SUBSTANCE PAINTER | 2019 現象級大逃殺遊戲《APEX 英雄》的紋理製作
Pierre Bosset on May 29 2019 | Stories, Substance Painter, Game
我們非常高興能與Respawn Entertainment（https : // www . substance3d . com / blog / %E2%80%9D https : // www . respawn . com / %E2%80%9D）團隊進行交流，他們創作出卓越的遊戲《Apex 英雄（Apex Legends）》（https : // www . substance3d . com / blog / %E2%80%9D https : // www . ea . com / fr - fr / games / apex - legends%E2%80%9D）。讓我們一起了解一下如何使用 Substance Painter 為角色和武器製作紋理。
Respawn Entertainment
https://www.substance3d.com/blog/%E2%80%9Dhttps://www.respawn.com/%E2%80%9D
《Apex 英雄（Apex Legends）》
https://www.substance3d.com/blog/%E2%80%9Dhttps://www.ea.com/fr-fr/games/apex-legends%E2%80%9D
簡介
Brian：大家好，我是Brian Burrell，Apex Modelshop團隊的一名高級美術師。我主要負責硬表面美術以及維護PBR指南和整體的PBR工作流程。
Patrick：大家好，我是Patrick Yeung，在Apex Modelshop團隊擔任角色美術師。
Wonjae：大家好，我是Wonjae Kim，一名高級美術師，在Apex Modelshop團隊負責武器製作方面的內容。
Substance與《Apex 英雄（Apex Legends）》美術團隊
Brian：Apex團隊有近50名美術師，其中還包括UI和FX方面。我們決定使用 Substance Painter 創作Apex原因非常簡單：在非破壞性工作流程中便於迭代而且速度很快，同時在一個軟體包內可以烘焙以及繪製所有內容非常方便，還可以自定義整個設置，與遊戲中的PBR-spec光澤著色方法更匹配。此外，使用 Substance Painter 可以輕易快速控制風化，這對於區分從更髒的基礎內容到浮華的傳奇資源至關重要。
藝術設計
Brian：我們的藝術總監Todd Sue希望資源在『勇氣和魅力』方面達到均衡。為了與Apex宇宙相匹配，要有一定程度的戰鬥磨損以及雄心勃勃的個性和武器，這一點非常重要。對於皮膚而言，玩家可以製作也可以購買，在 Substance Painter 內輕易創建圖案和插圖也很重要，便於跨UV縫進行繪製。而且，我們也非常謹慎，哪些資源應該有風化，哪些資源基於稀有程度需要更有光澤，更新穎以及更令人興奮。
Substance的使用
Brian：《Apex 英雄（Apex Legends）》美術團隊一直使用 Substance Painter 創建角色，生物，武器，車輛及道具。除 Substance Painter 以外，一些環境美術師和Modelshop美術師也在使用 Substance Designer 。同時，我們希望在未來的博客中和大家分享這些細節。
自定義PBR指南
Brian：PBR指南起初非常小， 包含當時以現有 Substance Painter 預設為基礎的具體材質的備忘單。逐漸發展成為更加具有實際意義的指南，它包含與引擎相關的許多PBR方面的內容，以GGX Spec-Gloss為基礎，而不是以更為普遍的金屬為基礎用於UE4中。一些主要的更新內容包括反射率和高光圖的全面修改，美術師可以迅速從 Substance Painter 中採取樣值，同時提供總體範圍的信息，分析需要做以及不需要做的內容，並烘焙細節例如適合的AO過程。如果我們認為這一點非常重要也可以輕易為不同的資源組定義不同的數值。例如，武器和角色與顏色和道具相比，「黑色」非金屬反射率的顏色範圍會更深一些。
對於在這樣的指南中能積累大量的信息，我創建了一些緊湊的備忘版本，在 Substance Painter 中工作時可以很容易將其放入第二個顯示器中。 值得注意的是，我們也在 Substance Painter 內使用基於PBR自定義的Respawn材質，但是我仍然建議美術師們注意指南和圖表，因為調整和生成器可以輕易破壞那些基礎圖層上的PBR。
PBR指南樣本
