Here's a look at a Substance Painter stylized edge highlight generator I developed for my work at Lightforge Games 🔅

The filter is based on the baked curvature & opacity map of the mesh. This has been a huge timesaver when texturing props & characters and helped us to keep the look consistent across assets.

Might do a full breakdown of this later if people are interested :)

I thought I'd share some tips I learned making foliage with Blender! I use Blender for both highpoly + lowpoly creation - texturing is done with Substance Designer :)

First off, curve modifiers are suuuper useful to get organic curves and add more depth to highpoly or lowpoly.

On that note: as a general tip you want to make sure to never have leaves disappear completely if viewed from a certain angle. You can for example use the Simple Deform modifier or a Displacement modifier to give them some bends (+ also by rotating them).

It's explained in detail in this video: Modular Plants

Hope this was useful! :)

Sooo - all the assets in my project are done!! The last thing was to make those little tadpole friends.

For the stylization I was inspired by work by Lianne Pflug & EllievsBear.

Early on in the project I decided to have the tadpoles to be the greatest point of (value) contrast in the scene. Having those white eyes contrasted with the black body creates a really strong focal point + gives them a sense of mystery (while still being cute).

Another thing that was important to me was to simplify the shapes, have a limited color palette and give them a round/friendly look.

I first used Blender's Metaballs to block in the basic shape (which gives it that soft, organic look).

After that I tweaked the shape with the Grab brush.

I have two versions of the tadpole to reflect the topic of transformation in my scene :)

Lastly I retopo-ed the tadpoles with RetopoFlow (Blender Addon) to be able to deform the tail later + added a brush pattern + edge highlight as with the other assets. First time using RetopoFlow & I love-hate it. Quick & intuitive buuut, the knife tool and other stuff is very crash-y (at least in the Github version).

Since the last blogpost I blocked out my scene + started working on the first 2 plant assets :)

I picked European frogbit + duckweed because they are both native and very cute.

A basic breakdown of my workflow can be found here. Basically I use Blender for Highpoly + Lowpoly and then bake and do the texture with Substance Designer :)

When you don't want to draw.jpg

Here is my first final asset, the duckweed - I arranged it for testing quickly! :)

Also here is the blockout for the scene!

Think I actually should get back to it and go a bit more into detail!

• abundant mini world
• transformation/ growing (still debating if I should add frog eggs)

Next Steps

• decide if I really want to use Unity
  • initial decision for it, cause companies I want to work for use it
  • but slow workflow, does not look as nice as UE or Marmoset potentially
  • UE/ Marmoset - faster, better result - but Unity nice technical skill to have
• frogbit lowpoly
• further detail blockout
   
  
  
  
  
  

Hi all! Here is a useful look into the process for my thesis.

Concepting a Portfolio Piece

First off, in case you don't know it yet, Miro is great for creating moodboards!

Besides collecting reference, you can also make mindmaps + Kanban boards, etc. with it. Plus you can collab real-time with others similar like Google Docs.

• Key References
• Style
• Lighting
• Benchmark (in my case from companies I wanna work for)
• Composition (not pictured in screenshot)

Style can be left out for some projects I'd say! But for this I'm also developing the art style, so it was important to include.

I included a key image and preliminary color palette in most of the boards (got this trick from Polygon Academy).

Benchmark is both useful to see if my work meets the quality of people working in the industry + to see if my work fits in stylistically w/ the companies I want to work for.

Playing with Unity HDRP

One thing I learned from collecting reference from companies I'd like to work for, is that almost all of them use Unity!

So I decided to go with Unity for this project, altho I'm really tempted to switch now that UE 5 is available.

HDRP has this really cool Iriscadence option by default (as seen in the video).

I decided to go with a "traditional" fish bowl instead of a cylindrical vase because:

• it's familiar
• it has round & organic shapes (and I want things to feel very natural)

Composition & Foliage!

This fish bowl will be filled with underwater plants + tadpoles. A cool thing I learned is how foliage can support the narrative you tell!  There is this really interesting article by Jeremy Huxley who did foliage for Uncharted 4 among other things.

Here is the narrative/ themes I want my scene to communicate:

And here is how that narrative (of transformation/ change) is supported by the foliage:Also I was so happy to find that image on the right! It was so hard to find any aquariums with a composition that reads well as a 2D image.

I picked this one cause it has a nice combination of leading lines, framing and clear focal points.

So with those questions cleared I picked some plants that support the narrative I want to tell!

They are all native plants where I live, which was sth. that is important to me :)

Hope this was useful, feel free to let me know your thoughts.

Next up

• create blockout
• practice stylized sculpting
• sculpt central branch
    

Here's the current workflow I use for the foliage (Blender +  Substance Designer):

I wanted something that looks simple & cute!

