Thanks for watching! I added some answers to frequently asked questions in the description :) You can download the tea kettle project file for ✨free✨ on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/painterly-kettle-95182168
Reminds me of when the Arcane artists talked about creating the effect. The interview went something like "How did you get that painted effect" "we painted it"
@@soysource3218it’s not debunked. they literally painted all the colors onto the 3D models like on a canvas. cody’s is just a different method. the issue with cody’s method is that one has to stick to the local colors. i’d rather be able to paint directly on the model like in some of his clips in this video. but either way. it’s a great way to make it look painterly. now i wonder about subsurface scattering and organic materials. i don’t know anything bout 3d. but i would love to earn it just for this effect
OMG, this is literally the top of the iceberg of 3D texturing and sculpting. ITS SO COMPLEX and the tutorials are so scarse 😭This is truly an easy easy EASY way to do this.
For blender users: a modified voronoi texture is actually really good at imitating the real brush strokes. So you can connect the position of the texture into the color of the Normal map node (better to lower the strength to less then 0.5). Set the voronoi to smooth and lower the smoothness to around 0.1. Then connect the Mapping node to the vector of the voronoi. There you can see a Location socket. Plug there a Noise texture. To control the strength of it, use Vector math node set to Scale. That’s the basic concept, play with it. You can and different Noise or other textures to Location/Rotation/Scale for even more stylisation. Last thing: group all this big node tree, duplicate it, change its settings connect those two with Mix Color node. Possibilities are infinite!
When I tried this method I only got large squares occasionally dotted around the mesh. Is there anything that I might be doing wrong that its causing this to happen?
@@HYPN0_ Play with the VORONOI Scale (this is the main option imo, maybe your objects are bigger or smaller), reduce the NORMAL MAP strenght to 0.5 (I got some black artifact) and also tweak the VECTOR MATH Scale value and NOISE TEXTURE values if you like.
that's cool, and things seemed to be working up to where I connected the mapping node to the Voronoi texture. which part of the noise texture goes into the mapping nodes location, fac or color? and where is the vector math node supposed to be connected to? my guess is the vector socket on the noise texture node, but it's not clear. still a great help, this is easy to set up, and even in my 'not quite right' looking set up, its still close to a painted look
@@26IME i said it was better not that the others were bad lol. I love watching other creators and blender youtubers. Have you tried not being toxic for no reason 😂
I've been OBSESSED with non photoreal rendering for a while now, and seeing this painterly normal map technique initially just sparks so much inspiration in me. Thank you, this is so cool! Looking forward to learn more about this stuff :D
Cody, you have such a talent for explaining complex concepts in simple language! Thank you so much for this video and I hope to learn more from you in the future.
After seeing your first video on Instagram I started experimenting with this technique. I’m my experiments I’ve found it looks really good if you create 3 slightly different normal maps, with the normal map animated to change between them every 3 frames
I think a good way to keep the colors identical between multiple maps would be to pain in UV coordinates, then use that as a vector input to the raw, unaltered texture maps. That would give you the ability to change the brush strokes, color, object shape, and even metalic or roughness textures to match with the brush strokes
@@ErindorEspeon I second this, would love to see a short follow up on the node setup for this. I was thinking baking the Base Color of the object and then importing the texture into the 2D painting software, but I have yet to try that.
I fell in love with the idea of 3D animation done to look like 2D, so I am absolutely here for this technique and hope you make many more tutorials along these lines in the future.
i work with drawing commissions, one thing ou can do to match the normals with de albedo/base color is do the normals first, then you save one copy of the normals in .png file(with the original normal saved ), grab the normal that you will transform in base color and put saturation to 0, you will have a perfect copy of your normal but pintable and in grayscale, than you use the option "clipping mask" in your grayscaled normal and paint of with no fear to smud or destroy everything ps: english is not my primary language, so please, forgive the syntax errors
Didn't know it was this easy to achieve a look like this. We first tried to look for similar ways after watching "ARCANE" and now knowing we can ... it's awesome! Thanks Cody
I'm a Maya user - have never used Blender - but for some reason I didn't click off the video when I realized it was focusing on Blender. And I'm so glad I didn't! This looks like it can be pretty easily applied in Maya as well, and I do use both Substance and Photoshop, which is where it seems most of the work is done. This is so great, thanks for doing the work and sharing it with us all!
@@notme2594 okay, so I haven't tried it myself yet (working on another project first), but my theory is that you build your model, map your UVs, then export your model as an obj (fbx might work, but I always use an obj unless I'm exporting to Zbrush). If you bring it into Substance painter, it *should* develop a normals map for you. From there you should be able to paint on it as shown here, either directly in substance or by exporting that map and painting in Photoshop or other 2D art program (which I think is the way I'll go). Once you have made your edits, you can create an aiStandardSurface node (the ai here is referring to the Arnold renderer in Maya, NOT artificial intelligence) in Maya's hypershade and link in things like the base color map and metalness map and whatnot in their usual spots, and then your painted normal map into the "normal camera" spot. Theoretically it should work the same way as this video. But my method would require substance painter in addition to a 2D art program, and I don't know if you have that. I'm sure there is a way to export a normal map directly from Maya, but I'm not experienced with that. Also I still haven't tried it, as I said, so it's entirely possible that I'm wrong. But I'm certainly hopeful. If I can get it to work I'll comment back here, and if you can find out one way or another you can come reply on here too.