Liu Xin是我們團隊高級圖形工程師之一，他創建了遊戲內數值檢測器，這樣我們在遊戲檢測的時候可以快速驗證PBR的範圍。在此基礎上，結合它與指南可以輕易在 Substance Painter 中選取顏色，使《Apex英雄（Apex Legends）》中材質的一致性變得更緊湊一些。這有助於統一藝術層次，減輕修改的光照程度以及後期處理過程中的負擔。從而PBR範圍更加一致，更容易在美術內容上創建較明顯的材質分離，我們認為這一點更重要。
自定義HDR貼圖
Brian：我們美術團隊有一小組人員在高級和首席圖形工程師的指導下，利用大量時間研究各種反照率捕捉技術並測量適當的陽光及陰影值，在遊戲引擎內部重新創建辦公室空間及停車場。我們在相同空間內創建自定義HDR貼圖，將其與 Substance Painter 集成，這一切都要歸功於自定義HDR貼圖的支持。這樣在兩個不同的設置之間，可以更精確地使光照和美術內容測試流程保持一致變得更加容易，特別是在此種情況下看到真實的物體/材質。儘管這並不是完美的1：1解決方案，但這比我們之前項目更接近些，從而最終美術師製作紋理和著色時會有更流暢的體驗。
最後但並不是最不重要的，我要為最初的KojimaMetal Gear Solid5團隊公開分享他們的PBR流程，其中也包括重建辦公室空間設置。這將帶給我們極大的靈感，尤其是在Fox Engine引擎內部取得令人意想不到的渲染結果。
* PBR美術團隊製作組：
Jake Virginia和Tragan Monaghan：創建最初的自定義Painter工具，大師材質以及Wiki教程
Austin Arnett和Jake Virginia：創建遊戲中的會議室並提供光照支持
Jeremy Thurman：其他的指南支持以及遊戲中的改進
角色藝術分析
Patrick：我們有一支令人驚訝的概念美術師團隊，他們創建了角色的最初設計。然後利用設計繼續在3D中對角色進行迭代，同時使用其概念和動畫團隊為角色創建最後的外觀及個性。然後使用通常將高解析度細節轉移到遊戲解析度模型上的過程。這裡的圖像在展示Kejun Wang創建的Octane概念，以及Diana Topalian 創建的高解析度雕塑和紋理資源。
在 Substance Painter 內完成從雕塑到遊戲資源的細節轉移後。開始紋理製作的過程。我們儘可能在使用ID貼圖和圖層遮罩中應用非破壞性工作流程，逐漸為角色創建材質定義。也經常互相研究彼此的 Substance Painter 文件，因為必須重新定義顏色和材質描述，創建商店中所看到的多彩皮膚。如果角色已經有明確的圖層，幾乎所有內容都可以使用ID或遮罩控制，在這種情況下，Substance Painter 特別有幫助。
這是Wraith的傳奇皮膚『Airship Assassin 飛艇刺客』，根據『QUARANTINE722』皮膚所創建。
Substance Painter 的項目『Airship Assassin 飛艇刺客』：所有內容都是由圖層遮罩控制。如果有其它方式獲得細節，是不會使用繪製圖層的，但通常可以使用填充圖層及遮罩創建所需內容。
製作武器紋理的工作流程
Wonjae：通常武器的製作從概念開始，這個概念至少包括一個正面視角視圖以及第一人稱視角相機視圖。如果完成建模階段，就可以繼續進行烘焙階段。其中，建模階段包括高模和完全展開的視圖模型（在相機前正在使用的模型）。這也是開始使用 Substance Painter 的地方。下面是一個典型的烘焙設置例子：
就環境光遮蔽和厚度而言，我們通常降低設置便於加快烘焙時間（見下圖）。同時也使用進一步自定義設置生成質量較好於實時方案的腔體烘焙。
當創建武器材質的時候，我們要進一步使用材質描述，以創建足夠的種類，這一點非常重要，否則對遊戲引擎而言，武器看起來就會有點太簡單化。通常，我們創建具體部位的基礎材質，在填充圖層中添加過濾器或者凹凸度，以盡力保留這一材質的獨特性。
這個階段你只能看到基礎材質，以及一些微小的細節，例如對白色區域創建金屬銑削的特效，還有在表面的其他部分創建凹凸橡膠的特效。
不同類型的材質有不同類型的劃痕，因此我們總是試圖將劃痕放置在相同的基礎圖層作為材質獨特性的一部分。Substance Painter 加快調整劃痕的深度和數量。此後，所有有趣的部分都已經添加，例如貼花紙，磨損和裂縫，風化及扭曲。這些細節應用在各處，不只是在某些區域，方法是通過混合生成器遮罩及手繪。
許多填充圖層用於風化材質，Mask Builder是整體風化和劃痕遮罩的首選方法。
有時我們將 Substance Painter 作為傳統的繪製工具。許多傳奇都有獨特的塗裝元素，直接使用 Substance Painter 進行塗裝。例如，動態循環的R301傳奇皮膚完全是使用Painter製作（見下圖）：
下面的武器是第一場戰鬥中的傳奇Havoc『The Golden Idol』，比普通武器需要的粗金屬還要多。但在 Substance Painter 中很容易進行添加及調整。
提示&技巧
