Tutorial: Texturing Weapons in Minutes using Substance Video Lecture | How to make Video Games: Game Editor Tutorial - Game Development

other than modeling texturing is
probably the most time-consuming task a
game artist has to wrestle through
fortunately a logarithmic has opened up
their texturing pipeline tool called
substance to anyone that has joined this
challenge now in this video our good
friend Wes will explain how to use it
and how to quickly get more texturing
productivity out of your day than you
ever expected in this video I will show
you how to utilize the one-click gun
substance to text your weapon assets the
substance consists of a single graph and
allows you to apply up to four materials
to your weapons the materials are
applied based on a four color SVG mask
the process consists of applying
material IDs to a mesh in your 3d
program using substance designers
built-in baking tools to create maps
that modulate the effects and then
finally creating your custom materials
and simply plugging them into the graph
let's start by taking a quick tour of
the graph on this far left side is where
we're going to be able to create our
custom materials so you can see that
this is material for here's material
three material 2 and material 1 those
materials then get plugged into this
middle section here the graph which then
modulates the effects allows us to add
different things like weathering and an
edge wear and dirt at the bottom section
here is where we can actually add in our
own masks that can help further mask
this effect and then finally here at the
far right is where we're going to output
our map so for instance here you can see
that we have a diffuse texture we have a
specular map and then finally we have a
normal map that you can use with your
assets so if we go back to the beginning
here and we take a look at these
materials the graph has a lot of
comments in it so the first material
here it says that material 1 will be
applied to the the SVG black area
material 2 will be applied to the SVG
red area the material 3 will be to the
green area and then material 4 will be
to the blue area so we have four colors
that each one of these materials are
going to be masked by now the SVG node
is here at the bottom so it's going to
be our first mask node and if we take a
look at this you can see that we
basically have the UVs for this weapon
and each of the UVs shells have been
color coded with one of those four
our material colors and this map is
going to dictate where the materials are
actually placed on the geometry itself
creating this SVG map here in substance
designer is an automated process so for
example let's jump over here to Mayan
this is just a 3d app that I'm going to
use for demonstration purposes and here
we have the scar weapon and you can
notice that I have those four colors so
we have the red black green and blue and
what you're going to want to do in your
3d program is you're going to want to
create these four materials and then
right before you export an FBX file for
texturing inside a substance designer
what you're going to want to do is take
one of these for materials and assign
those to the sections of your weapon
where you want to assign specific
materials so for instance let's take a
look at this red if I select this red
material and I'm going to actually
select the polygons associated with that
so if we take a look at this we've got
these polygons associated let's go over
and take a quick look at the UV texture
editor and here you can see in the UV
texture editor the UVs that are
highlighted with that polygon selection
now we go back over to substance
designer we can see that here in that
SVG map the red area which is
correlating to those UV shells this is
red and this is where our camouflage
material is being applied if we zoom in
onto this area you can see that these
nodes right here are making up our
camouflage texture and then there's a
note here that says this is material 2
and that it will be applied to the SVG
red area now once you've exported your
FBX file from your 3d application and
you're going to use that here in
substance designer you can go ahead and
load this this into the viewport so here
we'll come up to geometry and I'm just
going to do a reload of the mesh so you
can see this from scratch so now here we
have the weapon it doesn't have any
materials applied to it yet I'm going to
click this scene Explorer button here
and you can see that this FBX it reads
in the material ID so again we have 4
material IDs associated with this so now
when I want to actually go to texture
the graph all I've got to do is take
this simple graph or this one single
graph and just drag and drop it in a
science to each one of these materials
so we'll do the 186 material will do the
187 as you can see as I start to drag
and drop that graph onto the material
the the the materials or excuse me the
text are being updated on the weapon
itself so here we go we'll put it on our
final material and now our weapon is
fully textured
creating your own SVG note here in
substance designer for your custom
texturing is a very simple process so
what we're going to do is we're going to
come over to our substance package and
we're going to link in a 3d mesh now in
this case I'm going to use this scar
underscore demo dot FBX I'm going to
open this file and now a resources
folder has been added to my package
since here you can see that we have the
model so now I'm just going to right
click and I'm going to go to the bake
model information and that's going to
break open up my scene information
baking window and now you can see that
the FBX has been read in and you can see
that substance designer sees that there
are four material IDs associated with
that and with that the material color
has come across so now you can see that
by setting up those materials inside of
our 3d application it makes it extremely
easy to extract that text that excuse me
that material color information and use
that for our SVG node so what we're
going to do is we're come over to this
information to bake and we have several
maps we can bake but in this case we
want to bake a we want to do a convert
UV to SVG and we'll leave our output
size at 1k and then we want to make sure
that our color mode is set to material
ie color so there's different options we
can have but the material ID color is
going to colorize these UV shells with
the SVG graphic and it's going to be
based on the colors that we have set
