Maintenance Platform Texture Update

Finally had a chance to texture this asset in Substance Painter. Great texture program, so much control over your textures.

Quick Update

Waiting on AE render to finish, I though I would post up the UVs to the maintenance platform that I created. UVs were fairly straight forward and easy. I actually enjoy creating UVs for models. Didn't get a chance to texture yesterday, probably finish that up tonight.

Maintenance Platform BG Prop

A new maintenance platform I made today in Lightwave. It took about an hour to finish modeling. I'll start texturing this later on today. I'll use Substance Painter to finish the texturing. I have found it to be extremely efficient to paint quality textures for rendering. UVs were created in Lightwave. I may switch to 3D coat to create quick UVs if the Lightwave ones don't hold up well to texel density. A quick F9 out of Lightwave before I start the texturing.

Sci Fi Prop Image

New image posted in the Images Section. Sci-Fi prop created in Houdini and textured in Substance Painter. Check it out here http://gdbello.blogspot.com/p/images.html

Houdini Hair and Fur Development WIP

Working on my Hair and Fur Houdini tool knowledge this week. A lot of great features that give a great amount of control. I have used other grooming tools for other 3D packages too. I still use those tools. Since we have been using Houdini as our main package, I want to try and keep everything in one main software.

Model comes from Aaron Guiterrez, one of our character artists at work.

***I learned a lot about Hair from abvfx here https://vimeo.com/88711732  Please check out his video about Hair and Fur in Houdini.

Houdini allows a great amount of control through painting maps. You can paint paint Density, Frizz, Frizz Frequency, Frizz Roughness, Clumping, Thickness, and Base Color. This is really helpful when you want to control the amount of hair in certain areas.

Density values are controlled through black to white scale or 0 to 1. Houdini defaults with 2,1,1. I change it 1,1,1.

Houdini Default values

Changed Value

Even the default value for Attribute Create furdensity is set to 1. Changing the value to 0 will allow you to paint the area you want to affect versus painting and taking it away.

Here is what it looks like with my initial furdensity painted for the beard. Using a separate node for the Beard, Hair and Sideburns gives me individual control over how much Frizz. Clumping, Density and Thickness is applied to each part.

In Order: Thickness Map, Density Map, Frizz Map, Clump Map, Frizz Frequency, Frizz Roughness

The eyebrows are part of the beard Node at the moment. This will change later as I want better control for the eyebrows apart from the beard.

Painting the density for the eyebrows. There are a lot of options for painting the density of the eyebrows. You can adjust the opacity of your map, which makes it very nice to adjust the density.

 

My initial layout of the beard, eyebrows, and hair. 

This hair is more uniform and looks like it has been brushed a lot. It also looks like the hair is very thick and coarse. I eventually went back into the hair and adjusted the thickness attribute, fuzziness profile, and fuzziness profile. I also wanted to give  him some dirty dusty hair. I was able to achieve this through the color on the hair material. Adjusting the root to tip blend will adjust the two colors.

Here is what my final hair looks like. 

Still a lot to learn using Houdini 15.5 Hair and Grooming tools. I like using the tools. A lot of control with the air so far. I want to try Braids or rough course hair next.

Canister Texture

I was able to finally texture the Canister prop. Houdini to Substance Painter 2 is a good workflow. I was able to create UDIMs in Houdini and then have Substance Painter 2 recognize the different UDIMs. SP2 doesn't recognize the different groups from Houdini. The tiles came in as the UV space numbers.

The TextureSet List has them listed as the following UV Space.

I realized later that I did not maximize the workflow effectively. Need to go in and fix that. Make sure no UVs are crossing the borders. If they cross the borders Substance Painter 2 will give an error and will not load the model correctly.

Here is the final image with the textures added within Mantra.

Wall Panel Change to UVs

Made some changes to the wall panel UVs and geometry as well. I created a digital asset that allows me to change the pipe along the bottom. I also made it for the vents on the bottom to change to ground lights as well. Still up in the air on what to texture this in. I am going to use either 3D Coat, Substance Painter or MARI. I like the idea of the new Substance Painter 2.0 having UDIM support. This will really help in my workflow, especially since I am use to breaking UVs up for MARI.

UVs were setup fairly easy using Houdini UV tools.

Tiled floor in 3D Coat

I haven't created tiled textures in 3D Coat in a while. I came across this 'Intro to 3D Coat' tutorial from David Lesperance on Gumroad. https://gumroad.com/metalman123456123 He has a lot of great tutorials for sale on Gumroad. Check them out if you can.

I was going through his tutorial and learned some more stuff about 3D Coat. No matter how long you use a program, learning someone else's workflow is beneficial as an artist. Here is the 3D Coat tile before export. There is some repeating I don't like and will probably get back in there and fix that. There was a bug in 3D Coat when importing the bricks for the multi textured tile.

The bricks were sculpted in the Voxel room and the Exported to the Meshes Panel. They were then imported during the 3 x 3 textured tile process.



