Making A Small Horse Toy
I wanted to take a part of a project I was already working on, the Tinkerer's Workshop, and bring it in Unreal Engine 4 to experiment with both the engine and Substance Designer. While this is not going to be the program the Workshop will be rendered in, it fostered the perfect environment for testing textures.
Reference Time!
Instead of trying to make a new and old version of the materials, I wanted to play with a before and after a toy had been painted. To be completely honest, while working on this project I had been doing a lot of painting and thought it would be fun to bring that into my digital projects. The models came from both CGTrader and TurboSquid.
The UVs
This part of the process went by rather quickly. I only had to make a desk and some of the back walls to make everything look more well rounded.
Time to Design(er)
The textures that I made in Substance Designer overall were rather simple but by far the most enjoyable part was creating wood grain. There is something extremely satisfying about watching a texture coming together.
Fresh vs. Painted
I wanted the painted designs to look whimsical and playful as if a grandfather repainted one of his toys to give to his young granddaughter. All of the paint splotches were all hand-painted!
The Unreal Reveal
Now that all the textures are done, the only thing left to do was bring it into Unreal! This is always my favorite part of the texturing process: to see all the hard work finished and rendered.
The Take Away
This exploration into Unreal gave me the drive to continue working with the engine. While I can certainly see areas that need to be worked on, not just with the texture work, it was a very encouraging experience.