@@vanessanielson4883 thanks for all the details, appreciate it. I did all the edits on normal maps and now got stuck on how to make it work in maya, i tried putting in aiStandardSurface but somehow only the texture worked. There was no strokes, nothing reflecting lights in a solid color like in the video. Maybe i missed smt?
@@notme2594 hey I think I figured it out. First, if you export from substance, make sure you export the world space normal map from the mesh maps export preset. That will show the one with all the colors, not just the shades of blue/purple that the default normal map has. Then do the painting as shown in the video. Then when you bring it into Maya, *don't* plug it directly into the normal camera node, that won't work right. You need the aiNormalMap node to go in between. So create the file node and the aiNormalMap node, then connect the Out Color of the file node to the Input of the aiNormalMap node, then the Out Value of the aiNormalMap node to the Normal Camera of the aiStandardSurface shader. Then select the aiNormalMap and uncheck Tangent Space in the window that opens in the hypershade. That's what ended up giving me the best render. My other piece of advice that I'm working on implementing now is to make sure your brush strokes aren't all even/similar size or shape. If you do, it'll still work, but it just won't look as nice. Hope that helps!
THIS IS SO MIND BLOWINGLY SMART! I can't believe I've never thought of this! It's such a cool use of normal maps and should work in any game engine, not just 3D rendering software!
This is so cool!! I played around with it a little bit, and possibly found an easier method for color variation. If you use the normal image and plug it into a color ramp so it's black and white, you can use it as the factor of a mix color node and put the color you want in the other socket. Then set it to multiply and drag the factor to make it more or less visible. This doesn't allow for the most customization, but it adds good variation for simple objects. The only issue I have now, is that you have to mess with the color ramp and keep it in the gray range, as having one side completely black causes certain parts of the mesh to look way darker since the normal colors have a wide range of value. I can't wait to try more stuff with this!! Thanks for sharing!
That does add color variation, but its really just changing it based off the normal colors, which is pretty random. I think a better idea would be to use ambient occlusion and change the colors with that, or to use a variation of cell shading to get a more "palletized" look.
@@rockedsocks4613 ooh, would ambient occlusion have the detail of all the brush strokes though? I thought that was mostly like a shadow pass. I haven't used it for anything other than that at least.
you are literally a life saver, i was looking for something like this without having to use something as procedural as a voronoi texture. thank you so much!
This is explained SO well. There's a lot here I haven't learned yet, but you did a great job at explaining the things needed to learn to get to the final result, so now I have a list of stuff to learn in order to practice your painted method. Thanks so much for making this, looking forward to more of your work!
This is so well explained. informative, very beginner friendly, straight to point and extremely fun! Not even a month since your debut and you've already won the hearts of thousands Welcome to the Internet!
@@blendersarelikevegans 99% of the content thats trending with this style over the past few months has been from Blender. Trendy content with no great tutorial on how to make it leads to someone making it. Thats why this has nearly 400k views lol. Thank you Blender community for making this a trending style
I use procreate and this is my idea! desaturate the normal＞make another layer>clipping mask>paint the color you want>set blend mode to multiply and I think it might also work on many 2d painting programs hope this help! Edit: someone say you can also using gradient map that works to choose what you like!❤
Really amazing technique! One way that you could do the Albedo map while using the same brush strokes as your normal map is convert it to a B&W map and then use gradient maps on top of it to adjust the colors. That would be a quick and rough way to do it and then you could fine tune from there.
@@orkgame5753filter it and reduce the saturation to zero so the image is greyscale, then apply gradient map to assign colors to the different values of the greyscale
@@orkgame5753are you using procreate? If yes I can help you click on the adjustment>hue saturation & brightness > low the saturation down > click on the gradient map(also in the adjustment) > adjust the color you want!
One thing I can say is; this is a very "artist" solution. A lot of artists who doesn't understand programming for 3d or gamedev usually use other method of workarounds that we understand; which usually would be considered ineffective by most people, but it isn't to us. so THANK YOU so much! Imma try this soo.
I appreciate how clearly explained this is! I would've thought this was entirely shader-based, but this seems a lot easier to implement and customize, and it makes total sense once you break down how normals work.
But seriously. The clarity. Earlier today I was watching another Blender tutorial that was all over the place-it was a cool effect, but with all the "whoops I should have done that first"s and corrections in the comments, I'd have to revise the entire tutorial for myself before even starting. But this? I feel like I could just do this based on the video alone and maybe pepper in some of the comment suggestions if I want to get spicy. Clarity is a sadly rare skill in UA-camrs so it's much appreciated!
Just make the model, bake the object normal map to the UV of an unwrapped UV model then paint over it sampling the colours of the normal map on every stroke. Hope that helps! It’s a tedious process but with consistent practice it’ll yield great results. This same style reminds me of Life Is Strange game
@@lucachacha71 It is a quick tutorial, maybe I should create the process on a video. Basically having the mesh, unwrap it as a decent UV unwrap. Bake the normals to the mesh UV Export the normals as an image file and open it in procreate, photoshop or Gimp or any other paint software. Use the sample brush in the software and use a paint brush to paint over it to create solid colour strokes while using the eye dropper tool. Like Cody does in the video. Create another layer while you do this though so you’re not drawing on the original. Export and add it as a non-colour image texture in the node editor for the material. Create a normal map node, attach that image to the node then to the principled bsdf. Make sure you have a light source. There’s a few tutorials on UA-cam that’ll help you
I love this video because you're actually explaining what you're doing and why. Most tutorials just show the process without giving an explanation of what it's doing. It's fine for paint by numbers copies, but it doesn't teach anything. I hope you keep making videos like this.
this has been living rent free in my head, since it was posted and now, I keep imagining ways to implement this into a game engine anyways, thanks for your lovely tutorial! 💜
You're probably the first place that actually taught me how to understand normal maps (at least, the gist of it) And tangent maps are a whole other beast, oof.
