I was also thinking about that but it'll still be quite uniform in terms of how large the area is each time even if the edges aren't smooth, you know some people are going to stop there and not go the full mile.
I remember back in the day when you actually hand painted the textures in Photoshop and manually did overlays and masks etc. Back then it was easy to spot that one rusted metal texture from cgtextures that everyone and their granny used. :> Now you just spot smart materials. I feel old.
For a second I was scared, like "Oh man I do that!" And then you showed the cleaning-up and the brushing part. And then I felt at ease. "Oh man I do that!" :)
The two dirt brushes are definitely the go to. The mold one is also good for not just mold but a whole lot of other stuff. The dots are also good, but I also use a lot of alphas to paint masks, especially the fingerprint and palm print stuff. The square-brush looking alpha is also good for making things look like as if they were physically painted.
Also it helps to understand the process of coating materials. Is it powder coated, e-coated, Anodized, Booth spray painted, or electroplated? What are the characteristics of each? Where is the coating thicker for each type (they aren't all capable of even coating)? Where is the coating the weakest and vulnerable to weathering? Once you understand that, then you can create more realistic weathering and corrosion.
I also like to go over my materials to add variations. For example, rubber tire material can be used in many many places such as tire, electrical tape, cable, latex mask / gloves, military object etc. I believe it's all about creativity. People can still use the same Smart Material in countless places. They just have to know what characteristics fit the story. Also, the thing that you guys did between 9:00 and 10:00 can be also done with the help of the ambient occlusion map as well.
I just wanted to bring the great point you guys made about the different stages of rust and wearing of paints. There is also the additional coats paint and use primer to consider that has different looks and principles compared to other paints
damn, you guys are so impressive. You constantly tackle things and subjects from a very conceptual and reflective side, which is so valuable and inspiring! thank you so much for all the hard work!
Also useful tip - by using F1, F2, F3 buttons, you can quickly switch between UV view, 3D view and both. Great for getting a quick look upclose on textures.
You guys are missing the key point which is reference. Without showing it and discussing the details everything can be arbitrary. In my experience the most common mistake is making art without a reference. Not relying purely on automatic masks. Answering questions like "how does a hydrant get old, how does the dirt build up and paint gets chipped" is the key. That's the real reason behind what You're talking about in this video.
Only beginners use what the people on this video are talking about, it's part of the learning process, and every tutorial will demonstrate this for beginners. Experience brings the things you are describing, and I can't see any point to this video at all apart from pointing the finger at people who have never used the software before.
I learned this in sorta a hard way. I downloaded a ton of smart mats for an asset I was making, and just tried almost all of them on. And it never ended up lokking the way I wanted it too. So in the end I realized, that I had to do the rest of the work myself.
Great points about the item history and timeline. Lots of applicants tend to ignore this and don’t walk the item through its own history. How many kids climbed the item and where are their feet likely to land? Where will dust settle? Whats is the path of water and what dries first? Chains swing and people drop things to gouge and nick paint layers out. Well done video for making this priority.
Thanks for the advice. I think the problem is that most "Substance Painter video tutorials" tend to get too long winded in explaining something as simple as adding a smart material to a fill layer. Instead of taking things one at a time they will have 5 more layer and black masks before they tell you they are done. I think people that watch video tutorials are too afraid to point out mistakes in videos that make it hard for them use the program fully. You do not have to know how layers or blending modes work in other softer but they feel they need to explain whether you have or don't have this other software.
Fav brushes; default, dirt 2, dirt spots, mold. Painting is usually left for projecting decals. I try to do as much as I can by layering masks and save smart materials.
Apart from it giving the asset much more character and not looking so generic, I also find it much more fun to go over it layer by layer adding grunge and details by hand.
i just know that it's great to see you guys just do stuff, i dont necessarily need substance videos, just more videos from you guys, its really chill just to see and hear you guys opinions and jokes while providing great tips and sugestions about general when it comes to broad term of arts and visuals etc. great job !!! im waiting for more
This video is gold, i'm going to have to make a lot of textures in substance for a scene i'm making and this gave me brilliant ideas...at least as brilliant as they can be at 4:00am
I had a painting teacher a long time ago who stressed the importance of not using paint straight from the tube but instead coming up with your own “recipe” to give your colors a more unique feel.