here in this color section and so now
that we have that in place we're going
to leave we can set the resource name we
have the file format and then we can
choose to link or embed this into our
substance package and then finally we
can select a folder to place this into
so now what I'm gonna do is go ahead and
just click the ok button and now that
map's been baked and we have a new
resources folder here now just going to
drop this down and now if I just double
click this map you can see that here is
that SVG map is already for us to use in
our project and it was very simple in an
automated process now to set up this new
masking all I have to do is drag and
drop this file right here into my graph
and we'll zoom in on the graph and I'll
show you where this is connected so we
have a note here that says that you need
to replace your with your own SVG node
and so we do have one here and what
we'll do is we'll just follow this
connection now this is going to be a
node here that we're going to be
connecting all of our materials into and
at this very bottom switch you can see
our excuse me this input node you can
see that this is where it's calling for
the SVG mask so once we have that node
in place all we have to do is just
left-click drag and drop and make a
connection now that we've discussed how
the materials are assigned let's take
look at this note here this is going to
be our main junction node and so we have
some comment to this and it says here
that this is going to be the node where
we input the four materials that we want
to apply onto our mesh and we've also
discussed how that last input is going
to be the SVG node and again it talks
about how the colors apply to this mask
will set where the material will be and
so what I want to point out is at this
node you can see that there's three map
types that for each material that's
coming in so you can see that we've got
material one is diffuse black material
one specular material one normal and
notice it also has the color by it so
this indication here tells you that it's
material one that we're talking about it
talks about the map type that it needs
so diffuse and then finally what color
that it's going to relate to here in the
SVG node so for each one of these nodes
or each one of your materials you're
going to break that material into a
diffuse texture a specular texture and a
normal and so all you have to do is once
you have that material set you just plug
it right into this junction node so we
have diffuse specular normal and then
we'll come down and look at the next set
here we have this is talking about
material two this is diffuse red
material two specular red and material
two normal red so let's go ahead and
zoom out here and so here's our material
two and we know that this is our
camouflage material and so you can see
that what this junction here of nodes
does is it sets up a material for our
camouflage it creates a normal map and
it creates a specular map and so each
one of those outputs are then piped
straight into its corresponding material
to input on site inside of this main
Junction node here so again we've got
material to read excuse-me material to
diffuse material to specular and
material to normal and once you have all
of those connections set up and you have
your SVG node in place your materials
will be applied correctly once you add
the graph to the model now that we have
our materials piped into the main
junction node and we've created our SVG
node there's a couple other nodes that
we're going to have to create as well so
if we kind of zoom in here we're going
to need to create ourselves a curvature
map an ambient occlusion map and a world
space normal and these maps are used to
modulate the texture effect nodes now
creating these nodes again is just like
the SVG is a very simple and automated
process by just using a model baked
information so if we take a look here
we've got this is what our curvature map
looks like
then finally here we have our ambient
occlusion and here's our world space
normal so to create these mats we're
going to come over here to our resources
we have our model already imported so
let's just right click let's go to our
bake model information and then just as
before you can see that our information
to bake here's where we can bake an
ambient occlusion map we can also bake
our curvature map at this point and for
instance our curvature map it's going to
ask us for a world space excuse me a
normal map and so what we're going to do
with this is you can actually bake a
normal map right here inside of
substance designer so our normal map for
mesh so if we come into our NOLA map
from mesh option what we can do is we
can load in our high definition mesh and
we can actually bake ourselves a normal
map that's going to be utilized by these
other maps so for instance our curvature
map we've been then feed in that normal
map that we just baked and then finally
our world space normals will also feed
in that same normal map once we have all
these Maps baked we can then just drag
and drop those here and then just hook
them straight up into the nodes that are
that are being modulated by these maps
now that we have all of our maps hooked
up we can actually get to the fun
process of going through and actually
tweaking these textures and so these
middle section nodes that you see right
here these are going to be the ones that
are going to allow us to actually
modulate the texture so we there's some
notes by each one of them so this first
one here works with damage paint we also
have some here that works with damage
metal we've got some dirt we also have
the ability to add dust and sand and
then finally we have the ability to add
some details on the diffuse and the
specular map so all you have to do is
just select one of these nodes and if
you come over to the parameters the
instance parameters you'll have just
sliders that you can just drag and to
make these changes it's very simple and
it's also very visual so we'll also come
over to and we'll take a look at the
dirt we can actually add some smoothness
we can change how the diffuse opacity
works for that dirt if we come over here
we can see that we can actually change
the the dirt color here we can change
how much the opacity is affecting the
diffuse and specular channels also again
just going through and looking through
our instance parameters we can work with
the diffuse pre lighting we can use a AO
intensity upon that diffuse and things
