Posted March 24, 2026 by B3arin
Week of March 29th 2026 - Texturing
Knife
This week, I focused on just putting down the base colours, and then adding the hand-painted details later on (first week of April). The way I textured in substance, is that I would make folders for the specific parts that I want to texture, for example, this knife has three main parts, bow, blade, and handle. I then put a fill layer with different colours in each folder. Then, I put a black mask on the folders, and I mask out the parts that shouldn't be in that folder. For ex, the blade folder will only affect the blade, so I use the face/object tool, set it to 1/white (white meaning it'll show black meaning it will not show), and then select the faces/object I want in the folder, then everything not selected is masked out.
In each folder, I will typically have other folders labelled base colour, bevel fill, and colour variation. The base colour folder will have my base colour, as well as other shades that make it seem dimensional, even just using base colour.
In the bevel fill, I have a fill layer with a colour that's lighter than the base colour. Then I add a smart mask that applies that colour only on the edges of my mesh (this only works on hard edges, so if your mesh is a mid-poly and has no hard edges, this smart mask doesn't really do anything).
I then basically rinse-and-repeat this process for the rest of the parts, as well as the different weapons.