Found you through shorts. This is so freaking cool and simple!! Thanks for making this super accessible. I don’t have kids yet but this would be so fun to let them color their own characters in normal maps and then bring them to life!
i would love it if you expanded on the substance painter/designer side of things, as im working in a game engine that doesnt support world space normals and i would really like to achieve this style aside from that, an amazing way to implement this (and i havent tested it so bear with me here) is making a brush stroke tile pattern that doesnt need to necessarily follow the patterns of your model and decreasing the opacity so your models normal map's colors can become more visible
The world normal is only a step in between, you would translate it into tangent space. otherwhise its bound to the objects... orientation in a sense. as he said in the end
You are heaven sent!! I have a project for school that I want to use a painterly style on and this randomly appeared on my feed! Definitely liked and followed!!
Dude! I saw this on Instagram and was blown away. I wanted to say - what a great first video! Your story telling is easy to follow, your shots are super pleasant and the information is great. Can't wait for more content!
I have loved watching your short videos on IG but I definitely prefer watching longer videos like this. I don't even do 3D modeling myself, I just find your videos beautiful and fascinaing! ^^
I would like this as well. I've been searching how to do this. I've now made it so that I can paint on the normal map but it paints different colours at once...
This is great! Well done on the presentation as well. I think modifying the normals is a great way to achieve this look without sacrificing versatility.
This makes SOO much more sense than handpainting the base color. this is genius, Thank you so much. Can you please talk more about how to get the painted look, aside from the strokes? how to light the scene and color things to make them look like paint?
For creating a base color texture with the same brush strokes as your normal map, I believe you could achieve it with gradient maps! Just convert the normal map to black and white and then apply your desired gradient map on top. This way you aren't doing any more manual painting, it's all just filters on top of your normal map strokes! And it's all done on one layer!
@@NicCrimson i think it depends on how you use them, you can get pretty specific if you don't rely on premade sets! Though you can't color specific strokes, I think its a great way to test color schemes quickly
instead of using a gradient map, fist convert to black and white, add another paint layer above it and set that paint layers blending mode to color, the paint away, if color is giving you an issue the use color dodge, or better yet: duplicate the normal map painted layer, then you can fill a new paint layer under the duplicated normal map layer, then turn the duplicated normal map layer to black and white and set it to multiply blending mode, then you can use the opacity to control the intensity, also you can also go back to the paint layer and add in any color you feel like.
@@generic_stiles this is a great way to get super specific! Its similar to how I paint black and white illustrations, which is how I thought about gradient maps in the first place, since I lay those underneath for added color variation ☺️
To create color variations procedurally : create a noise texture in 1D, plug the color of your normal map image in the W field. Now you have a random value between 0 and 1 for each color cell ! You can plug it in anything (like a hue/saturation/value node) to affect colors :)
Yes! This happens sometimes. I don't know why yet. For me it's usually in glancing light or really glossy areas. The best solution I have right now is more subdivisions or make your shader more diffuse.
It seems that way for me, too. It mainly shows when I make it metallic. What do you mean by making the shader "more diffuse"? Like, rougher and without gloss?@@codygindy
Wow! This is such a cool concept and also so well explained! Also the level of artistry and assumptions is incredible. Keep this up and I’m sure this will be an incredible channel. Subscribed 👏🏼
This is beautifully straightforward and I love your video structure. Doesn’t feel like a tease until the end like most everything I see on UA-cam. Big kudos.
Great tutorial! Love the lighting and camera work at the beginning. Maybe you could use Substance Designer for the brush strokes, and use a generator inside the Substance painter.
OMG THIS IS SO HELPFUL seriously i was trying to figure out how people were doing this stuff but all the tutorials were so hard to replicate, this is simple and has great results" you're a genius man!!! thank you so much
Thank you for sharing these ideas with us! Unfortunately I'm one of the people who just can't figure out how to do the thing you mentioned in Substance where you paint on both channels at the same time, basically, how to paint with different colors on the base color channel but also make those brush strokes create variation in the normal channel. How would Substance even know what colors to apply in the normal channel? I think we would all really appreciate a more in-depth tutorial on this, if you could do it 🙏
Agreed! Definitely would love a more in-depth explanation of how to accomplish this in Substance for those of us who need a complex hand-painted texture in our Base Color, but with the Normal Map to match 1:1.
I love this video, and I can’t believe this is your first educational one with how professional it is! Thank you! I have substance painter, and I have scoured the internet looking for how you can make the “world” channel appear like you have in yours, i have the world space normal mesh map but I have literally no idea which shader allows for you to add a world channel that you can paint on like you showed in your vid, would you be able to explain how you got this? Thank you if you see this!
Pretty great for a FIRST full video. I'm inspired to use this method for an intro title animation I've had in my head for a long time, but was reconsidering which medium and technique to use.
To flip the green channel, don't use the "invert" node. Use a subtract node to do "1 - X". Invert will change the range from (0, 1) to (0, -1), which can cause some issues. 1-X will change the range from (0, 1) to (1, 0). Going beyond 0 or 1 in shaders can cause some weird behavior. Avoid it unless it's intentional.
