Cinema 4D Tutorial - Intro to UV Mapping with Bodypaint Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

body paint and UV unwrapping are
probably two of the most requested
tutorial subjects not only on eyes on
comm probably all over the internet and
I happen to know a couple very talented
artists Kristen and koban who happen to
know a lot on these subjects and we're
willing to share their knowledge they
both work at a studio called Edison
creative and they just wrapped up a
cartoon series called the axiom
chronicles where they utilize cinema 4d
to create 2d style assets in 3d and
mixed it in with the actual 2d animation
for this cartoon series and they were
generous enough to share their knowledge
with us so they're going to be covering
a lot of their process a lot of their 2d
workflows for creating 2d style assets
and 3d how they utilize body paint how
they did some UV unwrapping how they
painted textures in Photoshop
it's everything that I selfishly wanted
to learn about body paint and UV
unwrapping for a very long time so I
hope you guys enjoy this a lot if you
appreciate everything that they've done
if you've learned anything from this be
sure to send both Kristen and koban and
an Edison creative a lot of love for
taking the time out and again being
generous and sharing their knowledge
with all of us so without further ado
take it away
Kristen and koban hey guys welcome I'm
Co Andrew dish this is Kristen Zahra
yes and we are part of a crew from a
company called Edison creative we've
been developing a science-fiction action
adventure cartoon series and we just
completed a four-minute pilot trailer
kind of thing and we had some really
cool challenges that we feel like we
overcame yeah and that challenge was
that the cartoon is very 2d it's very
two-dimensional but we wanted to build
our ships and some robots and things
like that in 3d so we could utilize the
animation features of cinema to make
them look awesome but we wanted them to
blend in with our two
stuff and a lot of people get real
intimidated when we start talking about
unwrapping you v's and making maps and
stuff like that in in this case it's not
difficult it's not something to get all
sweaty and and goofy about it's really
easy and it's and it can be fun believe
it or not so we're gonna show you guys
some of the methods we used to overcome
that issue and make our 3d blend in with
our 2d and some really simple techniques
for unwrapping and texturing stuff so
let's go there we go so let's take a
look at Dylan's concept art and talk
through our goals in 3d and what some of
the challenges were up front so we
decided really early on that we wanted
to create the drones as a 3d element so
that we could pose them at any angle
render them as still frames and animate
them in after-effects or in the instance
that we wanted to make them fly we could
also have the option of rendering a
sequence in order to see a bit of
perspective shift but the one thing we
wanted to keep in mind was how could we
maintain Dylan's art style and have them
not look overly 3d so we noticed a few
other things when we looked at his
drawings that we knew were gonna need to
mimic in cinema and the first was that
the lighting was static if you look at
Dylan's R you can see there's a light
source that appears to be on the right
side of the drone
however it's not physically accurate
because from the front there doesn't
appear to be any change in the material
it's still in shadow and so that tells
us off the bat that we're gonna need to
make materials that were independent of
lighting so yeah that led us to using
luminance shaders which are self
illuminating and also allowed us to
eliminate the need to do any lighting in
our scenes you know one huge you know
hurdle for us was we didn't want our 3d
to look so 3d that it didn't blend in
with our 2d and you know one thing that
really helped that from the get-go was
Dylan's design directive was that with
there would be no black outlines around
anything
you know a lot of cartoons everything
has a heavy black outline but we were
going stylistically for something that
doesn't have that and since we didn't we
were able to you know get nice angles
without having to worry about that
outline you know tracing only the
perimeter of the two dimensions we're
looking at so yeah when it came to UV
unwrapping which we're talking about in
this tutorial we were really able to cut
a lot of technical corners and speed up
the process and that really was because
the edges of the texture didn't have to
be seamless in a lot of areas and that
you know I'd hear Dylan's illustrative
style and that also helped us create
those hard edges to define the lighting
like he had so yeah that was a huge win
for koban and I and saved us a lot of
time you know our main goal was to be
able to pretty much capture these drones
at any angle and maintain Dylan's art
style and I think we got there you know
the art direction changed a little bit
from that drawing to the final product
here that has a little more texture and
a little more detail to it now we're
gonna move on and show you guys how we
did it alright guys so we're here in
cinema we're with our drone model and
we're only worried today about
unwrapping this main ship body so we're
gonna solo this object if you have a
magic solo button this works perfect
we're just gonna get it on its own so we
can focus on this solely and it's
important to note that whenever you're
doing you be unwrapping there's
definitely a stream streamlined process
of how to go about it a lot of people
use checkerboard patterns or they use a
series of colors and numbers on a grid
to allow you to see visually if you're
you v's are being laid out and are laid
out proportionate it's a visual
representation essentially of how your
UVs are getting interpreted on a 2d
plane so in your viewport if you see
squares on your object that are not
quite square but more rectangular squash
terse or stretched then you know that
you have
problems in your uv-map so I always like
to use a checkerboard if I can because
it definitely helps make sure that
everything that you paint in Photoshop
or procreate will translate on to your
3d model exactly how you intended it all
right so we're gonna create a new
