OTM Aaron Week 4: texturing and substance painter

This week I decided that I wouldn't move onto any more assets before I completed the current assets I had created in their chronological order, so I began by have my arm chair modeled and textures and then moved onto my wall panels and so on.

I had to slightly break this rule early in the week when I had to create some windows as this was a much needed asset and had to be prioritized over general world populated assets; so I put everything else on hold.

once I had a general base mesh for the windows I went back to working on my other assets and making sure the high and low poly models were sound and ready for baking and texturing.

I managed to get the models completed by the mid-point of the week and spent the latter half in substance painter texturing my assets and creating tillable textures

I decided that I would create a wood texture in substance designer as I figured I would be using such a  texture a lot with the majority of my assets being constructed from wood.

I dedicated a whole day to doing this as I wasn't familiar with the process of created a wood texture and unfortunately wasn't successful which knocked my confidence a little.

never less I got back on track and managed to produce a decent wood texture with time to spare which I of course used to make progress on other aspects of my work.

This is as far as i went with regards to creating my own textures from scratch and relied on algorithmic materials for a basis to work on; this way I could save a lot of time and most probably produce a better result.

Once my texture was ready I could get to work on my assets and finally produce something that was perpetually half finished or a work on progress; I actually had something I could put in the level.

Whilst texturing my wooden objects, although the textures were to a high quality there was something that didn't seem convincing. I realized that it was because the grain of the wood textures I used wasn't always following the logical length of he planks of wood used. I managed to create a good work around in substance painted by have the same texture duplicated on multiple layers and changing the rotation of the object combined with poly masking to produce a realistic result and this immediately made my assets look more realistic by 10-fold.

Plain wood texture created in Substance Designer

With each of my assets I have been paying particular attention to the normal map baking and making sure they were produced correctly and to a high quality.

Generally this process had gone smoothly and without any unsolvable problems but one asset, my Victorian gramophone has been giving me a headache for no apparent reason.

I am having some strange unexplained artifacts in my normal map that I suspect are related to the orientation of both models in 3ds max when I export them but this is an ongoing issue that I am yet to fully solve.

Aside from this one asset the majority of my assets have all turned out fine and with this project i'm stressing quality and attempting to avoid cutting corners or missing things out because they wouldn't be seen or wouldn't affect the final outcome; I want to be extra scrupulous.

Arm chair with materials applied

Upper wall trim with materials applied 

Lower wall trim with materials applied

Window with materials applied

Bay window with materials applied

Round window with materials applied

Gramophone with materials applied

This week has been texturing focused and I have been working hard to produce believable textures using the tools at my disposal, as of this week I have everything I have modeled so far completely textured and ready to export with exception to the gramophone I am having baking issues with.

By the end of this week I aim to complete all current assets that are in progress and start next week with a completely brand new set of assets to complete and responding to the trail and error I have been experiencing over the past few weeks.