Brian：對於在 Substance Painter 內部總的工作流程只有一些提示，這主要是針對初學者到中級水平的美術師而言：
1.儘管只是一個基本的名稱，也要儘量保持圖層和文件夾貼有標籤，特別是如果我們創建的項目中有其他美術師需要訪問的文件。
2.我認為在其自己的文件夾繪製層級的頂部附近添加大部分風化會更容易。在下面有一些輕微的風化也沒有關係，尤其是在智能材質的內部，但是對於嚴重劃痕/灰土/汙垢等等而言，將它們保持在在基礎圖層之上會更好。
3.儘管添加許多智能材質和生成器創建一些具體類型的材質（例如塑料）的變體非常容易，可以將文件縮小並提高性能，但是卻沒有添加任何一種新的材質用於微小的變化。例如，為了創建較沉悶的塑料材質變體，只需為你希望影響的區域製作遮罩，並啟用光澤和/或法線貼圖/高度與適當變化的值結合。
4.我發現在 Substance Painter 內不使用色調映射繪製是很複雜的，因此我建議如果你的藝術內容看起來已經過時，在後期設置的過程中，可以體驗一下不同的色調映射，以及高光亮點看起來有點奇怪的漸變過渡效果。完美的解決方式就是如果可能，在 Substance Painter 和藝術渲染軟體包之間應用相同的色調映射。例如，Brian Leleus為Unity 和UE4用戶在 Substance Painter 內部提供了ACES色調映射：https : // www . artstation . com / artwork / mrqd8
Brian Leleus為Unity 和UE4用戶在 Substance Painter 內部提供了ACES色調映射：
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mrqd8
色調映射轉換示例
Patrick：我最喜歡的一項技巧就是在 Substance Painter 內使用繪製過的高度細節。這種情況下，如果在 Substance Painter 中添加法線或者高度細節，但在原始烘焙貼圖裡並沒有，我們仍然希望生成器能考慮已添加的細節，例如邊緣磨損和灰土。現在讓我們快速瀏覽一下如何設置它們。
1.一個塗漆的金屬板例子。我希望添加一些槽的細節，並在其上面添加磨損。
2.使用填充圖層以及遮罩控制形狀添加槽。大家可以看到槽上沒有邊緣磨損，因為塗漆層上面的邊緣磨損生成器並沒有識別出這些槽。
3.製作填充圖層，關閉所有不必要的通道。設置高度和法線通道為「Pthr」（經過），這樣該圖層就作為定位點的平層。
4.進入塗漆層上的MG金屬邊緣磨損生成器，向下滾動；應該看到兩個槽：微法線和微高度。將已經創建的定位點分配給這些槽，設置適當的參考通道。
5.最後，在生成器微細節部分打開微高度和微法線，這將激活分配的定位點。現在大家可以看到之前創建的槽的周圍有邊緣磨損。最棒的是如果因為任何原因需要改變槽，並不需要擔心邊緣磨損的再次繪製。因為該邊緣磨損現在與細節相連，它們會發生相應的改變。
關於未來的項目/內容你會使用Substance嗎？
Brian：是的 - 一定會！我們大量運用這個軟體，並沒有想過未來會改變這一點，特別是如果未來它的更新速度會儘可能地更快，並且發現漏洞時關鍵部分繼續被修復。
非常感謝《Apex 英雄（Apex Legends）》的美術團隊！
所有圖片均有Respawn Entertainment公司的Apex Legend團隊提供。
Substance資源連結：
官網
https://www.substance3d.com/
材質庫
https://source.substance3d.com/
問答論壇
https://forum.substance3d.com/
官網教程（需科學上網）
https://academy.substance3d.com/（中英文切換）
B站教程+直播
https://space.bilibili.com/177064095/#/
免費共享社區
https://share.substance3d.com/
微博
allegorithmic（偶爾更新）
合作
meizi.yan@adobe.com
優酷教程
https://i.youku.com/allegorithmic（暫停）
中國區作品集：
http://huaban.com/allegorithmic/pins/
重申：大家的問題請儘量在推文後留言，而不是在後臺對話框中發送，過期後小編無法回復。
APEX LEGENDS - TEXTURING THE BATTLE ROYALE PHENOMENON OF 2019Pierre Bosset on May 29 2019 | Stories, Substance Painter, Game