As a student , I am very glad u made this video and I managed to found it. This is really gonna be helpful for my assignments and stuffs. Thanks for this awesome video.
I love using the sandpaper brush with some tweaking for adding wear, and the default hard brush to blot metal bits in and the invert the brush and cut back the blots to create individual scratches. Dirt 1 and 2 are also great tools to use.
as a programmer, not a designer I like baking out the generated maps like curvature and process them with some low scale noise, before putting them back on. Smart materials are most usefull to me when I finished one object with massive stacks of procedurals and save it all to a smart material so I can keep a coherent look on multiple objects. Once all of this is done I rather use shader to get the fine differences between multiple objects in the shader.
You just need to press X on the keyboard and it changes the meter from maximum white or maximum black. It only works when the meter is at the furthest extent so if it's in the middle or 70% it won't work. It's also useful in the polygon mode when you want to add and substract the selection of polygons that you want to be affected. Hope this helps !
But... Smart Materials are the "Make Awesome" buttons... Joking aside, I really enjoy this content as it combines the techniques required to use the software with the artist's perspective, highlighting why we study the fundamentals of design and art in the first place. Applying those fundamentals with the techniques that get taught in a class really separates people who can make 3D objects, and the people who make 3D Art. Great Video! Can't wait to see whats next! Would love to see some Substance Painter workflow videos, possibly with managing LOD's textures for games? Maybe even a Hair Card/Texturing series would be AMAZING.
Something I still have problems with, but mostly due to lack of knowledge of substance painter on how to do what I have in mind so I switch to look alike smart material and tweak it a bit, but I definitely need to put more attention to this. Thank you for this video. If nothing else, it gave me the motivation to focus more on substance painter.
Great stuff guys! Already had a solid grasp of what you went over but it was still refreshing to hear the emphasis on storytelling. I did take away the polygon fill tool though, which is amazing. Big thanks :)
This is kind of like the synthesizer preset vs. custom sound argument. There are hit songs where I can identify a famous sound, and some people have purchased synths just to get a specific sound. Like a preset sound, material, transition, I suppose bad art can manifest in many ways, and good art can make use of presets. I think someone with an artist's eye and mastery of Substance will create their own masks, though a smart material can be an excellent basis to work from IF you properly bake your curve maps first. Then, the smart materials are 'smart' and following the contours of your objects. The end result is what matters, and the end-user isn't exactly gonna look at a game and say, "OMG THAT IS PAINTED STEEL 21B by Allegorithmic, which was recently acquired by Adobe!"'. ;) Okay, a dev might say that but if it looks good, it looks good.
I learnt a new method of just creating the right "ROUGHNESS" map! Get the base colors right. It is soo important to get the base color right as we should be able to get the feel of what the object is just with the base color. The trick I learnt is just get the base color right and then export the color information to B2M, Shader Map or Photoshop and generate the roughness map from there and bring it back in Painter and apply on a fill layer with the "ROUGHNESS" channel enable and then play around with numbers! In this fashion you will have a bit more extra control over the roughness map! As you can still add on roughness effects from the base fill layers! It is just like we do in Mari! Take the necessary base textures required and drag to the roughness channel and then go on adding some additional stuff! Though a bit lengthy but really pushes your textures forward! Amazing Work! 💪
My favorite brush for the eraser is called Chipping from the allegorithmic site. My favorite for painting masks is anything with the Charcoals or Chalks. Sprays are very useful. Same with the Pencil brush, I use that often for very fine details. Turn up or down the opacity and flow too. Too high is typically too harsh. Other than that, I'm still experimenting
PREACH! Thank you for this. I'm an educator at an university, and substance painter has become the bane of my existence concerning student surfacers/texture artist for this exact reason! :) (I love the program tho!)
nice tutorial ! i learned so much, but i have one question the rust shouldn't be under the steel, since the rust is the steel got eaten by the oxidation ?
Awesome vid! Something that I like to do as well as hand painting some additional information into the mask is adding variation via the use of fill and some of the grime alphas that come with substance.
Great overall thought process video Showing the "Mask Builder" would be a very helpful technical tips video, kind of like the anchor points video which really helped me. Knowing these things are there and how to use them to your advantage is great for everyone.