material double-click it call it
checkerboard and we're only worried
about luminance for our project so I'll
turn off everything else and then the
luminance channel I'll create a surface
checkerboard within the texture node
I'll check in here and up here is a tile
of how your shader your procedural
shader
will essentially repeat and we want the
U and the V to have a lot more squares
so we're gonna just increase this to 15
for our sake and then we're gonna drag
and drop it on to our model and by
default cinema 4d will look at an object
and it will create a projection type
based on that so in your attributes
editor of your texture tag here it has a
projection type that it defaults to and
it looked at this object and it said
that's this looks closest to a spherical
object which I don't really agree with I
think it probably should have defaulted
to cubic but it default it's the
spherical and that's not really what we
want because we definitely want to
create more of an even grid of squares
and a lot of these are getting skewed
they're definitely larger in some areas
and there's a curvature to it that we
don't like the top looks like a
dartboard that's definitely not right
and the Front's also a little off so
there's a lot of things that are wrong
with this now it's easiest to see what
you're going for if you had a normal
cube in the scene so we'll see what a
cube looks like if you applied texture
and here all the cubes I'm sorry all the
squares when you change to every angle
appear to be the same size and they're
lining up on the edges for instance so
we know for sure that these look good
and this is correct but a cubist is
fairly you know
easy to map something on its when you
start to get with these sort of
irregular shapes especially something
organic that things start to become very
difficult but these checker boards are
very helpful and I think it's important
when we go to you know open up our UV
editor and start to modify these I want
to quickly show you what we're trying to
achieve when we go to do a UV unwrap and
if you were to think of this in real
life terms it's kind of how I like to
look at anything that I do in 3d is how
would this be done in real life and try
to wrap my head around why we do
something it's easier for me to retain
the concepts of how you apply these
techniques in 3d so like let's say I'm
gonna make a paper cube in real life the
way that I would do that is I would take
a sheet of paper and probably print out
a template folded into a 3d volumetric
cube so if you were to look at the
finished project product I'm sorry it
would look just like this but if you
were to look at what you printed on the
paper it's most likely something very
similar to this and that's really what
you're trying to do with any piece of
geometry when you do a UV unwrap you're
taking a three-dimensional volumetric
object and you're trying to interpret it
as a flat 2d let's say die-cut or
template of that object that's at least
how I've always looked at it so like
let's take our drone for instance I'm
going to undo that there and show you
it's alright that's our final but let me
show you what our drone would look like
that way so here's kind of a 3d
volumetric object and I would imagine
that if I was to you know print
something like this and fold it into the
shape that most likely these pieces on
the side would unfold and so would the
front and the top which most likely
would be connected so I would imagine it
to do something very similar to this now
all the pieces in the undercarriage here
which were let me show you the like
parts of the motor we're not worried
about in our model at least we
no we're gonna apply just a very flat
one color or two color treatment to it
we're not gonna hand-paint any of the
stuff underneath because it's getting
hidden by motor parts and other things
so there's a technique where you can
almost merge all the vertices together
and you can color them all one color
very simply so just for sake of this
example I'm only worried about the sides
the front and the top of this piece of
geometry so again if you were looking at
it in 3d and then looking at it as a 2d
object and let's just say we take those
vertices of the bottom part like I
mentioned and condense it into one
vertex you would probably get something
like this and from a print it would be
laid out like that maybe and these parts
would be attached but they would fold
together and then you would maybe tape
it up to you know become that sort of
volumetric 3d object so that's really
what we're we're looking to do and if
you can see kind of how I unfolded it
initially to what we got at the end I
just flopped this top piece here and I
did that because I knew that it would be
easier for Coban to paint if he was
looking at it cuz he would know for sure
that if he was looking at it from the
front angle that the windows were on the
right side but this is gonna be our kind
of final UVW map and that's how we're
gonna lay it out so I just wanted to
show you guys that up front so we knew
what we were creating so we're back in
cinema and we're gonna take our model
and we're gonna put it into the body
paint UV editor so in the very top right
of your screen
you can change your layout here to UV
edit it's also in window customization
layouts so body paint UV edit okay and
on the left side you have the typical
interface you're used to working in and
that's going to be more interact
so you can still move around your model
you can select poly faces edges points
etc and if you are gonna paint directly
onto your object you'll have a
paintbrush that will be able to
interactively paint on your model we're
not going to do that we're going to
create a map the old-fashioned way and
then we're going to use either Photoshop
or procreate and we're going to make a
texture map for our drone okay so on the
right side is your UV edit layout and
the left side again is more of an
interactive and interpretation of the
same thing so if we look back at what we
want to create this is how we're going
to try to lay out all of our you v's
alright so when we made our object
initially and when you select this
object in the objects panel I'm going to
change it to hidden mine real fast so I
can show you but we made our object out