I converted the height map into a normal using Quixel Suite and then brought it into Houdini to render. I applied a UV Project node to a grid and then a material node right after the UV Project node.

Here it is in Houdini with a Normal and Displacement applied to a grid. No Color texture yet. That will come soon.

Canister textured

Canister was textured in 3D Coat. A background prop that will have no interaction with any of the characters. Modeling and UVs were completed in Houdini. Here is the challenge with Houdini and 3D Coat. 3D Coat does not recognize the material assignments being exported from Houdini all the time. In the end, to make it easier I have to export each object separately.

Using Substance Painter, I can make a material  ID in Houdini and use it as a mask in Substance Painter. This seems to be an easier workflow when texturing a mass amount of objects. I will try to texture this object using Substance Painter. Here is a quick render using Mantra with 3D Coat.

Clouds in Houdini

Taking a break from my modeling in Houdini and getting back to my Houdini roots. I decided to give Cloud making a try in Houdini 15. Here is my first cloud. Making clouds seem to be a great challenge. Since any shape can be turned into a cloud, animating that cloud would be the better challenge.

Wall Panel UVs Houdini

Created the UVs for the modular Wall Panel. Still have one more design for this wall panel. The UVs were made in Houdini and took about 30-45 minutes to complete. Really easy to use tools in Houdini. The character and floor panels are used for reference.

 Select the geometry primitives and then create a group. Select the edges of where you want the UV Seams and then create a group.

I have a custom shelf that I use for most of my Poly Modeling. Instead of typing out the node, I just select the shelf button. It was quicker and easier to model objects this way.

This is what the UV Flatten looks like after the groups have been added. I had to create an additional group with some edges that I missed when creating the initial Edge Group.

I also use a UV Layout node to correct the proportions in the UVs. This will also add edge padding to the UVs based on a determined distance set in Padding. 

Be careful when selecting 'Correct Island Area Proportions'! This may cause your UVs to lose the necessary Texel Density needed for texturing.

 

For any reason you need to save the UV Image out of Houdini to bring into Photoshop. Right Mouse Button (RMB) on any of the UV nodes and select Save - Texture UV to Image.  

Then set the File path and UV size that you want to export. Reminder Houdini has limitations set for Indie and Apprentice.

I hope this helps. More to follow soon!

Module Wall Panel

Started work on a new hard surface model in Houdini. A modular wall panel that will have two other variations. This is the first variation of the wall panel. There will be two more to follow. The figure and floor panels are used for reference. A inner and outer corner piece is also on the modeling to do list. This first piece still needs some work as it is incomplete.

The wall will be similar to the floor piece. It will be a practical design and not full of too many pieces that do not belong. I have never been a fan of just adding various shapes to fill a hallway, ceiling, or floor, etc. I understand that the Death Star was basically one giant Greeble. That was the Death Star, a giant space station.

Design is important when it applies to environment creation!

 

Floor Panel Texture

I was finally able to texture some items. I finished the floor panel texture. Rendered with outdoor lighting even though I painted this based on an indoor HDR Image. I painted the textures in 3D Coat, which has great texturing tools. A lot of control similar to Substance Painter. I changed the UVs in Houdini since there were bad UV seams.

In Houdini I will be adding Decals to break up the texture with footprints, wear and tear, and wheel marks.

Lunchtime Session Modeling

Sadly no video for this modeling session. In the future I will record all of my lunchtime modeling sessions. This was a generic sci fi floor panel. Here is my issue with floor panels and sci-fi concepts. A lot of the panels look great and amazing. The concept artists come up with fantastic designs. My biggest issue is that they do not look usable. To many grooves in the floor! You would either trip while walking or something with small wheels would get stuck.

Here is my simple design that is going to be textured using substance painter. I still have to texture some other objects before this one. Traditional modeling was used in the creation of this floor panel. Modeling and UVs have been created using only Houdini 15.5. Some great tools. Total time for creating this floor panel was about 1 hour.



 

Missile Model made in Houdini

Missile Model created in Houdini 15. This is an older picture that I was able to recover. The UVs were created in Houdini as well. The model was textured in Substance Painter using stencils from https://gumroad.com/plyczkowski. The fins and front post have been rigged in Houdini for animation.

Lunchtime Modeling Session in Houdini

Recorded one of my lunchtime modeling sessions when I created a prop in Houdini. Using traditional modeling techniques and created the UVs using Houdini 15.5's tools.

Houdini Hard Surface Modeling

Created some sort of sci-fi cargo container prop tonight using Houdini 15.5. 

I was working on developing my modeling skills in Houdini using the new modeling tools. While I like using procedural modeling, I like to use some traditional modeling techniques as well. It seems that Houdini is getting better and better modeling tools with each release. The UV tools have come along way too.

I created this model and the UVs inside of Houdini in a little less than an hour. The next step is to texture this in Substance Painter and give a go at using  https://gumroad.com/plyczkowski new Sticker Stamper Tool for Substance Painter.