2:36 I you would have done textures like that say.. 10-15 years ago, you would have been hired as a chief god texture artist on spot. Now it's literally 30 sec and a throwaway.
A tutorial on how to paint away masks (not using the slides) would be cool. I think my main issue with texturing is having full control over where I want detail to be.
when I use metal edge wear, it always just fills the entire model, idk how to get it to go on the edges, do I need to have those edges marked as sharp? or something different
Great vids as always! Could you do more on creating good Alphas for Zbrush and Mari? tips and tricks with layers and blending modes? Happy Valentines dag!
I try to avoid using smart materials (or at least using all the layers of a smart material). It’s easy enough to layer your own textures or use the standard materials and layer them that I barely see the point in using smart materials that come free with substance (unless you’re just figuring out how they work or something of course). Substance is so powerful, using smart materials just takes so much of that power out of your hands and into the hands of a boring algorithm
Another great video as always!! I would love to see more substance videos! Maybe an intro to designer as well. I've been having a hard time breaking into that one.
I thought about it too before Ive seen this video, cause i noticed it alot in games lately, just thought it was "normal" already, apparently not. Thank you dude! Every single thing I was doing, was actually wrong xD at least I know the UI now
A lot of talk not much showing. They could have changed the parameters in mask to reduce the artificial chipping effect. 10 seconds job with better result, THEN few brush strokes where ACTUALLY needed. Slightly better than a noob, not quite a professional workflow...
they claim that beginners rely too much on smart material and mask, for their info when i started with substance painter, i didn't understand how it works or how it is, i see all these as tools for artist and we can still apply them in anyway we want
Its really good to add a grunge on subtract blending mode over the edge wear and then add another one on linear dodge. Then its much less uniform.
Great tip!
I was also thinking about that but it'll still be quite uniform in terms of how large the area is each time even if the edges aren't smooth, you know some people are going to stop there and not go the full mile.
I take it a step further and ALWAYS polish paint ALL my masks by hand using custom scratch brushes and wear/damage stencils.
Would this be done by painting the grunge on the paint layer? I'm confused on how to add the grunge over the edge wear.
@@blouko You stack more Mask Editor layers with custom grunge maps and set them to overlay/multiply/etc
I like how you dig into the actual creativity here, unlike so many tutorials out there that only show you the technique.
Directions unclear: spent 3 hours imperfecting my perfect texture
The only comment that utilises the directions unclear in an actual way and no memes
I remember back in the day when you actually hand painted the textures in Photoshop and manually did overlays and masks etc. Back then it was easy to spot that one rusted metal texture from cgtextures that everyone and their granny used. :> Now you just spot smart materials. I feel old.
Eh don't worry mate, I used that rust texture a lot back then.
lol everyone had the same rust, grass, grunge, and chipped paint textures
It wasn't that long ago that photoshop was the main tool though, so don't feel old!
@@BannedIP there's nothing stopping you from projecting and painting textures, even in Painter. :)
I think i saw a leaks texture from textures.com on one of the GTA 5 big trash trucks.
For a second I was scared, like "Oh man I do that!" And then you showed the cleaning-up and the brushing part. And then I felt at ease. "Oh man I do that!" :)
You guys had the opportunity to make a "Substance Abuse" pun and it never happened and I've never felt so let down
I would love to see more Substance Painter videos.
The two dirt brushes are definitely the go to. The mold one is also good for not just mold but a whole lot of other stuff. The dots are also good, but I also use a lot of alphas to paint masks, especially the fingerprint and palm print stuff. The square-brush looking alpha is also good for making things look like as if they were physically painted.
Also it helps to understand the process of coating materials. Is it powder coated, e-coated, Anodized, Booth spray painted, or electroplated? What are the characteristics of each? Where is the coating thicker for each type (they aren't all capable of even coating)? Where is the coating the weakest and vulnerable to weathering? Once you understand that, then you can create more realistic weathering and corrosion.
Now if you made a video covering that I'd be terribly interested :)
I also like to go over my materials to add variations. For example, rubber tire material can be used in many many places such as tire, electrical tape, cable, latex mask / gloves, military object etc. I believe it's all about creativity. People can still use the same Smart Material in countless places. They just have to know what characteristics fit the story.
