Arnold and Substance Painter

 Week 7

What is Arnold Shader?

Arnold is one of the most accurate and powerful renderers out there. Its most beloved feature is ray tracing, the method of graphics rendering that simulates the path, physical properties, and behaviour of light. This feature is a must for the demands of animations and movies with visual effects. It perfectly captures the realistic aspect of 3D characters and complex scenes in films, games and designs visualisation projects. What sets Arnold shaders apart from Maya basic shaders is that the shaders are PBR which are more complex and thus excel at achieving almost accurate photorealism.

What is PBR?

PBR or Physical Based Rendering represents the most scientifically accurate interaction of light and materials. A PBR material file has 6 channels, each containing a different texture. There is a channel for the base colour, 3 channels for roughness and 2 channels for metallic. This goes to say that PBR relies heavily on the properties of the material itself to judge where and how the light will react with it. 

For the above image, I used the Arnold plastic and metal presets to showcase how each object and it's properties are affected by the light around. 

For week 7, we were introduced to on how a render set up is done in Maya through Arnold. Aistandard surface is the most commonly used shader when it comes to Arnold however, it also offers other different shaders for other specific needs. They are as follows-\

AiAmbient Occlusion

AiWireframe

AiShadowMatte

AiCurvature 

AiMix

AiComposite

Setting up the aidstandard surface shader is very direct and uncomplicated. All one needs to do is to put down the right map at the right place such as Albedo being the base color, Roughness map, Metallic map, Normal Map which replaced bumb map as the more effective and accurate one. 

And to better understand it all, were given a task in class where were given different texture maps and we had to all make it come together.

So to begin with, I created a sphere and then clicking right, I assigned a new material. Through the options, I selected aistandard surface from the Arnold shader dropdown list.

The above images showcase the Hypershade set up for the texture and the render output respectively. On inspecting, I realized a couple of things about the outcome. The render could have used more light intensity and exposure. The textures are not high definition and the thus appear pixelated on zooming in.

Week 8

For week 8, we were introduced to the world and the basics of Texturing and how to do it in Substance Painter.

Texturing in simple words means adding properties such as Color, Roughness, Emission, Height, Metalness, etc. to your object. This comes from the fact that every material has its own tough and visuals. For example, Wood and Metal are two different materials and they not only look but also feel so.

Substance Painter is a software that lets the user paint or use smart materials to texture their model and is equipped with letting the user create their own texture maps. This means that you are able to create your own base color, add or take away the roughness, metalness and even height which can either be used as a normal map but can also be used as a displacement map.

Using a new software can be intimidating but also exciting. I watched many tutorials that help a beginner like me get the most out of the software. I started experimenting in substand painter and started off with simple models such the one below.

The above low poly model was created by me and then I brought the OBJ into Substance Painter. Instead of complicating it too much, I chose to do simple stuff such as creating a base color and using the height map, painted the buttons and tie. Using the Paint layer and the Symmetry, I created the eyes. Looking back on it, it may seem very simple and not much to look at but still I would like to think it wasn't that bad a start. 

I created this Anime art style wall smart material following a tutorial online (https://youtube.com/watch?v=RhW5MwCSjKw&feature=shares)

This was more of an experiment to get the look of a damaged and well used table.

The above was from following the tutorial created by my course leader, Richard. However instead of completely follow it concept by concept, I tried to create my own textures.

The above image is of my first full character texturing in substance painter. I made use of several grunge maps, blur slope, dirt maps, different brushes to make it look stylized and unique.