like that so we can actually utilize
these notes across the bottom across
this middle section here to add wear and
tear to the edges and things like that
to the maps and again like I said you
just select the node and come over to
the incident
instance parameters and just tweak the
settings until you find a desired result
one final thing I'd like to cover are
these masking nodes so let's just kind
of zoom into this area here and you can
see that we have a mass node so I'll
just double click here to load this into
the 2d view and you can see that we've
got a very simple black and white mask
and what this mask does is that it's a
mask to apply weathering to this area
that's inside of the white and so in our
case this is going to be our camouflage
texture so we're going to take a look at
how that mask is actually affecting this
node here so if we select this node I'm
just going to double click to load this
into the 2d view and we'll kind of zoom
in on this area here of the camouflage
and we'll do the same thing in our 3d
viewport and so with this node selected
we can see that the final input here and
if we zoom in close you can see it's a
grayscale input and then it's asking for
a paint mask so that's the input that
it's asking for and that's what we're
feeding it and so if we come in and take
a look at maybe adjusting the edge width
so as I start to you know pull this
forward you can see that we were eroding
the edge and and we're really affecting
the way the camouflage text or the
camouflage material is being applied
onto this onto our object and again this
is masking the instead of that wedge
excuse me that edge where happening on
the entire on the entire texture it's
only taking place here in this mask
where there is white we have a similar
mask here for this node so if we kind of
zoom in on this guy so this moat this
node is actually adding sharp edges and
excuse me damage on the edges around the
metal so if we come down here we can see
that we have another mask that you can
create and then just pipe that into this
node here at the bottom and the same
thing the final note here is you can see
that it's looking for an input of a
metal mask it's a grayscale so it just
needs a black and white or a grayscale
value mask now both of these masks are
SVG and you can easily create that here
in substance designer so what you can do
is just come over here to your package
we'll do a right-click and we'll say a
new we'll say a new vector graphic and
then we'll leave this here at the 1024
for this we'll just call this demo SVG
and then click OK and that's going to be
placed here in our resource
folder so if we look over here in our 2d
view and I'll go ahead and just frame
this up you can see that we have this 1k
texture and now we can actually start to
work with this work with our vector
tools now something else that you can do
that's very helpful is you can import in
the a UV snapshot so if your 3d program
you can export the UVs out so you can
actually paint over them if you would
like you could go over here to the
geometry tab and you could display the
UVs from the geometry in the 2d view
however I like to add just my own UV
background because you can actually
adjust the opacity so what we'll do is
we'll click this button here and you can
see that we now have the ability to
actually adjust the opacity of this now
I had actually already brought in this
UV set so once we have this in place if
you do not have one if you do not have
an image placed in this background it
will ask you to navigate you know the
directory and you'll find the image but
you can also replace that here you can
click this folder button here and you
can load in the new background but what
you have which is nice about loading in
a custom background you have this nice
little slider here so what you could do
is just pull your u-visa
so you can kind of see what you're
actually gonna be drawing over and then
what you can do is you can come in and
start to grab hold of a pen tool here
and let's just kind of maximize this
viewport here something to see this a
little bit better and then it's just
like your typical drawing application
let's see you've got a pen tool active
then we can come in and we can start to
draw in shape so what we want to do is
change this from freehand to path so we
can work with the path feature and so
then I'll just kind of click and just
start to draw in some vector shapes just
like you would in any kind of drawing
program so now we fill this in with
white we can also start to mask out a
whole nother area here say at the top
and then again we're using our UV as a
template to kind of draw over in the
background what we can also do is here
you can see that we have transparency
enabled so let's just go ahead and turn
this off so now we see that you know
it's just black in the background and we
can see much more clearly the shape that
we're trying to generate here and then
again we can adjust our opacity here of
our UVs or bring those up so we can
really see what we're working with and
then once you have that set you can then
use that SVG node so here we'll go ahead
and just kind of pull this forward here
and then we have this new SVG know we
can just drag and drop this guy
here into our graph and now we have
ourselves a custom note that we can use
as a mask so you also don't want to
forget your normal Maps so here we have
the normal map and we also have a
setting here let's go ahead and just
turn off that background and so here we
have one more note here in our graph
that says replaced with your normal map
so we had talked earlier in the video
about being able to bake the model
information that we could actually bake
normal Maps from a high res mesh to a
low res mesh right here in substance
designer so once you have that normal
map created or even if you created your
no map in another application you can
import in that file or link that into
your substance package and then again
you're just going to drag and drop that
here into your graph and then you're
going to make that connection here so it
says this note adds details on the mesh
normal so you're just going to go ahead
and put this into the second input where
it says normal so that covers this
walkthrough on using the one-click gun
substance as you can see substance
designer is a powerful texturing tool
set with the ability to create reusable
graphs and filters that can quickly and
easily be applied to various assets
you