How to Set Up Painterly-Style Textures with Mari & Substance 3D Designer

Introduction

I'm Karim Hassanein, Lead Texturing and LookDev Artist at Monkeys.tv, based in Egypt. I've always been into art since I was a little kid. I was a 2D Artist until I was 18, when I created a mixed-media project that combined 2D and 3D art, which made me switch completely to 3D. I got into the industry when I was 22, thanks to the CEO of Monkeys.tv, who was the one to discover me on ArtStation.

I've contributed to many projects with the team, such as Doritos, Coca-Cola, Orange, indie films, and many others! I'm a self-taught artist who never joined any art school, as I think anybody can gain knowledge through observation and practice. What taught me a lot was gathering information about whatever I was trying to learn from documents and articles on the internet, and figuring out the basic concepts, and then the complicated and more advanced things step by step. It's accumulated knowledge in the end!

Inspiration

I haven't done any personal hard-surface projects in a while because I'm more into organic stuff, so I thought that if I'm going to do something that is hard-surface, I want it to be also organic with some unique shapes and features!

The concept was created by the Spanish Artist Tomàs Barceló. He's such an amazing traditional sculptor with a unique style that I've never seen before! I spent almost a month observing his work, trying to get immersed in his style and the vibe and feeling of each of his pieces.

Modeling

I started with a basic ZBrush mannequin and made it look like a baby to get a smooth start. Then I cut it into pieces to pose freely because it was all DynaMesh! From that stage, I worked on it asymmetrically, but the UVs are symmetrical, and that was planned from the beginning because it wasn't supposed to have a T-pose in the first place.

I'd say the month I took to prepare for the project was what saved me time because I made decisions and rules for myself, and that made it go well and look exactly how I wanted! 

Some parts were modeled entirely in Autodesk Maya, other parts in ZBrush using ZRemesher with polygroups preserved and polished to give clean results, then taken to Maya to fix the flow of the edges if required. Unwrapping was done in Maya as well.

Texturing

First off, the project is still in progress. I haven't finished it yet!

I started breaking down the materials in the reference and categorizing them into metal, paint, stains, dust, etc. I used The Foundry Mari and Mari Extension Pack mainly for texturing because Mari can handle crazy levels of detail and UDIMs way better than any other software, and it's helping me to fulfill my vision. I used Substance 3D Designer to create utility maps, such as several variants of curvature maps and custom ambient occlusion extracted from ZBrush displacement to give me full control over texturing. I also created my own Mari brush to create that brushstroke effect in the patterns to give it a realistic feeling!

Here are some of the maps:

Albedo:

Hand-painted pattern:

Curvature variants:

Brushstrokes effect inside Mari:

Lighting & Rendering

That WIP render was created in Houdini using Arnold. It's an amazing software; it gives full control over the geo and can do a lot of stuff to help create stunning shaders and looks. For lighting, I used a simple studio HDRI to help me throughout the lookdev stage, and some of Cave Academy's LookDev tools were used to help tweak the values of the shader. Nuke was used for adding depth of field and lens effects, such as chromatic aberration and that grainy cinematic look.

Conclusion

There isn't a textbook guide for such things, but I'd say the key is to choose unique and challenging concepts, and that depends on the artist's mindset and vision. It would help the artist to explore themselves and know their true capabilities. The main challenge was the decision-making cycle I went through before starting, and whether they were going to work or not. I've learnt a lot of stuff, especially about the flow of patterns. That by itself made me realize so many concepts, and still so much to discover till I finish that piece. My advice for beginners would be to keep going and not be a clone of someone because you look up to them.

Karim Hassanein, Lead Texturing & LookDev Artist