, with appealing shine but also coloring and patina that would help break it up a bit. On the other, weathered wood exposed to sunlight and sea inclemencies. That contrast of shine and matte is something I enjoy doing. Since both materials had these orangish/brownish tones I added a blue paint as a complementary tone inspired by fishing ships. Finally sand at the base, with a very desaturated tone, so it didn't steal the show. Barnacles were the excuse for connecting both tone and theme-wise. I added the seaweed to have some color there. I also tried different solid colors for the base, mostly red and black. I wanted to keep a visual hierarchy, so when looking at it, the head and body would be the first thing and then moving down with the rest.

Initially, I had in mind buoys, fenders, ropes, and even an anchor, but didn't manage to make it work... they were way too distracting and I also ran out of time to try more stuff. 

This was my first doodle done in a couple of hours, I was just looking for colors and elements distribution. I needed to understand if the overall idea would work. I used some very basic materials, duplicated, and colored them. As I was working on it, more ideas were coming. The first one was to add a glass and then the poop to explain the sad face. Since I already had a few white elements, I decided to add some white lines here and there to highlight some of the elements like the wrists, the knees, and the eyes. That did help differentiate the parts of the body nicely.

Face

The face was easy since I more or less knew the elements I wanted to include. It was just a matter of scaling them correctly and having some nice spacing to make it readable but interesting at the same time. 

The handle started as just a circle painted on the displacement; it was my first contact with displacement in Substance Painter, so it took me a while to use the opacity and intensity to get the results I wanted. Also, I was new to Iray, but got it to work quite fast as soon as I found an HDR that worked with the materials. 

I started creating the height/displacement and blocking all the stuff in MODO and then baked into planes so I could use EXR for better results. I tried to add every element on a different paint layer so I could play with their intensity. For some elements like the bolts, I created a brush that would do the work, and then it was a matter of placing them around. I also used a powerful tool named Roll Brush by Alex (Zinan) Liu. It's sort of a lazy mouse that repeats a pattern over the path. It is a bit tricky to set up at the beginning, but it was quite useful when I input my own heightmaps. I did the trims in the metal with it, just freehanding. I also tried to use it for the ropes but they didn't end up in the final version. For some other stuff, I just made some alphas in Photoshop and then used a bit of height push.

Once I was happy with the overall height/displacement I added some additional layers, pushing in and pulling out stuff with simple bushes to try to make the metal dented. I did anchor point everything together so I could later use this information for masking stuff in other maps.

After that I started working on the base materials for the head that were:

• Metal
• Black Paint
• Glass

An important thing was to tie everything together in a natural way, and for that, I used some scratches, dust accumulations, and a greenish/blueish patina. Also different colorations and oxidations on the metal, from darker stuff to even purple. It is all about the nuances of each surface. In order to make transitions interesting and organic, I used either my custom chipped paint brush or my own alpha library, which I am planning to release very soon on Artstation! 

Body

For the main body, I started with one of the base wood materials from the Substance library and stripped it down to the base layer. Then altered the hue with a simple HSL filter and started adding layers to enrich it. You can see my whole layering here.

I wanted to try to create a wood that was rich in subtleties but at the same time readable from a longer distance. I started with color gradients and hue variations, painting everything by hand as I usually do. I use alphas for painting either with brushes or stencil mode. I usually try to use a black mask on the layer at first, then a generator to have a base, and then tons of paint masks to add or subtract information from the layer. The behavior and soft/hardness of the brush are quite important to create different kinds of transitions. I have a bunch of custom brushes with random behavior. It helps that all my alphas have Ayi on the name, so I create a sub shelf, type my name on the search, and all are there; one click and they are automatically applied to my current brush. This allows me to try all sorts of weird stuff quickly while using brushes. I also use the alphas on the eraser. I try to use as much as possible the shortcuts, especially numbers to switch between different tools and x to change from black to white while painting. 

When using generators for masking, my favorite one without a doubt is the legacy one. I have a version with all values zeroed and start from that depending on the desired effect. The reason why I like legacy so much is because of the world space stuff, especially useful for top downs. I used it for dust and sun bleach but also for a greenish hue from the bottom. The secret is, never leave a generator as it comes, tweak it and then add paint layers to remove or add extra stuff. In that way, it would look unique instead of generic.

I also used lots of anchors points to try to connect stuff together. For example, all the darker wood grain was painted from an alpha, then I added an anchor point for later. When I did the desaturated version, I used that anchor as my initial mask, blurred it, leveled it up, and used the anchor point this time to subtract it. In that way, I get that outer glow effect so the crevices desaturation extends a bit. I did the same method for the paint peeling, so I had a base that I later could refine painting on and off manually.

The planking and division were all done by hand, including some of the cracks. I just made sure they felt decent with multiple paint layers and a bit of height. Also, it is important that height has an impact on the albedo even if it is subtle. The mid-part was also done by hand, I just duplicated the main wood, masked it, tinted it a bit, added white lines and then destroyed them here and there. I usually try to have an interesting hue or luminance contrast on my textures, so dark wood is countered with light dust, or saturated varnish contrasts with dry desaturated wood.

Again, an important aspect of layering is to try to create something that feels visually complex with very simple layers, something detailed but not noisy.

Colors

Color palettes are more about art principles than tools. Using the right proportions and complementary colors in order to build an interesting picture is the most important thing. Also having good and interesting references is key.

Albedo is the soul of a texture for me, so I put a lot of effort into it that later translates into other maps. I usually sample solid colors from images or I even make some good albedo bases in Photoshop/Designer and then adjust colors through HSL filters. Keeping it organic is a matter of subtle transitions and good use of gradients and opacities. Extreme stuff doesn't work well most of the time, so if I need to duplicate a layer 3 times, I change the hue slightly, repaint the mask and repeat... that's what I do.

Opinion on Substance Painter

I've been using Substance Painter since the early versions and the program just kept going up. It seems obvious, but painting multiple maps at once was the biggest revolution for me coming from Photoshop. And then anchor points were again the reinvention of the wheel.

One of the best features, in my opinion, is the easy connection with Designer, which I use mostly for creating height/normal map generators for high-frequency details or more specific stuff like masks or base materials. Also, the projection mode is super useful.

After this contest, I also realized the potential of Iray, which can be quite powerful when it comes to rendering. The fact that it is just one click away and I don't have to leave the program makes it super useful.

With that being said, it is still missing some basic features I would expect from a modern texture painting software such as lasso selections, being able to click on a mask and get it previewed in the viewport, layer navigation menu per pixel in the viewport and a lot of other stuff I used to use in Photoshop when it was my main tool.

Advice for Texture Artists

The best way of mastering texturing is through everyday work, there are no secrets. It is all about understanding the theory, having the right references, observing reality, and extracting what you can use from it in a creative way. And then, work, work, work... especially in production environments where you can learn a lot from your colleagues. Find a few small tricks that help you become better and keep digesting images and understanding them.

Being critical with your own work is also very useful, never feel satisfied because there are always things that could be better.

Afterword

I am currently writing a series of articles about Fundamentals of Texturing for Games that you might find useful. It is a way of trying to give back to the community what I have learned through the years and different studios, and I don't think anybody has done something like this before.

Ayagaure Sánchez, Senior Environment Artist at MachineGames

Interview conducted by Arti Sergeev