Also, the thing that you guys did between 9:00 and 10:00 can be also done with the help of the ambient occlusion map as well.
I just wanted to bring the great point you guys made about the different stages of rust and wearing of paints. There is also the additional coats paint and use primer to consider that has different looks and principles compared to other paints
damn, you guys are so impressive. You constantly tackle things and subjects from a very conceptual and reflective side, which is so valuable and inspiring! thank you so much for all the hard work!
Really means a lot! Thanks for the support :)
Also useful tip - by using F1, F2, F3 buttons, you can quickly switch between UV view, 3D view and both. Great for getting a quick look upclose on textures.
You guys are missing the key point which is reference. Without showing it and discussing the details everything can be arbitrary.
In my experience the most common mistake is making art without a reference. Not relying purely on automatic masks. Answering questions like "how does a hydrant get old, how does the dirt build up and paint gets chipped" is the key. That's the real reason behind what You're talking about in this video.
Only beginners use what the people on this video are talking about, it's part of the learning process, and every tutorial will demonstrate this for beginners. Experience brings the things you are describing, and I can't see any point to this video at all apart from pointing the finger at people who have never used the software before.
I learned this in sorta a hard way.
I downloaded a ton of smart mats for an asset I was making, and just tried almost all of them on. And it never ended up lokking the way I wanted it too.
So in the end I realized, that I had to do the rest of the work myself.
Great points about the item history and timeline. Lots of applicants tend to ignore this and don’t walk the item through its own history. How many kids climbed the item and where are their feet likely to land? Where will dust settle? Whats is the path of water and what dries first? Chains swing and people drop things to gouge and nick paint layers out. Well done video for making this priority.
Thanks for the advice. I think the problem is that most "Substance Painter video tutorials" tend to get too long winded in explaining something as simple as adding a smart material to a fill layer. Instead of taking things one at a time they will have 5 more layer and black masks before they tell you they are done. I think people that watch video tutorials are too afraid to point out mistakes in videos that make it hard for them use the program fully. You do not have to know how layers or blending modes work in other softer but they feel they need to explain whether you have or don't have this other software.
Fav brushes; default, dirt 2, dirt spots, mold.
Painting is usually left for projecting decals. I try to do as much as I can by layering masks and save smart materials.
Neat! Thanks Ola.
Just started painter recently, glad I have the right mindset
Apart from it giving the asset much more character and not looking so generic, I also find it much more fun to go over it layer by layer adding grunge and details by hand.
Flipped normals allways thumb up !
I'm so addicted to your commentaries. Definitely my favorite dynamic duo. (More Painter Content Please.)
i just know that it's great to see you guys just do stuff, i dont necessarily need substance videos, just more videos from you guys, its really chill just to see and hear you guys opinions and jokes while providing great tips and sugestions about general when it comes to broad term of arts and visuals etc. great job !!! im waiting for more
You guys are the most helpful channel I've come across on UA-cam for this kind of stuff
when is the full indepth tutorial coming out?
Hopefully next week!
@@FlippedNormals cool thanks!
Great advice. Ty for the video.
This video is gold, i'm going to have to make a lot of textures in substance for a scene i'm making and this gave me brilliant ideas...at least as brilliant as they can be at 4:00am
They allways are)
I had a painting teacher a long time ago who stressed the importance of not using paint straight from the tube but instead coming up with your own “recipe” to give your colors a more unique feel.
As a student , I am very glad u made this video and I managed to found it. This is really gonna be helpful for my assignments and stuffs. Thanks for this awesome video.
The Bark brush is amazing! if used sparingly you can see a good degree of random lines and crossed "scratches". I think it has a nice pattern.
I love using the sandpaper brush with some tweaking for adding wear, and the default hard brush to blot metal bits in and the invert the brush and cut back the blots to create individual scratches. Dirt 1 and 2 are also great tools to use.
It was really helpful. I used to do textures 100% procedurals, but thinking like this, its really more interesting than just create some generators.
as a programmer, not a designer I like baking out the generated maps like curvature and process them with some low scale noise, before putting them back on.
Smart materials are most usefull to me when I finished one object with massive stacks of procedurals and save it all to a smart material so I can keep a coherent look on multiple objects.
Once all of this is done I rather use shader to get the fine differences between multiple objects in the shader.
how did u swap the paint color from black to white at 6:46?