of a cube to start and then did some
extruding and probably use bool shapes I
know we used it for the front and then
when we hit the letter C to make it
editable we were never given a tag that
looks like this
a uvw tag and with this little
checkerboard texture and that's a very
important tag to make sure that you have
you have to have your object editable
and you have to have this tag by default
if you had a primitive object you
created a cube a sphere etc and you hit
the letter C I think default wise cinema
makes this for you but in our case it
wasn't there and for a long time code
and I were really confused as to why we
couldn't do much in the body paint UV
edit layout and that was because we
never had this tag so make sure that you
have that it's very important also take
note that in our case again if we turn
this two edges we have some pretty nasty
geometry here that I luckily am NOT
making a modeling tutorial because I
know clearly that this is not
a great weights to model you want to
maintain quads and most of our models
fairly fairly nice and clean but this
front part isn't you have a lot of you
know edges that aren't connected and non
quad shapes and if you were texturing
this with anything other than luminous
shading if you had actual reflection or
specular on here if you move this model
around in relation to light you get a
lot of edge breaks and sort of weird
shading shading things happening and so
we're lucky again
to not really worry about that we didn't
have to take a ton of time and model
this you know really too detailed so
that's that's one advantage again of the
luna sheeting all right so the next
thing is and I'm going to turn this back
to our checker board here I'm gonna keep
the lines on because I like to look at
it that way on the right side you can
see that our UVs are laid out in a very
strange way it's because it's using a
spherical projection on it now what I
want to make sure that we do is let's
real fast show you if you don't have
anything showing up in this in the
screen here one of two things could be
happening either you don't have one of
these tags at all or this UV show at UV
mesh is turned off and if that's the
case there's two ways to make sure you
get that back on that's either take this
texture uvw tag and drag a drop directly
on here and you'll see them or just make
sure that this is toggled on show uvw
mesh
alright so now one thing to that we want
to take note of is that when you're
under the UVW mapping projection tab we
don't have any ability to change this
projection type and that's because you
need to be selected on your Polly's or
your Polly edges or points so I'm gonna
hit select control a to select all these
and then you can see these turned on
which is awesome one other thing to note
is that anytime you want to move and
manipulate over anything over on this
right side which
the UV layout you have to be selected on
UV Poly's here or UV points
I think texture is well I don't know how
to use this this tool here but I always
am using this poly face or UV face and
UV point mode in order to manipulate and
move things on this side of the screen
okay so I want to choose something that
is a projection type that kind of mimics
the shape of this object already and
obviously to me it's not a spherical
shape it's more of a rectangle so I
think a box or cubic would be a good way
to start I think I'm going to try a box
I've found it to be a very successful
one in most cases so I'm in a hitbox and
that's pretty good you see what it made
over here on the right side I mean some
of these shapes are already mimicking
what we want I'm gonna bring over the
template of what we're going for and you
can tell like you know this is fairly
fairly close to the shape this left side
and right side look fairly good there's
some interesting overlaps happening and
stuff but for the most part this is
doable and this could be cleaned up
fairly fairly easily so I like it I
think everything looks fairly good now
one thing that you notice probably that
didn't happen you have the UV x' laid
out here but it didn't modify anything
over here this still looks and appears
to be that same projection that
spherical projection that we were using
and that's because cinema is looking at
this shader projection instead of the
uvw tag and you can see that because
once I hit that it changed the UVs over
here it's now laid out as a spherical
projection so we want to tell cinema use
the UV w's that we create to project it
onto this object so we're going to
change the projection type to UVW map
awesome so now not only is it laid out
over here but then it also modified what
we see interactively on this and that's
great that's exactly what we want
because we want to be able to move and
manipulate things here and see it update
interactively for us on this side of the
screen awesome so now what I'm going to
try to
is think of this in terms of islands
what kind of areas of the ship can I
take move and manipulate them and I
think of this right side as sort of if
you were in Illustrator and you had an
artboard everything within this dark
gray is actually going to be the map
that you create and export to paint on
so everything outside of it can kind of
be just you know you're you are bored in
order to assemble the parts and pieces
but I think of it as creating these
islands of poly faces and kind of
getting them off on their own and then
compiling them into the the kind of
layout that we want them to be in so I'm
gonna stop real fast and create
selections for each of these parts but
really the whole idea is that I'm gonna
get the left side of the ship on its own
the front side on its own the top on its
own and also the right and back lip here
everything else underneath the carriage
I'm going to probably paint with just
one or two shaders so I'm not really
worried about having those laid out in a
way that I could paint they're gonna be
covered by motor parts and all those
things like I mentioned so I'm not too
worried about it all right so I'll leave
you I'll come right back
I mean I'm back in my normal layout
because I just wanted to show you
quickly and that is I have all these
triangles up here which are now created
and if I double click them in the
attribute editor it brings up what I
