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Rain - File 5: Shading & Texturing
This file includes the final model and UV maps from the previous file and adds the shading, texturing & baking setups. In the first collection you can find the materials that were used for the texturing & shading process. Here I have all of the vertex colors and individual image nodes live and blended together to get the final material results. After this was done I started baking the material down into a few PBR textures to simplify the materials and optimize them for Eevee display. The final Materials can be found in the second collection.
The third collection includes the usual lighting setup for the viewport and the forth includes the turntable setup with 2 cameras (full body & head) parented to a rotating empty object. The turntable animation is not just restricted to the empty but also I animated the input mapping of the world HDRIs to get the most thorough shading tests rendered. In the world shader you will also find 4 packed HDRI images from the Blender Cloud Library included to switch between.
I also included 3 Workspaces at the top to view the material setups, the model itself in more detail & for the texturing & texture painting itself.
6 comments
Hi Julien, thank you so much for sharing this file with us! I'm trying to improve on character texturing by studying the the node setup in this file, and I have a couple of questions. I see that the base colors are blocked out with vertex colors and mix RGB nodes, and I was wondering how the vertex colors (such as "Col" and "SSS") are so smooth? Since the model doesn't have tons of vertices and in vertex painting one color is assigned to each vertex, how are you able to achieve smooth vertex painting? I tried painting on the "Col" in this file, and the brush strokes are nowhere as smooth as yours.
Secondly, what will happen if I replaced the vertex colors (such as "Col") with an image texture? Would it make a difference in the result? Thirdly, from what I observed in the node setup, this method of texturing Rain is different from the method used to texture Spring - which method would you recommend and why? Lastly, if you were to re-texture both characters again, is there anything you would do differently? If so, what are they? Sorry for asking so many questions! (I'm quite new to texturing) Thank for all your help, time, and the effort you put into this series!
Oops nevermind I think I figured out why the vertex colors are smooth - I just needed the blur tool!
@coolyan2016 So the main reason why I used the vertex colors as a base to texture from is so the default viewport shading (vertex colors) in workbench looks very close to the final textures when rendered (in either Eevee or Cycles). There's not really any other reason for it.
There are plenty of things I would like to do differently if I get the chance (and I will once I get to the texturing of the second character "Snow"). I would create a node setup which I do not need to bake in the end, so no AO nodes and nothing that is depending on generated coordinates or anything that could change after deformations like curvature. I would also use texture painting more than before and add more detail. The clothes and areas of the skin are very undefined. But I would also use procedural texturing more to add stitches and other details. All of this is not to make it more realistic but just to make it look more finished. The texturing is quite bare-bones imo and could be better, but it was always meant to be simple.
I can highly recommend to look at Simon's Procedural Shading Tutorials and his work on Sprite Fright to see what I mean.
Hi Julien, thanks for these resources. I'm curious how you made these textures (the jeans, for example). Did you use a 3rd party program for the maps?
@Kyle Olson Making the textures is often too much effort & time investment unless you are really good with shader nodes. CHeck out the Procedual Shading Course for that. There are also plenty of libraries online, some of which are free and creative commons like Texture Haven, cg bookcase and of course here on the Blender Cloud.
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