MILITARY GUY TEXTURING - PART 2 (STYLIZATION)

Hello and let's dive right into the process - I already got a decent and clean look on my military guy. At the moment it pleases my eye, but it will still need more interesting stuff like logos, numbers, anything that can show a military conveyor of soulless/faceless wolfenstein-y soldiers.

current status

The trick here was to add a stylized feel to it with AO and curvature. Most of "stylized" smart materials available on the market and pre-made for Substance Painter are actually based on a set of such little tricks: 1. Base color

2. Darker color with AO mask

3. Ligther color with curvature mask

That's almost it. You can also add some gradient and other little tricks but the most part is stored in these three magic layers :D

Stylized "filter" it's a ctually a set of three layers explained above

This is what a model looks with heavily highlighted curvature and slightly darker AO. This is an extreme example to explain you the principle, you will have to set the power of this effect on your own as it heavily depends on your taste and result you are going for.

Some people like AO in colder tones and Highlighted Edges in warmer tones - same way it works in real-life brush painting.

Let's take a quick comparison look:

no stylization

with stylization

You can see that the armor plates instantly become "juicier" as soon as we add this effect.

Note - this will only work if you have "AO" and "Curvature" as baked maps before hand, whether you baked from highpoly to lowpoly right in Substance Painter or anywhere else like Marmoset Toolbag for example.

This is what the setup looks like in layer panel in Substance Painter:

curvature mask for the highlights

AO mask

See? It's almost ridiculous how simple it is.

That's basically it.

In the next post I'm planning to cover cool stuff like "Metal Edge Wear" to add even more stylized and brutal look to the military dude.

Have fun!