You just need to press X on the keyboard and it changes the meter from maximum white or maximum black. It only works when the meter is at the furthest extent so if it's in the middle or 70% it won't work. It's also useful in the polygon mode when you want to add and substract the selection of polygons that you want to be affected. Hope this helps !
But... Smart Materials are the "Make Awesome" buttons...
Joking aside, I really enjoy this content as it combines the techniques required to use the software with the artist's perspective, highlighting why we study the fundamentals of design and art in the first place. Applying those fundamentals with the techniques that get taught in a class really separates people who can make 3D objects, and the people who make 3D Art. Great Video! Can't wait to see whats next! Would love to see some Substance Painter workflow videos, possibly with managing LOD's textures for games? Maybe even a Hair Card/Texturing series would be AMAZING.
My instructor always said "There is no "make Star wars" button because if there was we would all be out of a job".
Something I still have problems with, but mostly due to lack of knowledge of substance painter on how to do what I have in mind so I switch to look alike smart material and tweak it a bit, but I definitely need to put more attention to this. Thank you for this video. If nothing else, it gave me the motivation to focus more on substance painter.
I also like the dirt brushes they're pretty good in combination with the noise textures within Painter
Nice!
Just in time when i needed this.....thanks for the video
Awesome video. Can't wait for the full indepth tutorial. Thanks FlippedNormals!
Great stuff guys! Already had a solid grasp of what you went over but it was still refreshing to hear the emphasis on storytelling. I did take away the polygon fill tool though, which is amazing. Big thanks :)
This is kind of like the synthesizer preset vs. custom sound argument. There are hit songs where I can identify a famous sound, and some people have purchased synths just to get a specific sound. Like a preset sound, material, transition, I suppose bad art can manifest in many ways, and good art can make use of presets.
I think someone with an artist's eye and mastery of Substance will create their own masks, though a smart material can be an excellent basis to work from IF you properly bake your curve maps first. Then, the smart materials are 'smart' and following the contours of your objects.
The end result is what matters, and the end-user isn't exactly gonna look at a game and say, "OMG THAT IS PAINTED STEEL 21B by Allegorithmic, which was recently acquired by Adobe!"'. ;)
Okay, a dev might say that but if it looks good, it looks good.
I learnt a new method of just creating the right "ROUGHNESS" map! Get the base colors right. It is soo important to get the base color right as we should be able to get the feel of what the object is just with the base color. The trick I learnt is just get the base color right and then export the color information to B2M, Shader Map or Photoshop and generate the roughness map from there and bring it back in Painter and apply on a fill layer with the "ROUGHNESS" channel enable and then play around with numbers! In this fashion you will have a bit more extra control over the roughness map! As you can still add on roughness effects from the base fill layers! It is just like we do in Mari! Take the necessary base textures required and drag to the roughness channel and then go on adding some additional stuff! Though a bit lengthy but really pushes your textures forward!
Amazing Work! 💪
Obviously we will still have control over the over the roughness from the fills (beauty of painter) but it is just a personal preference!
Just started learning substance painter and looking into smart materials, the timing is impeccable ^_^
love you way of your explaining
Thanks You Very Much.That's is really Good.
My favorite brush for the eraser is called Chipping from the allegorithmic site.
My favorite for painting masks is anything with the Charcoals or Chalks. Sprays are very useful. Same with the Pencil brush, I use that often for very fine details. Turn up or down the opacity and flow too. Too high is typically too harsh.
Other than that, I'm still experimenting
PREACH! Thank you for this. I'm an educator at an university, and substance painter has become the bane of my existence concerning student surfacers/texture artist for this exact reason! :) (I love the program tho!)
Thanks for watching! It's really frustrating when people skip the hard steps, going directly to magical texture maps
Great video! Nice work guys
Love your conversation style of doing tutorials. Can you maybe do one on stylised usage for Substance, compared to the realistic looking?
Good info here, recently subscribed to substance and haven't really thought about many of the things you spoke so thanks!
What are your secrets fire hydrant? I must know!
Wow how do you see those high horse from that sky high ivory tower you're in?
nice tutorial ! i learned so much, but i have one question the rust shouldn't be under the steel, since the rust is the steel got eaten by the
oxidation ?
