3004 Character Brief: The Prophet Pt. 2 - Texturing

Texture Budgeting and Planning:

 

Beginning with the Knuckles:

I decided to first approach the hands, since they're a more simple area than the rest of the Prophet's model, and are also an isolated segment of his body, making them an easy sample piece to texture.

The knuckles are just a masked smart material 'Iron Forged Old' with its base colour changed to a warm golden gilding to match my primary reference image for the area. I then masked everywhere but the knuckles and added a masked ambient occlusion layer and applied that only inside the flute holes to add a bit more depth.

Adjusting the Texel Density:

While the hands had a healthy texel density, when I began sketching detail on the face, I realised that the area was too starved of pixels to stand up as a game-ready or cutscene-ready textured character. After discussing it with one of my tutors we arrived a revised texture budget plan that would better suit the model.

The upper body (segmented at the hips and the 'elbows') is now going to have its own texture map. As for the head, when I'd first begun unwrapping the model, I did consider giving the head its own texture map as is the standard, but I was concerned with how I wouldn't be able to sketch across the neck and head in one brush stroke since it was a transitional area of texture - an area that needed to be seamless and would be harder to make so than the average character. However, my tutor suggested cutting a seam at the base of the neck and clavicle area, where a material's edge would be way less visible. Because this suggestion came from someone with industry experience, I was confident that it was the technically sensible choice to make. The legs are untouched unwrapping-wise, and while we discussed the possibility of mirroring them to save texture budget, I've decided to keep them texturally asymmetrical on the off-chance I decided to add that kind of detail during texturing, as I'd rather be safe than sorry, and the overall budget won't be affected too much either way. The head and neck are now going to share a map with the lower arms as they're both too large for their own 1024 map, but both fit appropriately on one 2048 map. The lower arms are also now mirrored, and the only pieces of the character that are symmetrical

Here's the new and improved UV layout: 3 2K squares; 1 for the upper body, 1 for the legs and 1 for the head and hands.

Forearms:

After baking the hi-poly sculpt, I hand-painted deeper crevices between the columns of the forearms. I then hand-painted the segmentations  on each pillar column with a blur filter and the 'thorn' alpha for my brush for a more accurate-to-reference grooves.

Neck:

I worked through the same process for the neck but I've also added more dust and grubbiness to the dips between each rib of the neck and forearms to bring out their a depth a bit more. I also added some subtle gold speckling using the same material as I did for the knuckles.

Head:

I want the smaller, spired side of the head to be a pale, statuesque marble, as you often see of white marble statues inside cathedrals and basilicas. Since it's a stone paleness that is used most often for faces, I think that it'll emphasise his more human characteristics nicely.

I just wasn't happy with the effect the marble smart material was giving me, mainly because the cracks didn't compliment the sculptural face I'd put a lot of a effort into making, so I changed out the default cracks mask for one more delicate. I think it suits him and also better resembles the quality of the marble most seen used for statues in my reference.

Hands:

I painted in his palms with the same pale marble material I used on the face. I want his hands to look as though they've been dipped in liquid marble, similar to the act of anointment in religious ceremonies. I also extended this material over the tips of his fingers to add some highlighting to them.

Arches:

To create a fine-hewn stone texture for the arches, I first added a base colour and roughness layer, along with 2 more colour variation layers with cloud textures for masks to break up the original shade. I then used the fine marble pre-set to make hairline cracks along the surface and finally used a noise texture to add some procedural pitting from age.

Spires:

To add my desired texture to the radial spires on the Prophet's head, I duplicated the edited smart material I used on the knuckles and adjusted the masks in its layers to make the gold denser around the edges with a vague effect of flaking between those edges.

Frescoes:

To selectively apply the frescoes from my reference as texture on my character, I isolated the images in Photoshop, used the warp tool to lessen the perspective distortion and imported them as textures into Substance Painter to 'stamp' them onto the model as a base colour layer. I then used the smear tool to manipulate the textures and blur them until they resemble artefact-ridden, imperfect A.I generated images as seen in my initial reference for the design of the character.

Chest Stonework:

I borrowed a brick alpha from this website and split it into three separate alphas to create a mis-matched base layer of stonework, and used an inverted version of the alpha to create a darker base colour and AO layer of mortar between the bricks.

I also applied this texture to the inside of the chest cavity, but I don't plan to add more to that area because when I finally add some lighting effects to the stained glass I want a relatively plain canvas for the light to bounce around.

Abdomen:

To jumpstart the texturing of the abdomen piece, I masked in the material I amalgamated for the arches, and applied the stonework texture from the chest area in the inset details. To add A.I generation-style imperfection to the area, I also masked in some patches of stonework around the perimeter.

 

I added the relief work in 3 stages. First I used the alphas to mask in extra height. I then added colour in its own paint layer, colour-picking from my main reference image. I then applied low intensity blur and warp to the height layer as I did the frescoes to add that all-important artefacting quality.

The last detail I added was to paint some gold around the some of the edges. I was aiming to bring out those edges and avoid giving too much of his surface area the same stone texture.

Stained Glass:

To create the stained glass texture in the Prophet's radial spires, I cut some areas out of one of my favoured reference images and applied them as image stamps to a paint layer. I then hand-painted in opacity while referencing my block-out of the shards in my initial concept sketch.

While most traditional stained glass in cathedrals, churches and such have a huge palette (sometimes garish) colours, I want mine to have a more minimal colour palette, especially since there are already a lot of shades in the character's colour scheme. With a base layer of blue, I applied a gradient of off-white radiating out from the centre. I then hand-painted some streaks of colour on a separate layer for more control.

To create the lead panes, I added a height/base colour layer and hand-painted it all, except for the centre window, which I achieved with stamping an alpha I'd fashioned from tracing over one of my reference images.

The final touches were to add some colour blotches to the centre window and add the lead framing, which I did this time with a Voronoi noise texture as a mask for a separate height/base colour layer.

Thighs and Back:

I added some more frescoes to the legs to flesh out the lower thighs as well as around the rear sides of the ribcage finally to fill in that plain area. I also made the choice to change the overall colour of this set of frescoes to contrast with the warm variations and ultimately add variety to the character's colour scheme.

Final Texturing Result:

Overall I'm very satisfied with the texturing. The materials weren't varied enough at first, but after fleshing out the frescoes, the stained glass and gold, I think that the Prophet is a very visually striking character. I'm glad I used proper reference otherwise I wouldn't have been able to create realistic materials to this level (which isn't perfect but I like to think it's a sound attempt). The scale of the shape language on display will mean it'll never look completely realistic since the design of the character is so abstract, but I think that they each work rather well on their own.