VFX tools and techniques /// Substance Painter 3D asset texturing with Anton Egorov

In our second live online VFX demo, Visual Effects, Digital Arts & Animation tutor Anton Egorov showed us some pro tips on 3D asset texturing using 3D material creation software Substance Painter.⁠ Learn more and watch the full demo.

A software with substance: Adobe Substance Painter is the leading programme for 3D digital materials. Like Photoshop, but with a whole extra dimension of tools, Substance Painter allows digital artists, animators, game designers and the like to take their skills beyond the 2D canvas and expand their creative potential. For this reason, it’s a VFX industry standard – an essential skill we teach to our Visual Effects students. 

A Texture of Quarantine

Digital artist and Catalyst tutor Anton Egorov’s recent live demo on the software was the perfect tutorial for digital artists moving into the 3D environment. Over the hour and a half-long, step-by-step, tutorial, Anton broke down how he used Substance Painter to texture the skin and metallic material of his 3D scene I’ll Just Stay at Home Today. 

“I took different 3D models from other projects and decided to dump them into this sci-fi looking room,” Anton says. “This guy is probably quarantined, so the only thing he can do is sit around naked, smoke cigarettes and watch my demos on his little laptop!” 

Rendering Reality

The striking image is a fantastic demonstration of the immersive scenes and, by extension, realistic worlds that you can create when painting in full 3D. As Lucas Granito, Senior Technical Artist at Ubisoft tells 3D Artist magazine, “[The video game Rainbow Six Siege] demanded realism because it took place in contemporary environments, so we couldn't stylize the game. We really wanted to create that immersion by getting realistic results. We found that traditional software was limiting us in our ability to go full PBR [Physically Based Rendering], which means that it was very difficult to get a consistent result between different artists. Substance allowed us to create the most advanced PBR project to date in Ubisoft's history.”

The software can be used not only to paint full textures, but also to paint masks which can then be used in other tools. On large-scale projects with many similar textures, Substance Painter can save designers a huge amount of time – ideal if you’re working within typically tight deadlines.

Get started with Substance Painter. Watch Anton’s full demo below.

Substance Painter Demo