2018
Equipment Haul
- Vuze 360
- Einscan
- Structure Sensor
- Vive
- iPad
3D Workflow
Substance Approach
1. Sculpt high-poly
2. Export high-poly to 3d package of choice (3DS Max, Maya, Blender, etcetera)
3. Retopologize a low-poly over your high-poly sculpt
4. UV Map/Unwrap the low-poly sculpt
5. Export the high-poly from your 3D package of choice to FBX (or .obj but I like .fbx better)
6. Export the low-poly from your 3D package of choice to FBX (or .obj but I like .fbx better again)
7. Import both high-poly and low-poly into Substance Designer or xNormal
8. Bake the following maps
a. Normal
b. ambient occlusion
c. color_id
- Note: Bakes are typically more successful if it is exploded and a cage is used (cage should match your low-poly vertices 100% with a slight "push" applied)
9. Alter color_id map in photoshop or GIMP to align specific UV islands to materials (not texture, think about what the material make-up of that piece is. Is it chrome? silver? wool? polyester? grease? etcetera) -- same material should get same color (e.g. all light chrome is red, all dark chrome is dark red, all wood is blue, etcetera)
10. Re-import new color_id map into Substance Designer
11. Import low-poly into substance designer/painter (if you used xNormal to bake maps)
12. Import Normal and Ambient occlusion maps into Designer/Painter (again, if you used xNormal to bake maps)
13. Begin creating materials using either Substance Designer/Painter. You may use the color_id map that you edited previously to stop bleeding while painting/creating your tiling materials.
14. When you are finished with your materials, you can reveal specific attributes to be altered IN-ENGINE (eg. dirt, rust, water, etcetera)
15. IF YOU CANNOT OPEN THE SUBSTANCE PACKAGE IN YOUR ENGINE OF CHOICE (Unity has plug-in support, Unreal Engine 4 requires a different branch of the engine you can download at Allegorithmic's site) -- then you will need to right-click each individual output material and export, then import into your engine along with your low-poly and apply all the maps to your low-poly asset.
16. IF YOU CAN OPEN SUBSTANCE PACKAGE IN YOUR ENGINE OF CHOICE - import your low-poly asset and your substance package, apply that package to your asset. Enjoy the fact that those attributes you revealed earlier are easily changed IN-ENGINE if you want to make changes.
17. Take a high quality screenshot/video in-engine.