We have the pleasure to chat with the team at Respawn Entertainment, who are behind the awesome Apex Legends. Check out how they used Substance Painter to texture characters and weapons.
IntroductionsBrian: Hi I’m Brian Burrell and I’m a senior artist on the Apex Modelshop team. My focus is hard surface art as well as maintaining our PBR guides and overall PBR workflow.
Patrick: Hi I’m Patrick Yeung and I’m a character artist on the Apex Modelshop team.
Wonjae: Hi I’m Wonjae Kim and I’m a senior artist in charge of the weapons on the Apex Modelshop team.
Apex Legends Art Team & SubstanceBrian: There are slightly fewer than 50 artists on the Apex team, and that includes UI and FX. The decision to use Substance Painter on Apex was an easy one for several reasons: ease of use and speed of iteration while being non-destructive, the convenience of baking and painting all in one package, and the ability to customize the overall setup to more closely match our in-game PBR-spec gloss shading method. It’s also a breeze for us to quickly control our weathering with Substance Painter which is critical when it comes to distinguishing the flashy legendary assets from the more grimy base versions.
Art DirectionBrian: Our Art Director, Todd Sue, wanted a balance of 『Grit and Glamour』 for our assets. It was critical to have aspirational personalities and weapons that also contained a certain level of wear and tear from combat in order to match our Apex universe. For skins that players can craft and buy, it’s important that we have patterns and illustrations which are much easier to produce within Substance Painter due to the ease of painting across UV seams. Also, we’re very careful about what assets receive weathering versus what needs to feel more shiny, new and exciting based on rarity.
Substance UsageBrian: Our Apex Legends art team has been using Substance Painter for characters, creatures, weapons, vehicles, and props. In addition to Substance Painter, Substance Designer is currently being used by several environment artists and a few Modelshop artists, so hopefully we can share those details in a future blog post.