Hi! I've tried to use the substance painter technique/pipeline but not me nor any of my friends couldn't figure it out. I just don't understand how to make it work, how to paint with basecolor and on normal map at the same time. Please make a step by step tutorial for it. Yes, you showed in the video a bit of it, but for me it's not enough to make the technique clear. I've also tried to find any other tutorials but I'm helpless.
Thank you for sharing. I started with maya in 2003 and this type of finnish has continuously come up at least once a year if not twice from clients. Your time given to script and constructive advice is greatly appreciated and extremely professional, I say this after watching many tutorials, also just doing this stuff for so long that you can see rich insightful thought from a mile away.
That's thought provoking and beautiful. It takes the concept of the visual style from video games like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword to a whole new level. Very pleasant.
6:50 a good way to do this in photoshop is to add a fill layer of your base color, set the blending mode to color, ease on the opacity a little bit, then add a curves adjustment layer and make the curves really wild like a zig zag. it does unintentionally leave a wet edges look but that might be because i tested it on a low res screenshot from the video.
This video is just amazing! You explained everything in a very detailed manor, though keep it short! This is by far the best tutorial/explanation video I've seen which actually thought me interesting stuff, without the length of a full tutorial!
I've heard about painting normal maps in some artists commentary of disco elysium but had no idea what they were saying then. you explained it well. good video!
Thanks for watching! I added some answers to frequently asked questions in the description :)
You can download the tea kettle project file for ✨free✨ on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/painterly-kettle-95182168
Can I ask how you converted it from object to tangent normals?
same issue here, did you figure it out?@@chrislindholm4200
Such a well made tutorial :)
Do u make any class for this course?
Reminds me of when the Arcane artists talked about creating the effect. The interview went something like "How did you get that painted effect" "we painted it"
Cody has basically debunked the Arcane style! Beautiful stuff.
@@soysource3218it’s not debunked. they literally painted all the colors onto the 3D models like on a canvas. cody’s is just a different method. the issue with cody’s method is that one has to stick to the local colors. i’d rather be able to paint directly on the model like in some of his clips in this video. but either way. it’s a great way to make it look painterly. now i wonder about subsurface scattering and organic materials. i don’t know anything bout 3d. but i would love to earn it just for this effect
Dude said "its not as complicated as you think" and it do be more complicated than me think
Lit not showing what the FUCK he is doing xd with that stupid zoom
OMG, this is literally the top of the iceberg of 3D texturing and sculpting. ITS SO COMPLEX and the tutorials are so scarse 😭This is truly an easy easy EASY way to do this.
For blender users: a modified voronoi texture is actually really good at imitating the real brush strokes. So you can connect the position of the texture into the color of the Normal map node (better to lower the strength to less then 0.5). Set the voronoi to smooth and lower the smoothness to around 0.1. Then connect the Mapping node to the vector of the voronoi. There you can see a Location socket. Plug there a Noise texture. To control the strength of it, use Vector math node set to Scale. That’s the basic concept, play with it. You can and different Noise or other textures to Location/Rotation/Scale for even more stylisation. Last thing: group all this big node tree, duplicate it, change its settings connect those two with Mix Color node. Possibilities are infinite!
This is great! Thanks for sharing 😊
When I tried this method I only got large squares occasionally dotted around the mesh. Is there anything that I might be doing wrong that its causing this to happen?
@@HYPN0_ Play with the VORONOI Scale (this is the main option imo, maybe your objects are bigger or smaller), reduce the NORMAL MAP strenght to 0.5 (I got some black artifact) and also tweak the VECTOR MATH Scale value and NOISE TEXTURE values if you like.
that's cool, and things seemed to be working up to where I connected the mapping node to the Voronoi texture.
which part of the noise texture goes into the mapping nodes location, fac or color?
and where is the vector math node supposed to be connected to? my guess is the vector socket on the noise texture node, but it's not clear.
still a great help, this is easy to set up, and even in my 'not quite right' looking set up, its still close to a painted look
OMG, I spent hours figuring out the same thing, figured it out, came here to share... only to find out you were there two weeks before me!
im amazed how this video is so insanely followable for both beginners and advanced blender users
Dude popped out of no where and dropped a more well made tutorial than pretty much all other blender/3D tutorial UA-camrs 😂 🎉
That's how the world works: new people are born, some of them rise to glory. The endless and meaningless stream of life.
Dude popped out of nowhere and nailed exactly what i was thinking with his comment as i was 1 minute into the video. I love the internet.
Have u tried to congratulate someone without shi*tin on others? Is kinda a thing
fr bro
@@26IME i said it was better not that the others were bad lol. I love watching other creators and blender youtubers. Have you tried not being toxic for no reason 😂
I've been OBSESSED with non photoreal rendering for a while now, and seeing this painterly normal map technique initially just sparks so much inspiration in me. Thank you, this is so cool! Looking forward to learn more about this stuff :D
Cody, you have such a talent for explaining complex concepts in simple language! Thank you so much for this video and I hope to learn more from you in the future.
Thank you so much, Jake! 😊
After seeing your first video on Instagram I started experimenting with this technique. I’m my experiments I’ve found it looks really good if you create 3 slightly different normal maps, with the normal map animated to change between them every 3 frames
This is a great idea!
