Texturing

first try

Using UV Snapshots and Clip Studio (instead of Photoshop)

Ribbon

We can use our UVs to create textures by using the lines in the UV Editor and draw over/under them. Having the UV Editor open, we can click "Image" -> "UV Snapshots" which makes this pop up.

Here we can select the image format and resolution for our UVs. I currently have it set to PNG, and 2048 for 2k resolution. We can choose the file destination and just click "Apply and Close" for it to save in that folder.

This is how it looks like in Clip Studio (but with the lines covering the ribbon UVs)

I've "hidden" the lines underneath my colour and my texture so when I save it out the lines will not show in the picture.

I used the same method on the dress (shirt, skirt, underskirt, belt/band and ribbon) but I didn't like how bland it looked. I tried to shade it (you can barely see it at the neck area) but I found it difficult to line up the UVs correctly so it wasn't uneven on the sides.

Later on I not only changed the UVs of the dress (shirt, and 2 skirts) but I chose to try out Substance Painter instead.

Preview with Arnold

Skin looks a tad weird in just a sky lit Arnold rendering, and in basic Maya - but with the provided lighted scene I was able to render out some better photos.

Preview with Render/Light setup from OneDrive Folder provided.

Fixed the weird tearing on the back - just moved the skirt up a little so the body/underpants wasn't showing through.

I wasn't really happy with how the textures were looking from this method and I had a hard time shading them because my UVs were wonky so it was difficult to line them up perfectly for the seams to not show.

I will be trying Substance Painter as another method to texture as I can use "Smart Materials" to add texture and some details to them and I am also not bound by the resolution of images I find online (some images are low res so they blow out easily when scaled up)

At the very least I wanted to try and understand how using UV Snapshots to make textures work, and if this Substance method doesn't work out the way I want it to then I will be going back to UV Snapshots anyway.

second try

Using Substance Painter

Using the leggings as an example this was my workflow

Export Selected object in Maya (in this case the leggings) as an OBJ
Open up Substance Painter, Select File - > New project - >
Resolution set to 2048 (2k texture for good looking texture with information)
Template is set as Unreal Engine 4, but I've found that the template doesn't really matter as I tried a PBR set template before and it was no different, this is just what it defaulted it for me as I use it for another module.
Use the "Shelf" on the right (default to bottom of the window) and search for Fabric amongst the "Smart Materials"
Tried on a selected few materials before I was happy with the one below "Fabric Synthetic Dots". This is a material that is native to Substance Painter, although I have imported some from a free sharing site.

How the selected smart material looks onto our mesh. Mine looks a bit wonky because I forgot to smoothen the mesh before I exported it into Substance. I didn't run into any issues so I didn't choose to re-import it.

A folder is created as you drag the smart material onto the mesh, this will let you open and change some of the settings that are in the material like the colour, detail and more. Some Materials have less configuration than others, and this one was very tame. But I quite like what I currently have so I stuck with it.

After we are happy with how the material looks, or before, we need to bake the mesh maps for a more accurate look into what the texturing will look like. This will search the information in our object and create an accurate position and depth to the texture from your mesh. This works a lot better if you have a low and high poly baked together. We won't need all these maps and our output settings will stack a couple of these together.

the skin

I started out with the body and for that I researched different ways to do it and found a really helpful guide on Youtube.

> Academic Phoenix Plus - "Texture Skin in Maya and Substance Painter"

They demonstrates how to set up your file and bake it so you get all the maps you need and what settings to use. Although their version is more real life 3D painting with a hint of styled look, I chose to follow most of their steps to get some nice colour to my character's face.

Again, here we use a smart material called "Skin" which when baked, will even out it's colour and create red areas where you would usually find red areas on the body.

Baking the meshes after adding the skin texture, basically colours the different areas for us and creates different maps without us doing it ourselves.

Then I was told to add some redness in red colour zones, because taking reference from real life - we all have red zones in our face and it makes sense to include them in 3D painting to make them look more "alive". I did the same with yellow and blue - yellow for the forehead and a tiny area of the eyes, and blue for the jaw/jawline and neck area. Then I overlayed and or changed the opacity of the layer so the colour blended in more to the face andc didn't stand out as much.

Added some make up for character - little bit of pink eye shadow and some eye liner. I did not create eye sockets when I retopologised my mesh, so it looks kind of weird as of now.

output/export settings

After adding the roughness map she loses some of her gloss, as shown in Arnold RenderView.

the shirt

Accidentally forgot to press 3 in Maya to smoothen my mesh before I was texturing - but when I took it back into Maya it seemed to be no issue.

Even though it currenly looks weird, below we can see that by rendering it looks entirely different.

When applying the different maps in Maya it might look weird for a second - but using Arnold to render shots makes them look entirely different than what you see currently. So using the Renderer to keep checking how it looks along the way will really help keeping an eye out in case things look wrong.

Below is how Arnold is rendering these mesh maps that we put in, not bright pink at all!

For the Apron I found a woolen (t-shirt) texture on the Substance Share website by Nevillekitala Kitala 0. I applied it to my object and baked out maps. There is a weird "watermark" on the top right, so I might find a different texture to use or try and cover it. It does not seem to include the name of the creator from what I cal tell, but I could be wrong.

For both the Leggings and the Underskirt I used the Smart Material "Fabric Synthetic Dots" and changed the colour to a pale pink, as I didn't want a pure white colour on my texture to make it stand out a bit more. I really like the texture-y look of the leggins below.

Within Substance, there is a "projection" tool where if you import an image - you can draw over it so it gets "ironed" onto your object/model. I did this with the eyes where I found a 3D/realistic image of some eyes and projected onto my model. I couldn't find my desired colour so I wen't with one I thought looked the nicest.

I felt like this was a nice touch to my model - even though I could probably draw on some nice eyes myself, I wanted them to look as real and nice as possible. Gives it some nice character to my model as well.

For the shoes I used black masks (to decide which area gets covered what, by drawing over the desired area) to separate the bottom part of the shoe with the upper part. I used a steel-looking Smart Material for the bottom, as it made it look very much like how the bottom part of a shoe would look - and a plastic Smart Matieral for the top. Now in Maya the shoes don't look quite as shiny as they do in Substance.

For the hair I only added pink as a base colour, then used a Stencil layer to draw on some strands with the in built brush in Substance painter. In future projects I probably will try and sculpt individual hair strands for a better look to the hair.

Here is what she currently looks like with the Lighting scene setup provided to me by my tutor. The Skirt and the Shirt are somehow different colours so will have to investigate that as I used the "Eyedrop Tool" to get the same colour from the shirt onto the skirt.

The Shoes are a bit too vibrant as well, but that is easily fixable by tuning the colour down a little bit. I've already applied pink colour to the hair - I just need to make a couple strands so it actually looks more like hair. After that I think I am happy enough to move onto the rigging phase.

Update with added hair, eyes and tweaked shoes

Rigging

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