Texturing Techniques and Implementation: Exploding

Hello everyone, my name is Alissa Corbut and I take on the lead artist role at ShadowRealm studios. Coming up with a cohesive visual style can be a challenge, but it doesn't have to be all that difficult! I will share my favorite technique I use to speed up my workflow and avoid any issues.

My favorite method so far is "exploding" models for texture work. 

Normally, if I were to bake this in Substance Painter like this, I'd get an AO bake accounting for the walls and top that cast a shadow atop the containers. It looks like this:

Now the containers aren't so dark! All I did after the bake was go to "Project Configuration" under the Edit tab and just swap out the models.

From here I texture like normal, this time without worrying about any weird dark places I may have gotten from my initial attempt.

Here are more models done with the explosion technique:

 The exploded model in Maya:     

Thank you for reading and following along our development for Trade N Transit! We are excited for you to see the cool assets in game and textures. I hope this was helpful in solving any potential issues with baking!