I think a good way to keep the colors identical between multiple maps would be to pain in UV coordinates, then use that as a vector input to the raw, unaltered texture maps. That would give you the ability to change the brush strokes, color, object shape, and even metalic or roughness textures to match with the brush strokes
YES! This is a good idea
@@codygindy I'd love to see how you implement this if you wouldn't mind doing a follow-up video; subscribed hoping for it! Fantastic first video.
yes this sounds very interesting. I would also love to see a follow up as well as other interesting ways you can come up to do things
@@ErindorEspeon I second this, would love to see a short follow up on the node setup for this. I was thinking baking the Base Color of the object and then importing the texture into the 2D painting software, but I have yet to try that.
are there any tutorial videos or documentation for this? Thanks!
I fell in love with the idea of 3D animation done to look like 2D, so I am absolutely here for this technique and hope you make many more tutorials along these lines in the future.
Definitely one of those "light bulb" videos. Such a simple and straight-forward way to achieve that look, regardless of the tools used. Awesome video!
i work with drawing commissions, one thing ou can do to match the normals with de albedo/base color is do the normals first, then you save one copy of the normals in .png file(with the original normal saved ), grab the normal that you will transform in base color and put saturation to 0, you will have a perfect copy of your normal but pintable and in grayscale, than you use the option "clipping mask" in your grayscaled normal and paint of with no fear to smud or destroy everything
ps: english is not my primary language, so please, forgive the syntax errors
Hi! You do this in substance painter?
@@danielasanchez-vy2sh no, on photo editor name is, Krita
@@ruandemeneses9513 thanks!
Thanks for the tip👍
this is exactly the instruction iwas hoping for, thanks !
@@ruandemeneses9513
Didn't know it was this easy to achieve a look like this. We first tried to look for similar ways after watching "ARCANE" and now knowing we can ... it's awesome! Thanks Cody
They definitely add paint overs in arcane on top of the 3D, but this will get you 90% there. It's so cool!
I'm a Maya user - have never used Blender - but for some reason I didn't click off the video when I realized it was focusing on Blender. And I'm so glad I didn't! This looks like it can be pretty easily applied in Maya as well, and I do use both Substance and Photoshop, which is where it seems most of the work is done. This is so great, thanks for doing the work and sharing it with us all!
hi there, im a maya user too and i'd love to know how to apply this on maya, since i couldnt figured it out :( thanks in advance
@@notme2594 okay, so I haven't tried it myself yet (working on another project first), but my theory is that you build your model, map your UVs, then export your model as an obj (fbx might work, but I always use an obj unless I'm exporting to Zbrush). If you bring it into Substance painter, it *should* develop a normals map for you. From there you should be able to paint on it as shown here, either directly in substance or by exporting that map and painting in Photoshop or other 2D art program (which I think is the way I'll go). Once you have made your edits, you can create an aiStandardSurface node (the ai here is referring to the Arnold renderer in Maya, NOT artificial intelligence) in Maya's hypershade and link in things like the base color map and metalness map and whatnot in their usual spots, and then your painted normal map into the "normal camera" spot. Theoretically it should work the same way as this video. But my method would require substance painter in addition to a 2D art program, and I don't know if you have that. I'm sure there is a way to export a normal map directly from Maya, but I'm not experienced with that. Also I still haven't tried it, as I said, so it's entirely possible that I'm wrong. But I'm certainly hopeful. If I can get it to work I'll comment back here, and if you can find out one way or another you can come reply on here too.
@@vanessanielson4883 thanks for all the details, appreciate it. I did all the edits on normal maps and now got stuck on how to make it work in maya, i tried putting in aiStandardSurface but somehow only the texture worked. There was no strokes, nothing reflecting lights in a solid color like in the video. Maybe i missed smt?
@@notme2594 Hm, that's too bad. I'm nearly done with my current project and then I'll see if I can get it work. Here's hoping!
@@notme2594 hey I think I figured it out. First, if you export from substance, make sure you export the world space normal map from the mesh maps export preset. That will show the one with all the colors, not just the shades of blue/purple that the default normal map has. Then do the painting as shown in the video. Then when you bring it into Maya, *don't* plug it directly into the normal camera node, that won't work right. You need the aiNormalMap node to go in between. So create the file node and the aiNormalMap node, then connect the Out Color of the file node to the Input of the aiNormalMap node, then the Out Value of the aiNormalMap node to the Normal Camera of the aiStandardSurface shader. Then select the aiNormalMap and uncheck Tangent Space in the window that opens in the hypershade.
That's what ended up giving me the best render. My other piece of advice that I'm working on implementing now is to make sure your brush strokes aren't all even/similar size or shape. If you do, it'll still work, but it just won't look as nice.
Hope that helps!
THIS IS SO MIND BLOWINGLY SMART! I can't believe I've never thought of this! It's such a cool use of normal maps and should work in any game engine, not just 3D rendering software!
This man has 1 video and 2 shorts and has already taught me more then I learned in my first year of college for 3D animation
This is so cool!! I played around with it a little bit, and possibly found an easier method for color variation. If you use the normal image and plug it into a color ramp so it's black and white, you can use it as the factor of a mix color node and put the color you want in the other socket. Then set it to multiply and drag the factor to make it more or less visible. This doesn't allow for the most customization, but it adds good variation for simple objects. The only issue I have now, is that you have to mess with the color ramp and keep it in the gray range, as having one side completely black causes certain parts of the mesh to look way darker since the normal colors have a wide range of value. I can't wait to try more stuff with this!! Thanks for sharing!