Custom PBR GuideBrian: The PBR guide started off as a very minimal guide containing a cheat sheet for specific materials based on existing Substance Painter presets at the time. It eventually grew into a more substantial guide that covered many aspects of PBR in relation to our engine, which is GGX Spec-Gloss based rather than the more common Metalness which is used in UE4. Some of the key updates included an overhaul to the albedo and specular charts to allow artists to quickly sample values from Substance Painter as well as provide overall range information, breakdowns on Do’s/Don’ts, and baking details such as proper AO process. It also allowed us to easily define different values for different groups of assets if we felt this was important. For example 『black』 non-metal albedo was allowed a darker range for weapons and characters compared to environment and props for contrast purposes.
Due to how much information can pile up in a guide like this, I created several compact cheat-sheet versions that could easily fit on a portion of their second monitors while working within Substance Painter. It’s worth noting we also rely on custom Respawn-made PBR-based materials within Substance Painter, but I still recommend to the artists to be aware of the guide and charts, since tweaks and generators can easily break the PBR on those base layers.
One of our senior graphics engineers, Xin Liu, built an in-game value checker so that we could quickly verify PBR ranges while playtesting. Between that and the guide combined with the ease of color picking from Substance Painter, our material consistency got much tighter for Apex Legends, which helped to unify the art and lessen the burden when polishing the level lighting and post process. By keeping the PBR ranges more consistent it made it easier to create more pronounced material separation on art content where we felt that was more important.
Brian: A small group* of us on the art team, alongside the guidance of a senior and lead graphics engineer, recreated our office space and parking lot inside our game engine, after spending a lot of time researching various albedo capturing techniques in addition to measuring proper sun and shadow values. We then built a custom HDR map of that same space to integrate into Substance Painter thanks to the custom HDR map support. This made it much easier to more accurately align our lighting and art content testing pipeline across the two different setups, especially when looking at real-world objects/materials in a consistent context. Even though it’s not a perfect 1:1 solution, it’s much closer than what we had on prior projects which ultimately makes texturing and shading a smoother experience for the artists.
Last but not least, I would like to give a shout out to the original Kojima Metal Gear Solid 5 team for publicly sharing their PBR pipeline which also involved re-creating an office space set up. They heavily inspired us, especially with their incredible rendering results within the Fox Engine.
* PBR Art Team Credits:
Jake Virginia and Tragan Monaghan: Created our initial custom Painter tools, master materials, and wiki tutorials
Austin Arnett and Jake Virginia: Built our conference room in-game and provided lighting support
Jeremy Thurman: Additional guide support and in-game polish
Patrick: We have a team of amazing concept artists who create the initial design for our characters. The character team then takes the design and continues to iterate in 3D on the character while working with the concept and animation/rigging team to create the final look and personality for the character. We then go through the usual process of transferring high-resolution details onto the game resolution models. Here is an image showing the concept for Octane created by Kejun Wang, and the high resolution sculpt and textured asset created by Diana Topalian.
Inside Substance Painter, we begin the texturing process after transferring details from sculpting to game asset. Working as non-destructively as possible and using ID maps and layer masks, we gradually build the material definitions for the character. We often also work on each other's Substance Painter files because we have to redefine color and material descriptions to create the colorful skins you see in the store. It is especially helpful in this case that a character has clearly defined layers and almost everything is controlled by ID or masks.
Here is Wraith's Legendary 『Airship Assassin』 skin that I created from the 『QUARANTINE 722』 skin.
『Airship Assassin』 Substance Painter project: pretty much everything is controlled by layer masks. I don't use paint layer unless I absolutely have no other way to get the detail, but more often than not I’m able to create whatever is needed with fill layers and masks.
Weapons Texturing WorkflowWonjae: Each weapon typically starts with a concept that includes at least an orthographic profile view and a first person perspective camera view. Once we complete the modeling phases, which include the high-poly model and fully unwrapped viewmodel (the model we use right in front of the camera), we move on to the baking phase. This is where we start using Substance Painter. Here’s an example of our typical settings for baking:
For ambient occlusion and thickness, we usually lower the settings (see below) for faster baking times. We also use further customized settings to generate a cavity bake for slightly better quality versus a real-time solution.
