Character Texturing

The process of making skin textures is tedious and can easily confuse my mind because only the head and hands of this character will be visible to the player, the rest of the body is covered by clothes, so I focused on making textures for these two parts after taking these factors into consideration in this part. Before this project my knowledge of skin textures was limited to basic colours, I hadn’t thought much about changing colours and roughness, or using some very simple skin texture balls. In the process of making this body material I was analysing the logic of the skin material step by step, and then overlaying the effects. Each effect is very weak, but all the effects overlaid together will make the whole skin effect look more realistic. After the first step I thought I had made a good material, but I didn’t, only the basic skin colour and some blood colours are not enough, I need to draw a lot of other colours to be superimposed, such as the shadows of the skin, the colour of the pores and the roughness of the changes, they are not uniform, so all these effects need to be drawn in a reasonable position and there is no way to achieve good results through some material balls. effects. In the hand texture process, because of the ronin’s frequent fights and wandering around, the hands will be quite dirty. I’ve already sculpted the veins and folds in the sculpting process, so I need to consider the colours of these effects when painting the texture. I’ve gained a better understanding of the underlying logic of materials by working on the skin material this time.

In the process of baking, there are some problems, the normal effect and AO effect of many close objects will affect each other, which is similar to the problem of baking the body. However, this problem is difficult to be solved by using the software marmoset, because clothes and belts are tight, and it is difficult not to affect other body protection. So in order to speed up the progress, I directly bake the equipment of several different UV sets separately and add materials. The advantage of this is that there will be no baking problems, but it is impossible to observe the overall material effect when adding materials. I have to import all the materials to the Unreal Engine to view the effect and then modify it, which may take a little more time. However, the final result was achieved which I think is more satisfactory

Some of the factors I need to consider before making the material of the clothes are what kind of fabric the clothes are made of, which determines which fabric textures I choose to overlay. After further research on some fabric references I have looked for before, I think the fabric of the character should be mainly cotton and hemp. Therefore, in the early stage of material production, I need to determine the basic color of the clothes and the texture of cotton and hemp based on the character design drawing. On this basis, I will consider the character’s experience of fighting and wandering for years, and combine the damaged details carved in zbrush to further draw the dirty marks and wear in the material. Some mask effects in substance painer work well, but they can’t generate dirt marks and scuffs where I want, so I have to draw these effects manually when making fabric. For example, the junction of folds is very prone to dirt marks, so I will focus on deepening these effects in this part.Since the equipment of this character has many fabric materials, after all the material effects are made, I will make these superimposed material effects into a material ball of my own, and apply them to the other fabric parts of the equipment. After learning the logic of this set of fabric production, I just need to make some adjustments to the other fabric.

I Find a suitable leather image on pinterest while i am making leather, and make it into a usable texture map at Substance Designer. I used a transparent map for the cape, because the cape is the most vulnerable to damage in combat, so painting a damaged effect is more suitable for this character.