That does add color variation, but its really just changing it based off the normal colors, which is pretty random. I think a better idea would be to use ambient occlusion and change the colors with that, or to use a variation of cell shading to get a more "palletized" look.
@@rockedsocks4613 ooh, would ambient occlusion have the detail of all the brush strokes though? I thought that was mostly like a shadow pass. I haven't used it for anything other than that at least.
@@rockedsocks4613 cell shading would be interesting though. I wonder what that would look like!
you are literally a life saver, i was looking for something like this without having to use something as procedural as a voronoi texture. thank you so much!
This is explained SO well. There's a lot here I haven't learned yet, but you did a great job at explaining the things needed to learn to get to the final result, so now I have a list of stuff to learn in order to practice your painted method. Thanks so much for making this, looking forward to more of your work!
This is so well explained. informative, very beginner friendly, straight to point and extremely fun!
Not even a month since your debut and you've already won the hearts of thousands
Welcome to the Internet!
Thank you so much!
@@codygindy i really do mean it!
thanks for replying!
this
Man I’m so glad that the blender community is a thing lmao. Thanks you so much! I’m definitely gonna implement this into my workflow!
@@blendersarelikevegans 99% of the content thats trending with this style over the past few months has been from Blender. Trendy content with no great tutorial on how to make it leads to someone making it. Thats why this has nearly 400k views lol. Thank you Blender community for making this a trending style
Woah, I never thought we can use a normal map like this - Thank you for sharing! It's indeed fascinating technique!
I use procreate and this is my idea! desaturate the normal＞make another layer>clipping mask>paint the color you want>set blend mode to multiply and I think it might also work on many 2d painting programs hope this help!
Edit: someone say you can also using gradient map that works to choose what you like!❤
You have no idea how long I've been looking for a video like this, THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH
Really amazing technique! One way that you could do the Albedo map while using the same brush strokes as your normal map is convert it to a B&W map and then use gradient maps on top of it to adjust the colors. That would be a quick and rough way to do it and then you could fine tune from there.
please how to convert normal map to B&W and use gradient map on top of it,i m so confuse
@@orkgame5753filter it and reduce the saturation to zero so the image is greyscale, then apply gradient map to assign colors to the different values of the greyscale
@@orkgame5753are you using procreate? If yes I can help you click on the adjustment>hue saturation & brightness > low the saturation down > click on the gradient map(also in the adjustment) > adjust the color you want!
@@orkgame5753 the fastest option is to simply put colorRamp after normal map
edit- in blender
@@orkgame5753 google it there are plenty of it
One thing I can say is; this is a very "artist" solution. A lot of artists who doesn't understand programming for 3d or gamedev usually use other method of workarounds that we understand; which usually would be considered ineffective by most people, but it isn't to us. so THANK YOU so much! Imma try this soo.
This is the type of content I was looking for when I started 3D animation last year. Thank you so much for this. I hope you keep posting.
I appreciate how clearly explained this is! I would've thought this was entirely shader-based, but this seems a lot easier to implement and customize, and it makes total sense once you break down how normals work.
But seriously. The clarity. Earlier today I was watching another Blender tutorial that was all over the place-it was a cool effect, but with all the "whoops I should have done that first"s and corrections in the comments, I'd have to revise the entire tutorial for myself before even starting. But this? I feel like I could just do this based on the video alone and maybe pepper in some of the comment suggestions if I want to get spicy. Clarity is a sadly rare skill in UA-camrs so it's much appreciated!
Could you do a step by step process of how to do this? It looks awesome and I’d love to implement it in my animated work!
i love animation!!
Just make the model, bake the object normal map to the UV of an unwrapped UV model then paint over it sampling the colours of the normal map on every stroke. Hope that helps! It’s a tedious process but with consistent practice it’ll yield great results. This same style reminds me of Life Is Strange game
@@ultra5538 currently playing life is strange and I was thinking the same! Beautiful aesthetics!
Bump
@@lucachacha71
It is a quick tutorial, maybe I should create the process on a video.
Basically having the mesh, unwrap it as a decent UV unwrap.
Bake the normals to the mesh UV
Export the normals as an image file and open it in procreate, photoshop or Gimp or any other paint software.
Use the sample brush in the software and use a paint brush to paint over it to create solid colour strokes while using the eye dropper tool. Like Cody does in the video.
Create another layer while you do this though so you’re not drawing on the original.
Export and add it as a non-colour image texture in the node editor for the material.
Create a normal map node, attach that image to the node then to the principled bsdf. Make sure you have a light source.
There’s a few tutorials on UA-cam that’ll help you
I love this video because you're actually explaining what you're doing and why. Most tutorials just show the process without giving an explanation of what it's doing. It's fine for paint by numbers copies, but it doesn't teach anything. I hope you keep making videos like this.
this has been living rent free in my head, since it was posted
and now, I keep imagining ways to implement this into a game engine
anyways, thanks for your lovely tutorial! 💜
This methodology is ingenious. By far and away the most intuitive way of doing this I've seen so far and best results
Where have you been hiding all these years?! The Blender world has been STARVED of your heroism all this time!
You're probably the first place that actually taught me how to understand normal maps (at least, the gist of it)
And tangent maps are a whole other beast, oof.