When we create the weapon materials, it’s important that we push our material description far enough and create enough variety, otherwise the weapon will look a bit too simplistic for our game engine. Normally we create the base material for specific parts and try to keep the uniqueness of that material by adding a filter or bumpiness in the fill layer.
This is the stage where you only see basic materials with minor details like creating a metal milling effect on the white areas and rubber bumpiness on the cheek rest area.
Different types of materials get distinct types of scratches, so we always try to put scratches in the same base layer as a part of the material uniqueness. Substance Painter makes it a lot faster to adjust the depth and amount of scratches. After this phase, all of the fun parts get added, such as decals, wear and tear, weathering, and screws. These types of details are applied everywhere, not just to certain areas, by mixing the generator mask with hand painting.
A lot of fill layers are used for weathering materials and the Mask Builder is our preferred method for overall weathering and scratch masks.
Sometimes we use Substance Painter as a traditional painting tool. A lot of our legendaries get unique painted elements and we paint these directly in Substance Painter. The Dynastic Cycle R301 legendary skin was made entirely in Painter, for example (see below):
The weapon below is the Havoc 『The Golden Idol』 legendary for the First Battle Pass, and required more raw metals than the average weapon. These were easily added and tweaked within Substance Painter:
Tips & tricksBrian: I only have a few tips for overall workflow within Substance Painter, and these are aimed at the beginner to the intermediate-level artist:
1.Try to keep your layers and folders labeled even if it’s just a basic name, especially if you’re creating work for a project where other artists might need access to your files.
2.I find it much easier to add the majority of the weathering near the top of the painter layer hierarchy in its own folder. It’s okay to have subtle weathering further down, especially within smart materials, but for the heavy scratches/dirt/grime and so on, it’s better to keep them high above your base layers.
3.Even though it’s super-easy to add many smart materials and generators to create several different variations of a particular type of material such as plastic, you can keep your file size down and performance high by not resorting to adding a new material for minor variations. For example, to create a duller plastic material variant, just mask out the area you want to affect and only enable gloss and/or normal map/height combined with the proper value changes.
4.I find painting in Substance Painter without a tonemap to be quite tricky, so I recommend experimenting with different tonemaps under the post settings if you’re having trouble with your art looking too washed out, and with specular highlights having weird gradient transitions. The perfect solution is to always use the same tonemap across both Substance Painter and whatever package your art is being rendered from, if possible. For example, Brian Leleux offers the ACES tonemap within Substance Painter for Unity and UE4 users here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mrqd8
Patrick: One of my favorite techniques involves working with painted height details inside Substance Painter. There are situations where normal or height details are added after the fact in Substance Painter and are not present in the original baked maps, and we still want the generators to take into account the added details such as edge wear and dirt. Here is a quick walkthrough to set that up.
1.An example with a painted metal plate. I want to add in some groove detail and have edge wear on it.
2.Grooves are added using a fill layer with a mask controlling the shape. You can see that there is no edge wear on the grooves, as the edge wear generator on the paint layer doesn't recognize them.
3.Make a fill layer and turn off all the unnecessary channels. Set height and normal channels to 『Pthr』 (Passthrough) so that we can use this layer as a flattened layer as anchor point.
4.Go to the MG Metal Edge Wear Generator on the paint layer and scroll down; you should see two slots: Micro Normal and Micro Height. Assign the anchor point we created to these slots and set the appropriate reference channels.
5.Finally, turning on Micro Height and Micro Normal in the Micro Details section of the generator will activate the anchor point we assigned. Now you can see there are edge wears around the groove that I made previously. The great thing about this is that I don't have to worry about repainting this edge wear if for any reason I have to change the grooves. The edge wear is now connected to the details so they will change accordingly.
Will you be using Substance on upcoming projects/content?Brian: Yes – absolutely! We rely on it quite heavily and we don’t see that changing in the near future, especially if updates keep progressing as fast as they have been, and critical bugs continue to be addressed as they get discovered.
Big thanks to the Apex Legends art team!
All images courtesy of the Apex Legends team at Respawn Entertainment.