And here's a look at the Substance Designer Graph:

The brush pattern is based on Vincent Dérozier's work, see this post for a how-to. For the color I use LT Color Dynamic to simplify the process & make it more predictable. And I also use EZSplatter to distribute the yellow-ish spots. The edge highlight is done via Curve Smooth and Curve Sobel :)

My first try this week looked like this:

I found it was a bit too undefined & looked more disgusting than cute. I solved this by scraping the edges of the highpoly & generally pushing the shapes a bit. Also I edited the roughness (a lot of "disgust" I think came from that) + added edge highlights to further highlight the shapes & create a clearer look.

The colors have stayed the same.

Next Steps

• complete atlas & build duckweed lowpoly assets (they will be seen up close, as the game world is a glass jar)
• continue learning Unity shader graph (so I can later make underwater shaders for the the project etc.)

Here's how the atlas currently looks (still need to add the roots + the leaf underside):

Thanks for looking! I have an Instagram now if you'd like to see WIP art and breakdowns: @tinymoss.

Work Schedule Experiments

Last week I wrote I want to experiment with a new schedule to have more energy/ focus. I honestly didn't work enough this week (like 2-4 hours productive work/ day). Wanna get it up to 4-5 hours consistently.

That said I reached my goals + the lunch workout experiment was successful.

• had no or little post lunch slump on days I worked out on
• BUT: can be a big time-sink depending on the workout (e.g. cycling just takes way too long vs. strength training)
• also gotta watch out for overtraining

Also Tuesday's lunch bike trip lead me to a ruin surrounded by forest which was cool!

Finding an Art Style

For the artstyle I have two competing interests!

1) I want to have sth. that fits the style of the companies I would like to work for.

BUT

2) I want to practice my sculpting skills

So I'm thinking of taking the vibe/ colors/ level of detail from the companies I'd like to work for, but also include sculpting in the workflow.

Here's a very first test with a duckweed plant.

Composition & Tadpole Pics!

A problem with having a terrarium diorama that can be viewed from all sides is the composition.

I looked at some nature aquarium composition tips. But they focus on the view from one side.

I think having a "main view" is definitively the way to go still.

Also the photos of the tadpoles are by Eiko Jones, super inspiring!

Next Steps / Questions

 Do you come up with your own artstyle for pieces? If yes, how do you approach it?

Next steps:

• finish first style test
• glass container research & modeling
• first blockout

Oh also I made a gas planet generator for #Mayterials!

I will be documenting my process for my MA thesis over the next months - making a cute terrarium diorama with tadpoles! c:

Here's a crappy 1st concept!

Art Research

One of my goals with this thesis is to increase my hireability.

I looked at what styles & skills the companies need I want to work for.

• Unity
• sculpting, modeling, texturing
• VFX as bonus skill

Also I wanted to choose a topic I'm personally interested in. Tadpoles + terrariums are both something I have personal experiences with (macro photography, making terrariums). And I made art pieces on terrariums before, which I can use for inspiration.

And I'm inspired by 2D art as well!

Ideal Work Schedule

I will work only on my MA thesis for the next 4 months + personal projects. So all stuff with no external deadlines.

(with the grant I have I'm not allowed to take on any more freelance work)

So I think this is a great opportunity to experiment with my work schedule.

What I learned skimming through some papers & articles:

• there's not one ideal work hour amount, but it depends on context
• there's a point after which productivity per hour plummets
• it's likely that creative/ focused work can be done for less hours a day before productivity per hour plummets
• for me mornings tend to be most productive & after lunch there's a slump
• I want to have time + energy to work on small creative projects next to my thesis

My schedule I wanna experiment with:

• 6 tracked work hours a day max, using Toggl for tracking
• from that 3 hours creative/ focused work max
• exercise or walks during lunch time to lessen post-lunch slump
• frequent breaks, get away from PC in longer breaks
• start work at 9am, no more work after 5pm
• focused work in mornings, low intensity stuff in afternoons

Most of this stuff I experimented with before & I know it works for me. But now I wanna see if actually working less hours per day makes me more productive.

Lastly I want to leave you with a cool mini documentary about tadpoles!

Next Steps & Questions

Next up is to make a style test in 3D & start blocking out the scene.

Have you experimented with your work schedule before? What did you find to work for you?

Hi all! I made a tutorial about making your first Substance Designer material :)

Here's some stills of the material I made for this:

First have some cake :)

This was a great opportunity to re-use the strawberry material I had made before.

One thing that helps selling the gelatine cover on top is blurring the lower parts of the strawberries with a non-uniform blur. Think that's also great for puddles etc.!

Also height blend was really useful for blending all the different materials together for this! Plus it gives you a really handy mask (I added the blend node to show you the mask).

  Also I made this simple alien runes/ glyph generator!

Here's how it works.

The tile samplers are offset so that they fill in the spaces in between the square grid. I use a perlin noise to drive which places get filled in, so that it feels like it has more structure to it.

I experimented a bit on what it could be used for. Ended up making sort of a temple floor pattern/ mosaic with it :) (2 glyphs, each in a different shape mapper).

Hope this was interesting! Thanks for looking :)