Research Trim Sheets

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Insomniac Games | Ultimate Trim Technique

Maya / ZBrush / Substance Painter - Workflow

 

Trim Sheets: Test Environment

First time using a trim sheet. The goal of this little project was to see how scaling my UVs would effect the assets texture quality. I only used base color and normal maps. Not sold on the design, will probably change it next. I also tested to see what might be possible to build with a single trim sheet. 

Reference from: Jonjo Hemmens

The goal at the end of this environment project is to recreate parts of Jonjo's work here.

I see uses of trim sheets quite a bit, but there are also lots of decals in here as well. The rest is just architecture and props. From what I can tell There are only two trim sheets being used here. Maybe three for variation. 

Jonjo talking about the project.

This was my test run. I see how trim sheets are effective for decal sets and walls that consist of planes, but not for 3D objects that protrude out of walls and floors. 

After analyzing Jonjo's work and practicing it myself for trim sheets you need to have a couple of things in place from the beginning.

1st: reference, and a block out of your level helps. Most importantly you need a rough pass or proxy version of your trim sheet to establish design layout of textures and see how your trims actually work and what they could be used for. This will include general shapes such as rectangle patterns for bricks and tiles. Just normal maps, and Ambient Occlusion will do for blocking out. This way you aren't committed either way towards a design or environment layout. Expect to change the design a few times.

2nd: After you have nailed down proxy design shapes, partition off your UV space and environment, The patterns that take up the most space will also take up the most space on the UV sheet. This might take some time at first getting everything to fit in the UV space and tiling properly. The whole point of trim sheets is high optimization with high detail. So its not a sin to use more that one sheet.

I used Maya and Substance Painter for the testing part, but Substance Designer might be the way to go when making the actual trim sheets. Plus I need a reason to use Designer more anyways.

I think before I start further on this research project. Getting more reference would be beneficial. Especially since I want to work at Naughty Dog some day, getting some high quality foliage and more grime in here might not be a bad design decision either. Maybe inspiration from the from Metro, the Last of Us, or Call of Duty Cold War might be helpful.

After all is said and done I think this might make a nice portfolio piece.

I would have demonstrate knowledge and skills with trim sheets, Substance Designer, and optimization for games in a AAA context.

10 Artists and PurRef Board

        Patrick Benai - Hard Surface Weapons

        Andres Rodriguez- Environment Artist @ Naughty Dog

        Dave Miragliotta- Environment Artist @ Respawn Entertainment

        Leah Augustine - Environment Artist @ Respawn Entertainment

        Gary Do - Hard Surface Artist @ Respawn Entertainment

  Roman Zhuravlyov - Hard Surface Concept Artist 

  Jonjo Hemmens - Environment Artist @ Rocksteady

  Aaron Cruz - Environment Artist @ Bungie

 Daniel Thiger -Texture Artist @ Bungie

So what was important to me for each of these images was finding great references for presentation material work, weapon design, environment design, and set dressing. It was important to find references that actually had artists that could apply their work well and consistently. Presentation and Render quality was also important to me so that I can get a good idea of what if expected and considered industry professionalism. For Materials I looked for materials that were designed with detail and could be apply to an environment and or weapon easily. Story telling also is something that I looked for. If the environment was interesting enough that it didn't tell a underling story then it wasn't included.

My 1st Substance Designer Project

 Nodes Used:

Shape: Generates several different kinds of primitive shapes and patterns

Bevel: This node is interesting. Contrary to what bevel does in Maya and ZBrush, in Substance Designer, bevel is a node that can 'blend' a black and a white value together. Very similar to a blur. However bevel seems to only blend at a constant rate. So the gradient that bevel makes is quite smooth.

Curve: The curve node is a bit of a confusing node, but if you look at it from the perspective of the graph image that it'll make sense. So what the curve node can do is sort of make waves of data by remapping input data from the previous node. In my case the bevel node.

Transformation 2D: Allows you to move shapes around or 2D images.

Blend Node. Blends foreground and background shapes together, also you can use masks in the opacity channel. 

NOTE: You better know your blending modes for this node, otherwise you are going to struggle with it.

Histogram Range vs. Levels

Learning Substance Designer 02/10/2022

Disclaimer: This Post will just be a post to demonstrate what I have learned thus far in Substance Designer. To see the entire software package documentation follow the link here Substance Designer Doc

General Layout:

The General Layout of Substance Designer is divided up into 6 different sections. with some similarities to Substance Painter, Designer has a...

3D View: Where you can you view you material in 3D space

 - in this view you can change the model that's rendering your material as well as import your own.