named them like I want all the front of
the geometry I want the back piece the
top piece and the left and the right
side of the ship if you don't know how
to create these it's really cool you
just select the faces that you want to
have as a selection and you come up
under select here and you say set
selection and then you can name them
whatever you want and then it makes a
tag over here which is a triangle that
allows you to easily access those again
so that's a very very very handy tool
we're going to come back into body paint
and now we're going to start to use
those selection
and we're going to move manipulate them
over here and it's kind of a puzzle
piece in game like I mentioned so we'll
start with the first one which is the
front and we don't like right now what
it's doing you can tell that some of the
faces are selected over on this side and
then also the front is really squashed
and interactively if you're looking at
that you can tell because our squares
aren't looking cool they're they're
stretched as well so again if we're
applying that principle where we want
those to look like squares we're going
to have to modify our UVs on this side
now the cool thing is you can create a
different projection type for anything
that you select so it doesn't all have
to be from that very you know first
projection that you make and in our case
I think it would be really helpful if we
change this camera to a front camera and
we used a projection type called frontal
what that does is it looks at the camera
that you're in the viewport that you're
in and in our case we're in a front
facing camera and it's going to
translate that projection of that object
as literal as it sees it so if you push
frontal you'll see you get exactly what
we want on this viewport in this
viewport and the interactive part our
squares are very proportional which is
great and then it also looks very nice
over here so this is a good good thing
to show you right now if I was to be in
this side of the editor and I wanted to
move these I can't do it it's locked and
that's because we're in this poly
selection mode and like I mentioned
earlier you have to be in one of these
UV poly poly or point mode in order to
manipulate and move anything on this
side so I'm going to change this to poly
ruv Poly's here and then I'm going to
use my move tool which you could either
use the hotkey or you can you know just
push the tool over here and I'm gonna
move them out of the way and right now
you can see it's moving stuff in this
viewport but I'm not really concerned
about it I just sort of want to get them
out of the way if you want and I'm gonna
go back in
perspective you could just sort of
generally try to create them to be about
the same size as everything else I kind
of like more dense squares like this so
I may just keep it its size and just
sort of get it out of the way and then
match all those other pieces to said
this size and then once we need to scale
it down as a whole weekend okay so now
I'm gonna go to the next piece which is
the back and I think this would work
just the same I think it will work
really well to go to a back facing
camera and say frontal and that looks
awesome so we'll use our move tool
change again to the UV poly mode move it
out of the way all right and then I'm
going to select let's say the top go to
a top facing camera and that actually
looks good there's nothing I don't think
we even need to remap it I think the
only thing that we may want to do is
move it out of the way and then go back
into perspective and see if we can get
the squares to be about the same size as
the front and we do that by scaling up
the UVs on this side because you can
tell that the front piece is a lot
larger like if we were putting the top
part where it probably should go which
is right here it should be about the
same width as this front piece and we
know that because if you were to select
a UV over and that whoops let's select a
point for instance like this point here
these two points should be right by each
other or very very close to each other
and right now this is all the way on
this left side and this is all the way
on the right side so this piece this
island should be scaled up to match the
width of this front piece and you'll see
what happens when I do that so I'm going
to select the poly or the UV Poly's
again and I'm gonna use the scale tool
you can scale something proportional or
non-uniform I'm going to choose to do it
uniform because then
nothing will get skewed we know that our
squares are are great looking we don't
want to make those you know rectangles
by scaling this non uniformly so I'm
gonna hit scale and you can scale from
any point if you'd like it looks like
it's scaling from the right but you
could scale from the middle if you
wanted as well or any of those points
maybe it's good to kind of align the
middle one right now since we know these
points are sort of connected and you can
zoom in as much as you want again one
two three and all your other hotkeys
work on this side as well so get those
fairly close you don't have to be like
crazy precise about it
but you can see already that we're
getting closer and those are very very
close to looking like they're aligned so
that's awesome I'm going to use the
scale tool again and I'm gonna try to
scale from this manner mid middle point
sorry can't talk I think that looks
pretty pretty darn good pretty close you
can get very precise and technical about
it but feel like that's gonna get us a
good result and we know we're not too
worried about these seams on some
organic models you would want to you
would really want these to be connected
so then if you were to paint a line and
you were to go over this part of the
object that would you know paint
perfectly and you wouldn't be able to
see you know miss mishaps and gaps and
that sort of thing but again we are
lucky and we don't really care so much
about it looking like that we sort of
liked the abrupt look of the edges okay
so let's get the left and the right
looking the way we want it so here's the
left side and we're gonna move this out
of the way as well up I have to be in
our honor tool that we talked about and
we're going to scale it up to be sort of
closer scaled down it looks fairly good