It should be an oxidized area of the steel
More videos please of painter I need to dig in and learn it!
Yeah I love the paint mask to paint on where you want the edge detail from the curvature. Instead of it being uniform.
wow, what a clever approach to texturing. Thank you!!
Awesome vid!
Something that I like to do as well as hand painting some additional information into the mask is adding variation via the use of fill and some of the grime alphas that come with substance.
can't wait for the tutorial! Thank you!
Great tutorial
Great overall thought process video
Showing the "Mask Builder" would be a very helpful technical tips video, kind of like the anchor points video which really helped me. Knowing these things are there and how to use them to your advantage is great for everyone.
Very good advice for a student!
2:36 I you would have done textures like that say.. 10-15 years ago, you would have been hired as a chief god texture artist on spot. Now it's literally 30 sec and a throwaway.
A tutorial on how to paint away masks (not using the slides) would be cool. I think my main issue with texturing is having full control over where I want detail to be.
Can you do videos about specific Texture maps in substance? Like opacity for glass or emission for light
Same goes with using stock models and not just texturing. If you want a unique look you really have to make models and textures yourself .
when I use metal edge wear, it always just fills the entire model, idk how to get it to go on the edges, do I need to have those edges marked as sharp? or something different
There should be a "Life Saving" button. Thanks so much, FN.
1:16 - "Leave the smart materials alone"
...(Pulling out IQ test for Smart materials behind my back :::)
Great vids as always! Could you do more on creating good Alphas for Zbrush and Mari? tips and tricks with layers and blending modes? Happy Valentines dag!
Cant wait for the substance tutorial videos!
Thanks for this video , you reached on me in right time . Hope i'll rectify my mistake in my demoreel .
Excellent! thank you!
What hotkey did u do to paint and unpaint red mask sir, thank
Great channel!
Great video guys! Would still love to have you on the show!!
I try to avoid using smart materials (or at least using all the layers of a smart material). It’s easy enough to layer your own textures or use the standard materials and layer them that I barely see the point in using smart materials that come free with substance (unless you’re just figuring out how they work or something of course). Substance is so powerful, using smart materials just takes so much of that power out of your hands and into the hands of a boring algorithm
MORE PAINTER CONTEnt PLS We LOVE U
Another great video as always!! I would love to see more substance videos! Maybe an intro to designer as well. I've been having a hard time breaking into that one.
what do you use to 3d model?
Great Tips/tutorial, really looking forward to using Substance Painter soon. Be great to know what setup machine your using
Is this asset part of a tutorial that as can do and build/following along? it would be cool to do. Keep up the good work guys
I thought about it too before Ive seen this video, cause i noticed it alot in games lately, just thought it was "normal" already, apparently not. Thank you dude!
Every single thing I was doing, was actually wrong xD at least I know the UI now
id like to see a quick video or post explaining the difference of making a smart material in Substance Painter versus Substance Designer
THANK U FOR KNOWLEDGES
Thank you for watching!
A lot of talk not much showing. They could have changed the parameters in mask to reduce the artificial chipping effect. 10 seconds job with better result, THEN few brush strokes where ACTUALLY needed. Slightly better than a noob, not quite a professional workflow...
"a lot of talk not much showing" is how I'd sum up every flippednormals video I've seen
they claim that beginners rely too much on smart material and mask, for their info when i started with substance painter, i didn't understand how it works or how it is, i see all these as tools for artist and we can still apply them in anyway we want
When Painter came out, you could clearly see which games used it with the drag and drop method.
its possible have the 3D model to use for follow this tutorial ? thank a lot
wow i already know these things, awsm vdo
I thought you already have a painter tutorial. will this new tutorial you speak of. it it a new s.p tutorial? great stuff
5:14 So the only way to fix such material misassignments is to use a paint tool? You cannot simply select vertices and assign a different material?
I think we got the point, we want more technical conversation
4:40 Good Start as I know what you are talking about there, being a person who was born in there :D
great video
Great video.
Tutorial starts at 5:00 :)
How are you flipping your brush to black?
TIP : for more variation change the brushes jitter values
Thank you. Very informative stor...i mean tutorial here.
Great tips
What if you're an Indie studio and you need thousands of assets but only have a few people to work on them?