2D View: Where you can view your material in 2D space

- you can view any node in this view simply by double clicking on it in the graph editor

- hitting space bar in the 2D View will change the view to a tiling image.

Library: This is area where you can find all of your atomic nodes, environments, grunge maps, etc. 

- by simply hitting space bar in the graph editor you can access a compressed version of the library and search and resource you want.

Properties: This display the editable information of the nodes.

- click on any node to edit them in the properties panel

Graph: This is where the action happens. In this space you will be placing your node networks here and developing your materials.

- Just above the graph is a list of tools called atomic nodes. These are more or less tools or functions that change your material across your node network. A kin to unreal engines multiply is Substance Designers Blend node. However, Designer is far more sophisticated.

Explorer: This is where you can view your Substance Package and your Substance graphs. Substance Designer makes use a parent and child relationship similar to most 3D softwares such Maya. You Substance Package is the parent and you Substance Graph is the child. 

- you can view the substance graph in the graph editor

- it is possible to have many substance graphs in a single substance package. 

- this is one of the many perks of substance designer because unlike painter; designer can ulitlize this parent and child relationship and blend many materials to create an entirely unique one.

- Substance Designer is also capable of exporting materials directly to Unreal Engine and Unity with the Substance plugin. This also you to directly make your substance materials as unreal materials. 

- Substance Designer can also export materials straight to Substance Painter. Allowing artists to author their own materials.

- if a node has a sockets on the left side of it, that means that it will be used at the beginning of the node network

- if a node a has a socket on the right side of it, that means that it will be an output node, or the end of the network.

if there is a nod with a socket on both the right and left sides that means it a gonna be used as bridging nodes together. 

the gray color sockets means that sockets with this color can only take in gray scale color data

the yellow nodes means the these sockets with this color can take color data 

the nodes with both gray and yellow socket can take both gray scale and color data.

node networks are read left to right.

some  color mode can be changed in the properties panel. Such as changing the Uniform Color atomic node from Color Data to Grayscale

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Substance Packages save as a .sbs file. This is the source document to your Substance Package, as .psd and a source document to Photoshop.

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Atomic Nodes:

Uniform Color: The Uniform Color node provides us with the ability to select any color we choose and output it to another node. We can also limit it to grayscale values only, constraining the selection to a value between black and white.

Blend: The Blend node allows us to mix together images. While simple in application, it is a very robust and useful node. We can change Blending modes, which will alter how pixels between our top and bottom image interact. We may alter the opacity of the blend, as well as play with cropping values for our top image.

Levels: The Levels node gives us the power to define the "limits" of the image that is used as input. We can manipulate the limits to remap the brightest, darkest and mid-values of our image.

Transformation 2D: The Transformation 2D node is about the closest we will come to working in a layer-based system. It allows us to manually adjust the input image (moving, rotating, scaling). It also provides tiling options in case we wish to have our image off any of the sides of the texture region.

Curve: The Curve node provides the same options as the Levels node, however it also allows for slightly more control over the values in between the "limits". By using a curve editor, we can create handles to adjust values at any point in our gradient.

Gradient Map: The Gradient Map node will allow us to convert grayscale data into colour data. It remaps the grayscale values to colour values along a gradient. This means that we can maintain colours even when we manipulate the original grayscale image.

Normal: The Normal node will convert any grayscale image into a colour image useable as a Normal map. It requires grayscale input to be used properly.

We can change the intensity, as well as Normal format (DirectX or OpenGL)

Text: The Text node allows us to create robust text within Substance Designer. While the use cases may be niche, trying to create text for use in a graph any other way will be significantly harder.

Artist 1 on 1 meeting 02/02/2022

Artist 1 on 1 meeting tasks

-          Build a PureRef board for artists that I’m following and that have work that interests me, and that I aspire to be.

-          Set a mini project up that align with your goals

-          Look into Substance Designer

Initial Goals

 Goals:

- looking for and entry level job in AAA studio

- interested in hard surface props, and weapons, and environments 

- interested in hyper realism, and realism, high end stylized.

- Game Studios: Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studios, PlayStation Studios, Activision, Gearbox, Respawn Entertainment Bungie.

- Environments for (Naughty Dog, SMS, PlayStation Studios, Bungie)

- Hard Surface/ Weapons (Gearbox, Respawn Entertainment, Activision, Bungie.)

Next up: find top 10 artists and build a pureref board, say what you like about each artist and what matters most to me. 

Custom UV Checkerboard Creator

 http://byvalle.com/UVchecker/

ZBrush Texture Resource

 This is a great resource for wood textures in ZBrush

Research First Post

 Research First Post