for now we'll just kind of set that on
this side I
believe it's gonna be on this side in
order to check this and you can use
rotation tools there's also a transform
panel you could say let's go negative 90
wrong way this is a good instead of
using the rotate now I can show you that
you can use these mirroring tools too so
let's mirror it on the x-axis okay and
then I believe I'm going to need to do
it again on the V okay and just to
double-check this is this is always what
I do I'll get it sort of in the area
that it needs to be scale it down a
little looks like it's a little large
and I'll just select a vertices over
here and as long as these are in the
general area like those are definitely
the same it's only selecting one vertex
over here but are you VW's it's
selecting two and that's because those
are technically one and should be like
connected if you were going to make this
a seamless UV unwrap but in our case
like I said we just want to make sure
that they're they're the right ones and
they're aligned you know right by each
other so looks like they are you can
tell all along the seam these ones that
are matching so that's awesome I'm going
to use this selection and I'm going to
move this a little closer
and I think I'm gonna just try to match
the ones that are closest which is this
paint this UV here okay so that's pretty
good
yeah and I mean you can tell it's sort
of starting to slip this way and it's
probably because we'll need to scale it
just a little bit down that looks good
now okay awesome okay I'm gonna come
right back to you guys and I'm gonna do
the other side since you probably
already know how to lay that out and
then I'm gonna show you how to select
all that undercarriage stuff and make it
one point most of these are laid out
fairly well so I went ahead and I did
the right side and I did the back I'm
using the same principles of kind of
what we did for the other sides and I
have now some of the points that I just
want to condense into one and in the
viewport here you can see all the stuff
underneath is stuff that I just really
want to paint with one or two shaders
but I don't necessarily want to put
detailed texture on and so we're gonna
condense those into one point and the
body paint UV editor has this really
cool thing under UV commands if you have
all these points selected and I believe
you have to be again under in order to
do these kind of commands and things you
have to be under this here
oh sorry Paulie I guess poly mode I
guess it doesn't let you have it under
point mode but some of those work great
out and that's because I wasn't under UV
poly mode alright and I'm gonna say
reset UV and it collapses like you
notice and it plopped it down into this
far most left point I wouldn't worry
about the interactive shading right now
and it not being a checkerboard it's
clearly on a white well I mean that
makes sense because it sits on
white part of the checker if you were to
move it you may hit you may hit black
yeah somewhere and that may be a black
part of the texture you have to imagine
that under this dark gray area is a is a
checkerboard texture and that's
essentially kind of what it's doing so
I'm gonna say Reese's reset yeah reset
again and then it's gonna pop to that
far left corner so we know that in
Photoshop or procreate whatever we make
our base layer for the background is
gonna be the color that all this takes
on and that maybe that's just all you
want to do or we're going to show you
how to sort of take not only a painted
texture for the majority of the model
but then we're going to do some what we
called slab texturing where we sort of
add other shaders as well to the model
we'll get to that but yeah so now I
think everything looks pretty great I'm
gonna bring up again our image that we
want to match and this is really all we
have left to do all I want to do is
rotate this so that it's laid out
correctly on this gray square so you can
marquee select if you'd like take the
marquee select make sure again you're on
you've UV Poly's and select this island
of Polly's and then either use you know
these commands appear which I guess
would flip it so we don't want to do any
of that I don't know what some of these
do again I don't need to know all these
things as long as I'm kind of getting
what I need out of it I'm gonna use the
transform tool and do ninety degrees so
counter clockwise ding let's control Z
that wrong way sorry guys 90 degrees
there we are
alright and I'm gonna hit the move tool
I'm gonna move it in the general area
here and then I'm gonna scale down
proportionally to get it as close to the
square as I'd like scale down again
you're trying to basically use the
entire square so that you don't have to
make gigantic texture Maps you want to
consider how close this model is ever
going to be the
camera like if you were zoomed in super
super close you're gonna want your
texture map to be a very high resolution
so that it doesn't look pixelated just
you have to keep keep that in mind and
that's why you scale these you these to
be as large as possible on there there's
also commands to fit it in the canvas
but it may skew and stretch our squares
and so I'm not going to do it that way
I'd like to have you know the most
control over stuff and now that I know
all these squares look great and
everything is pretty much you know
aligned as much as possible these ones
look a little bit off I guess that back
area that looks slightly shifted so I
may fix that but all the rest look
pretty darn good so I'm happy with that
let me move this back one real fast cuz
that that is a little bit off so let's
find the selection for that believe it's
this one and interactively look at it
real quick and see if I move it if I get
anything better let's make sure we're on
this mode and you can see like there we
go oh that's weird because really these
points should be right by each other I
don't know why it's off let me try to
move it I guess a little bit more down
here maybe scalings off yeah it could be
scaling because you can sell at this
point and this point should probably be
by each other let me double check that
by selecting this vertex aha alright
good good example of what not to do or
what kind of mistakes may may happen