I loved that they used a style like this in the TMNT movie. It really gave it a cool feeling and just looks great
Found you through shorts. This is so freaking cool and simple!! Thanks for making this super accessible. I don’t have kids yet but this would be so fun to let them color their own characters in normal maps and then bring them to life!
i would love it if you expanded on the substance painter/designer side of things, as im working in a game engine that doesnt support world space normals and i would really like to achieve this style
aside from that, an amazing way to implement this (and i havent tested it so bear with me here) is making a brush stroke tile pattern that doesnt need to necessarily follow the patterns of your model and decreasing the opacity so your models normal map's colors can become more visible
Same problem here :" )
The world normal is only a step in between, you would translate it into tangent space. otherwhise its bound to the objects... orientation in a sense. as he said in the end
Your quick little summation on Normal Maps helped me finally visualize how they operate. Thanks!
For a first "full video," this video is so well done, like if you've been doing these for 2 years or more.
You are heaven sent!! I have a project for school that I want to use a painterly style on and this randomly appeared on my feed! Definitely liked and followed!!
Thanks for watching!!
Dude! I saw this on Instagram and was blown away. I wanted to say - what a great first video! Your story telling is easy to follow, your shots are super pleasant and the information is great. Can't wait for more content!
Great tutorial, most blender tutorials just go over how to do ONE thing. But you've explained WHY it works as well. Can't wait to watch more!
Glad you enjoyed it!!
You're amazing! Please never stop making tutorials 😄
I have loved watching your short videos on IG but I definitely prefer watching longer videos like this. I don't even do 3D modeling myself, I just find your videos beautiful and fascinaing! ^^
That segment on how normals work was actually perfectly explained and super concise and it wasn't even the main focus of the video, really good vid.
love your art. could you explain the process in substance painter a little more? I got a little confused. looking forward to future videos!!
this gives me so much inspo! like adding various effects from the graphics pipeline onto the uv unwrap instead
This is incredible! Could you show a more in depth tutorial of how you painted it in Substance Painter?
I would like this as well. I've been searching how to do this. I've now made it so that I can paint on the normal map but it paints different colours at once...
How did you make it work for a normal map ? xD Mine says that those texture cannot be painted on@@iris89936
i'd love to see this as well!
I'd love this as well, can't work out how he does it so he can paint both the world space map and the base colours
Same, Im saving issues, whenever I paint my normal maps the colours seem inverted
This is great! Well done on the presentation as well. I think modifying the normals is a great way to achieve this look without sacrificing versatility.
This makes SOO much more sense than handpainting the base color. this is genius, Thank you so much.
Can you please talk more about how to get the painted look, aside from the strokes? how to light the scene and color things to make them look like paint?
This is the first time I’ve actually liked commented and subscribed together.
I’m just so impressed this is his first video.
For creating a base color texture with the same brush strokes as your normal map, I believe you could achieve it with gradient maps! Just convert the normal map to black and white and then apply your desired gradient map on top. This way you aren't doing any more manual painting, it's all just filters on top of your normal map strokes! And it's all done on one layer!
I guess this is a way but, you don't have much control
@@NicCrimson i think it depends on how you use them, you can get pretty specific if you don't rely on premade sets! Though you can't color specific strokes, I think its a great way to test color schemes quickly
instead of using a gradient map, fist convert to black and white, add another paint layer above it and set that paint layers blending mode to color, the paint away, if color is giving you an issue the use color dodge, or better yet: duplicate the normal map painted layer, then you can fill a new paint layer under the duplicated normal map layer, then turn the duplicated normal map layer to black and white and set it to multiply blending mode, then you can use the opacity to control the intensity, also you can also go back to the paint layer and add in any color you feel like.
@@generic_stiles this is a great way to get super specific! Its similar to how I paint black and white illustrations, which is how I thought about gradient maps in the first place, since I lay those underneath for added color variation ☺️
I have looked for a long time for a tutorial to make painting style renders in blender, this is the only one that is user-friendly.
Thanks
To create color variations procedurally : create a noise texture in 1D, plug the color of your normal map image in the W field. Now you have a random value between 0 and 1 for each color cell ! You can plug it in anything (like a hue/saturation/value node) to affect colors :)
This is a rare gem of a tutorial. THANK YOU for sharing this.
For some reason, my geometry is showing up in the render, despite using smooth shading. Anyone else having this issue?
Yes! This happens sometimes. I don't know why yet. For me it's usually in glancing light or really glossy areas. The best solution I have right now is more subdivisions or make your shader more diffuse.
It seems that way for me, too. It mainly shows when I make it metallic. What do you mean by making the shader "more diffuse"? Like, rougher and without gloss?@@codygindy
Yeah, or also try turning down the specular!
on the normal map node, change the slot to 'object space' from 'world space'
Not sure what modeling software you're in, but you may need to unlock the normals. Sometimes smooth shading doesn't work if the normals are locked.
Hi, I found your content via UA-cam shorts and fell in love with your style and techniques.
Well done, keep up the great work!
Wow! This is such a cool concept and also so well explained!
Also the level of artistry and assumptions is incredible. Keep this up and I’m sure this will be an incredible channel. Subscribed 👏🏼
Wow, what a first video. One of the best 3d vids I've seen.
UA-cam is much more accessible than Instagram, thanks!
This is beautifully straightforward and I love your video structure. Doesn’t feel like a tease until the end like most everything I see on UA-cam. Big kudos.
Great tutorial! Love the lighting and camera work at the beginning. Maybe you could use Substance Designer for the brush strokes, and use a generator inside the Substance painter.
I’ve been searching for unique 3d art styles, and came across this tutorial. Very helpful!
