Robot Texturing

We started this project by importing the provided FBX file. We made sure the template was set to PBR Metallic Roughness and Document Resolution was set to 2048. Because of the non-destructive nature of Substance Painter, these settings can be changed later as needed. 

The next step is to bake the varying texture maps. This step is important as substance uses these maps to determine curtain aspects of the model such as orientation, curves and thickness. With this information substance can use tools like generators other neat little tricks to easily create details. This walkthrough contains many examples of this very concept.

A grunge map was added to the roughness layer of the plastic material to break up the material and give it a bit of a weared down look. 

A black mask was added in order to limit where the texture is displayed. Using white we can reveal a texture while black will hide it. The video Covered four common separate ways of selecting which part of the mesh to add the texture to. 

1) Paint Effect: Using a paint effect you can use brushes to paint the texture back on. 

2) A Polygon Fill/Fill Effect Tool: This tool can be used to select varying parts. It's able to select based on triangles, polygons, Floating mesh or UV islands.  

3) Floating Mesh: Similar to an option in the polygon fill tool, it's possible to mask based on the seperate mesh object. 

4) Colour Id: Using the software in which the material is made, A Colour ID Map can be made. Substance Painter has the ability to easily select parts of a model based on these colours. For this project we will add separate materials using this method. 

Next we started work on our edgewear. The goal is to show the metal under the paint in places that would wear down easily. 

We start by adding a metal texture that is overlays the blue paint texture. A black mask is then added to the metal texture, hiding it. 

This is the result of the metal edge wear generator. It was also at this point that Substance decided to glitch causing the generator to not work properly. Restarting the application fixed the issue. 

Now we want to have the same material but with a different colour for a different part of the robot. The colour group we have been working on is duplicated then renamed. The layer mask colour ID was removed and a new one selected. The paint colour was then changed to orange.  I also went back to the original colour and gave it more of a green look. similar to the tutorial.

The metal texture and metal edge wear generator was copied from our first colour and pasted to our new coated metal layer. A few settings are changed in the generator including metal wear and grunge amount. 

As it is, the robot still looks too clean. To give in an old, perhaps abandoned look we will give the robot a layer of dirt. This layer will always be at the very top of the layer stack in order to overlay all texture underneath. We will start with a brown fill layer. 

A dirt generator is added to a fill layer. The main settings changed here was the dirt contrast, grunge amount. The generator makes the fill layer more condensed around all of the nooks and crannies. I forgot to take a screenshot of the end result so here is a shot from the tutorial. 

More detail is added to the dirt by using a grunge map. We used a grunge map called dirt scratched. The result of this is on the Left. What we now want to do is cut into the generator using this filter. To do this we need to change the blending mode to multiply. 

The dirt layer is instantiated over to the legs. This is the final generated look. 

The eyes are given a black material. 

A position generator is used to create a gradient between two colours. A duplicate of the base orange colour was made and darkened. A mask was created for this darker colour and the generator was added to that. With this setup the robot is lighter on the bottom than at the top. In retrospect I think it would've made more sense to have that reversed. In my mind the robot is old and possibly sun bleached. The top of the robot being the most exposed to the sun would result in the opposite gradient. 

Next we will be creating hard surface details. This is a pretty straightforward and repetitive process. I've included 4 images of different details being added. The process was pretty much the same for each detail. So here are the steps:

A paint layer is added. This lets us use the brush. In substance the brush can control each individual channel. For hard surfaces we just need the normal channel. With that selected we can choose a stamp or brush from the Hard Surfaces tab in the library. Now we can scale and rotate our brush and start stamping in extra details. 

This part of the tutorial also taught us about the symmetry feature of substance. It is a pretty powerful tool for creating symmetric details. It's not just limited to two sides. For example in that last image I divided the symmetry tool into six, allowing perfectly spaced bolts around the top of the robot. 

Finally we started to add the final details. In this case we used writing but any texture or image would work.  We started by using the planar projection mode on a fill effect layer which is attached to a fill layer.  An alpha was selected and used in the fill effect layer.  This is how we got the words to display on the robot. The planar project mode allows to easily place decals anywhere. If using the surface tool the planar will snap to the surface of the object. 

To use two fill effect layers on the same texture layer I need to change the blending mode of the top layer to "Lighten Max" so that both fill effects are visible. 

The last thing I need to do is export the textures to be used in Blender. I Need to change normals from Directx 12 to OpenGL for rendering in cycles. To do this a copy of the PBR Metallic Roughness pre-set was made and the Directx 12 channel for the normal map was replaced with the open GL option from the converted maps tab.  All I needed to do next was make sure I was exporting to the right place, then set the rest up in Blender.