that you guys are gonna have to
troubleshoot I accidentally had taken
this Island and flipped it vertically so
it's the wrong way and you can tell that
by this point and this point should be
by each other and they're not so I'm
gonna select those faces again and then
I'm gonna use the command I have to be
under this mode again I'm going to use
the command to flip it vertically and
now you probably don't even see anything
happen over here
it's a symmetrical you know object but
it did look interactively like it
flipped some stuff here so now when I
hit those points see alright select any
of these that should be right by each
other they are by each other and that's
what we want we want to make sure that
that's happening over here all the way
down alright so again gonna select this
and I'm gonna take a look I feel like
now that looks pretty aligned and I'm
cool with that
I think whatever Cobin ends up painting
it's gonna be fairly fairly nice and
accurate so I'm not too concerned about
anything else I think like this is a
great texture map so now is the really
fun part we get to export it and give it
to koban to do the paint so real fast so
I'll run you through that process you
want to come up here to file and you
want to say new texture and I'm gonna
name it sea drone UV paint whatever you
want to name it you have the option of
making this larger if you want
we found that 2k is a fairly good
texture map the bits per channel I like
to have 16 at least and then again any
of these other things you can modify and
change but yeah I like to say 2048 by
2048 now the next thing to do is select
all your oops sorry in this viewport or
over here either way you like to do it
control a so all of your you've either
selected be in the UV mode and then
under paint brush over here it brings up
an attribute panel that allows you to
change the color and the size of a brush
so I want to change the hardness to be a
hundred so it's a very sharp brush and I
think 10 is a good number but maybe
we'll go slightly lower so that the
lines aren't as thick so maybe we'll go
to like 8 okay and I think right now
your color and this is sort of hard to
know but it's just like Photoshop or
illustrator the top swatch is the color
that you're on so we're gonna be
painting
something white in your layers panel
over here you have a background already
you want to create a new layer and let's
go back sorry that we are doing this a
second time but we're gonna go back to
those UV Poly's and we're gonna say
select no layer outline polygons and
it's gonna take whatever color that we
told the paintbrush tool so in our case
it's white and whatever radius that we
wanted the brush and it's gonna outline
these Poly's that we have selected white
and in 8-point all right so we're gonna
say file save texture as we'll save it
as a tiff or PNG whatever you want TIFF
is cool for us I'm gonna say yeah you
can save it wherever you want I'll save
it to the desktop and then now it's the
fun part we'll pass it over to koban to
see what he comes up with all right now
we're gonna paint this bad man with JAMA
so here's the nice map that Kristin laid
out for me and I'm gonna come in here
I'm in Photoshop obviously here I've got
the color palette that Dylan created I
added a couple extra colors kind of you
know based on the way Dylan did it and
we're gonna paint our drone this green
color down here we're gonna sample that
and for some reason today photoshop's
being weird and I'm gonna have to keep
flip-flopping back and forth between
foreground and background color but make
sure the color we selected as your
foreground color and simple dimple we're
gonna create a new layer we're going to
come in and grab our marquee selection
and we're just gonna admit we're gonna
fill the whole space with our base color
so our base color is the lightest of our
three tones that we have so I'm just
gonna go ahead and fill with the
foreground color boom there we go we're
going to name this base color so we know
we've got our main color sitting on that
layer so we're going to create a new
layer we're going to go in and we're
going to do
texture so I'm going to deselect and
let's name this layer texture so Dylan
made these great brushes for me he works
and procreate on his iPad pro and
Photoshop was not being cool about
letting us make brushes that matched
what he had made so he made me these
great stamps where we just took brush
swatches that he had made and turned
them into Photoshop brushes that I just
use as stamps so this is what it looks
like we got a couple different shapes
now for some reason when I created these
brushes they defaulted to this color so
every time we pick a new one we're gonna
have to change back to the appropriate
color right now I am going to just
select where I'm gonna paint and I'm
gonna work on the same layer but I'm
gonna just set up a mask here to
restrict my brush from over flowing over
into the next UV area so I'm gonna grab
the color I need which is going to be
our mid-tone and again remember this
shouldn't happen for you but I have to
switch back to foreground now we are
gonna go and we're gonna grab one of
these great brushes that Dylan made for
us and up here in the brush you can
rotate your brush and so I'm gonna
rotate it a little just to get a little
angle because I want my texture to lay
on you know what it depends on what
you're painting but I try to imagine
like how does the air flow over this
hole and where is it going to take you
know as it flies through a sandstorm is
where is it gonna take a beating where's
the air pushing it against you know the
side of our drone here and that looks
good to me yeah that's looking good okay
so we're gonna deselect and we're gonna
come down here we're gonna do the other
side same idea just try to get in there
tight so that you don't get any bleed
over onto what is the top of the drone
use your little selector guy here okay
we're gonna go back and we're gonna grab
I'm gonna use a different brush just to
show you you know kind of all these
brushes were derived from the same
texture but yeah I have I have this cool
one that'll work really well Dylan made
this crazy shape there it is look at
that it's just a giant triangle and I'm
literally I'm not brushing I'm literally