SO excited to implement this into my work flow! Thank you for sharing your technique. Keep it up with the tutorials, this is great!
OMG THIS IS SO HELPFUL seriously i was trying to figure out how people were doing this stuff but all the tutorials were so hard to replicate, this is simple and has great results" you're a genius man!!! thank you so much
Bro, first video?
even profile image supports same reaction😂
That has the be the most intriguing, mysterious, ominous, handsome teakettle I've ever seen in my entire life.
Thank you for sharing these ideas with us! Unfortunately I'm one of the people who just can't figure out how to do the thing you mentioned in Substance where you paint on both channels at the same time, basically, how to paint with different colors on the base color channel but also make those brush strokes create variation in the normal channel. How would Substance even know what colors to apply in the normal channel? I think we would all really appreciate a more in-depth tutorial on this, if you could do it 🙏
Agreed! Definitely would love a more in-depth explanation of how to accomplish this in Substance for those of us who need a complex hand-painted texture in our Base Color, but with the Normal Map to match 1:1.
I saw this as a Short a while back and am so glad to find it as a full video! This effect is cool as hell and also so smart and straightforward!
I love this video, and I can’t believe this is your first educational one with how professional it is! Thank you! I have substance painter, and I have scoured the internet looking for how you can make the “world” channel appear like you have in yours, i have the world space normal mesh map but I have literally no idea which shader allows for you to add a world channel that you can paint on like you showed in your vid, would you be able to explain how you got this? Thank you if you see this!
Pretty great for a FIRST full video.
I'm inspired to use this method for an intro title animation I've had in my head for a long time, but was reconsidering which medium and technique to use.
To flip the green channel, don't use the "invert" node. Use a subtract node to do "1 - X".
Invert will change the range from (0, 1) to (0, -1), which can cause some issues.
1-X will change the range from (0, 1) to (1, 0).
Going beyond 0 or 1 in shaders can cause some weird behavior. Avoid it unless it's intentional.
Invert node does 1-x
Cody, this technique is so freaking elegant. Thank you.
Hi! I've tried to use the substance painter technique/pipeline but not me nor any of my friends couldn't figure it out. I just don't understand how to make it work, how to paint with basecolor and on normal map at the same time. Please make a step by step tutorial for it. Yes, you showed in the video a bit of it, but for me it's not enough to make the technique clear. I've also tried to find any other tutorials but I'm helpless.
Same, did you ever figure it out?
@@SirenRyan no, sadly
Thank you for sharing. I started with maya in 2003 and this type of finnish has continuously come up at least once a year if not twice from clients. Your time given to script and constructive advice is greatly appreciated and extremely professional, I say this after watching many tutorials, also just doing this stuff for so long that you can see rich insightful thought from a mile away.
HOW DO YOU PAINT ON MESH MAPS??!??!?! TUTORIAL FOR NORMAL PAINTING IN SUBSTANCE PLEASE!!!!!
This is a phenomenal resource. I’ve loved your other videos on tic tok and im overjoyed that you started posting on UA-cam!!!
Your style is phenomenal. As a future animator I cherish that I've found this channel and I'll learn what I can from it.
This is such a wonderful first video, thank you for sharing your knowledge with all us !!
WOW, this is so helpful!! Can't believe it's the first video on your channel!
Really throwing down the gauntlet here for your first video. Great choice of topic and well presented.
That's thought provoking and beautiful. It takes the concept of the visual style from video games like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword to a whole new level. Very pleasant.
6:50 a good way to do this in photoshop is to add a fill layer of your base color, set the blending mode to color, ease on the opacity a little bit, then add a curves adjustment layer and make the curves really wild like a zig zag. it does unintentionally leave a wet edges look but that might be because i tested it on a low res screenshot from the video.
Damn!! This is one of the best tutorials and I cant believe its ur first one.
Thank u for this and looking forward to more awesome videos from u.
Simply brilliant! It's so simple but so effective! Amazing technique
great video. actually the first artists - friendly video I've ever seen and I've seen a looot of videos over the years!!!
This video is just amazing! You explained everything in a very detailed manor, though keep it short! This is by far the best tutorial/explanation video I've seen which actually thought me interesting stuff, without the length of a full tutorial!
wowzer, this is such a good tutorial. I'm going to try it in C4D -thanks so much for sharing!!
I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS VIDEO CODY!!!! thank you :D so excited to start making my own painterly 3d art
This is so elegant, absolutely wild. And congratulations!
Thank you so much!
OMG THIS IS THE TUTORIAL IV BEEN WAITING FOR EVER SINCE I STARTED BLENDER LAST YEAR
I've been using blender models to kickstart digital paintings for a while. This is a very natural step to go to next, and i really like the look. : )
This video tutorial is exactly what I've been looking for almost half a year, and it's also sooo well explained. Thanks a lot.
This video came out of no where, and it was EXACTLY what I’m looking for to experiment
I watched this one year ago, i had just known blender, came back, still one of the best tutorials out there
Hey! Thanks so much 😁
you need an award for this tutorial. So clear and simple and easy to understand. Saw you on IG and thank god i did
I've heard about painting normal maps in some artists commentary of disco elysium but had no idea what they were saying then. you explained it well. good video!
funnily enough I was just making a tea kettle but the style I was using didnt feel quite right. This was exactly what it needed, thanks!
I have been looking for a way of doing this exact thing for almost a year now, i had not considered using a normal to get that look. Thanks for this!