clicking because all this is is just a
great big stamp Oh
see I got to go get my color
all right here's our brush let's go back
to our okay watch this boom done next
round but I can use the tip of the of
the stamp to do whatever here I'm gonna
pull up this one's my favorite
I called it dil blot because Dylan's
such a dil blot yeah it's just a
different shape so I can kind of achieve
different stuff got to get the right
color every time I pull these up they've
retained that hideous color let's see I
can you know make a stamp here and I can
go up and I can rotate it and I'll get a
different you know the edges are all
different on this stamp so boom just put
in a little more happy little textures
there just get your textures in there
and make it it's your own little world
so next
yeah okay we're gonna do the top here
get out that selection tool go ahead and
try to cut in there nice and tight it's
important to remember whenever you paint
in a UV map the only thing you're going
to see on your model is what is inside
the constraints of your UV map so you
can see on the sides how I've got all
that junk laying over but it doesn't
matter because it's only gonna pick up
what's inside the UVs you can have as
much junk outside and nobody will ever
see it because only what's inside those
polygons is what's going to be projected
onto the model so we got that selected
and we'll grab another brush and do the
dance you gotta go reselect our color
and notice for this texture pass again
I'm working on the same layer you could
create a new layer for every one you
don't have to all this is gonna kind of
meld together in the end anyway so you
might as well just save yourself some
time and just keep working on the same
layer with different selections each
time so here we go
just kind of lay it in there maybe that
air flows just over the front and all
that shrapnel and debris that it flies
through and only hits it in certain
places it doesn't we're not going to
cover the whole thing
you
yeah there we go okay nice and heavy on
the front maybe we need a little bit on
the back just kind of let make that jive
okay we're gonna work on the little just
this is a little rim of the tail end of
the hole obviously we're gonna grab our
selection tool lasso that up and then
you got it go back and get get the brush
boom easy okay
go back I gotta get that front cooking
so grab that lasso tool it's just the
lasso tool there's a polygonal selection
tool I forget what it's called I just
know where it lives there we go so maybe
heavy on the front kind of the top where
it gets smacked with all kinds of junk
as it's flying through space and time I
go that looks good
yeah I think that's gonna play out real
nice
alright now I'm gonna go I need to find
just a simple hard edged brush so I'm
going to open up my brushes over here
cuz I don't have this in my axiom brush
set so I just need a hard round brush
we're gonna do the panel lines next so
grab a brush it's in here somewhere
come on Photoshop here we go
all right we're gonna change that size
let's go six I think six is gonna look
good all right so now we're gonna make a
few more layers make sure we just
deselect everything let me make some new
layers okay we're going to call this one
panel lines
all right we got to go back and now our
third and final color is the darkest of
our three tones and that's going to
create our panel lines make sure that's
in the foreground don't know why
Photoshop is doing this today all right
let's start here in the front we're
gonna come in the diagonal line there
pick that back up and come straight
across cool simple
looks like Dylan drew it
all right working on the side will have
a line that comes up there maybe that
line will wrap across the top but maybe
a little more detail might be nice yeah
okay I'm really just winging this guys I
mean I already painted ten of these so
I'm just kind of winging it I don't know
that this one will ever show up anywhere
in the show but it looks nice one coming
out here kind of wrap to the edge there
back edge boom alright so we need we're
gonna need this on the other side and
we're gonna cheat and we're gonna copy
it
grab that marquee and we're gonna copy
and we're gonna paste that onto a new
layer we have a paste in place and we
rename that layer
pad on line two left side I'm gonna work
I think I'll remember that and what
we're gonna do is we are going to gonna
go to transform and we're gonna flip
vertical yes that's the right one okay
now that's flipped vertically I'm gonna
grab that I'm gonna hold down shift I'm
gonna move straight up hopefully Kristin
got her you Viets right in the right
spot it's fine if she didn't because the
next thing is we're gonna show you how
to go back and just bump these things so
that they all line up perfectly so
that's looking good we need some panel
lines on the top layer panel lines top
opie there we go
so I think maybe I'll start maybe with a
line across the back that is meant to
line up with these diagonals coming off
our side I'll just drop a line in there
this is so easy I'm not even using my my
tablet I'm just Mouse drawing all this
sometimes when I'm feeling real fancy I
like to get my stylus out and that's for
more detailed stuff though okay yep
straight down the back that'll be cool
right in the center there and why don't
we we will try to catch that diagonal
line that comes up on the face the front
face of the drone
we're gonna save and then I'm gonna ship
it off to Kristen or myself we haven't
decided that yet all right so now we are
gonna put we're gonna wrap that texture
that we just painted back onto our model
at first we have to replace the
checkerboard that Kristen used as her
guide we're gonna replace that with the
Photoshop file the tip that we just
painted that doesn't look so good
so we gotta fix that Kristen yeah how we
gonna fix that yeah so when you put the
texture on the model it ends up coming
up in at a very low resolution you're
probably seeing it a lot lower than we
painted so under the editor in your
material editor here you have a texture
texture preview size and if you change
this to 24 by 2048 by 2048 which we
painted it should look a lot sharper in
the viewport than it does that's good
yep so we can see already that our panel
lines aren't lining up perfect so it's
easy to fix and all we have to do is
bounce back and forth between photoshop
in here and we're gonna go into
Photoshop and we can nudge them around
now you can see that the front panel is
not lining up just right same with the
side yeah just the two sides I think
everything else looks great though don't
you : let's see the front and those were
never really meant to line up there no
no no no but the top front we could kick
that over a little okay so we
essentially we have to go back to
photoshop and we're gonna I think what
we need to do let's start with the left
side I think we just need to tap that
back so we're literally just gonna you
know pull up the move tool in Photoshop
and we're just gonna use our arrow keys
to nudge that backwards which is towards
the back of our ship so we go back to
cinema' and we saved that real quick and
we're just gonna update that file so if
you
click the cheater and just say reload
image it should reload that and if you
notice we kept the the map turned on so
you got make sure you turn that yep
there we go
whatever layers you have showing in
Photoshop will show up on your model so
you have to make sure if you got
something I don't want to show like
those white lines you got to turn the
layer off you happy with that or do you
think we need to nudge it back a little
I think it yeah maybe one or two not
just forward now right may have went one
too many I'm gonna try one first again
yeah it's good okay so then we'll just
do the same thing on the front looks
like it needs to go to the right a
little mm-hmm I would say two nudges yep
so find the layer that song oops
front that's good so remember it guys
when you're in Photoshop and you're
nudging these layers around it's for
that to reload and cinema you've got to
save your Photoshop file so it updates
to cinema it really is just a game of
nudging them saving going back and forth
to see how your textures laying out on
your model here we go yeah it's pretty
close it'll do for now yeah it's a
little weird corner but I feel like that
it's not gonna read ass you're way up
close on it absolutely we're not worried
you can always go back and fiddle and
perfect to your heart's content but
that's the basic gist of it you just
have to bounce back and forth between
you know whatever you're painting in and
cinema and just push things around until
they've line up the way you want them to
okay so now we've wrapped our painted
texture on the on the hole and now we're
gonna do what we call Kristen and I
coined slap texturing we're literally
gonna take material and just slap it on
set selections we've made this is just a
way to finish off the bottom the parts
that we didn't paint we want them to be
like the darker color you see that kind
of looks funky so there's a set
selection we're gonna grab this material
and we're literally gonna pull it and
just slap it on to the object okay and
so a lot of this gets covered up with
engine parts and storage boxes and just
the junk that hangs off the bottom of
the ship but it's nice to have that
darker color in there it kind of creates
a shadow in there you see a little bit
of it through certain things but then
this we have a second selection
which is just this kind of rim and we're
gonna use our medium tone remember we
have three green tones and we literally
just slap it on there and that's done
and we brought this color palette in
from kind of a palette of colors that we
developed for both the drones and the
city right so it's easy from file to
file when we've created all these to
just apply you know the same sort of set
of colors yeah
it's bedtime this is a neat thing that
Kristen taught me and I the the reason
those you see those cubes floating in
there they're just holding the textures
we can copy and paste them from file to
file and they'll automatically bring in
all the textures down in our texture our
materials window so that's just kind of
a cheat we do which is nice and it's
easy you can do it you just apply the
material to the cubes and then leave
them floating there and you can copy and
paste them in and out of files and
they'll bring the colors with them
alright so then the last thing I think
we have to do then
Cobin is just texture those windows
right or the little boy oh yeah right
sorry we have one more set selection so
we're gonna use some of these great
colors like we used yep give it back
this is the second the medium color for
those let's try it and then I believe
the back was the darker unless I got
those flopped
that appear to be right yeah yes yeah I
think that was right and then we put the
lights in there so yeah I think that
we've got it guys and just to show you
sort of let me unsolo this and show you
the rest of the ship or the drone
basically everything that we learned in
this tutorial we applied to all these
other parts right yeah yeah all of every
piece of the ship was unwrapped and
textured in the same method that we just
showed you guys doing the whole so you
know when you break this ship down to
each of its parts it gets pretty crazy
but it's a very streamlined and quick
process to get some color on the thing
that's it awesome okay guys so that's
basically how we did it and hopefully we
showed you something cool maybe
something you didn't already know
hopefully there's some techniques in
there you can use on a project that
you're working on so yeah we are
Edison creative and the cartoon is
called the axiom Chronicles hopefully
this nice little tutorial we've created
will make it to the internet before our
Kickstarter campaign ends where we are
hoping to crowdfund
the completion of episode one of the
axiom chronicles so you can find us on
YouTube hopefully we'll still be on
Kickstarter and all the other social
media places and goodies that the kids
like to hang out at these days you can
find them all here at the bottom we'd
also like to really thank each a for
letting us crew up with him and do one
of these we both agree that his
tutorials have been very valuable for us
I think I've learned everything I know
about cinema from Kristin and EJ before
I even ever actually met him so thanks
man and thanks for having us and
hopefully some people can get some good
stuff out of what we're doing
take care