How can I achieve smooth texturing with hard surface models?

Cassie Crawley, USA Gaëtan replies Hard surface 3D models are nice to texture as they can come with a large variety of materials and some used/weathered effects on them, which let you imagine the functionality and story of the object. In order to get a smooth texturing workflow you have to take several things into account.

The first thing is to prepare your UVS for baking. This way you’ll be sure to get accurate results by reproducing all the details from your high-poly mesh on your low-poly version.

Define your smoothing groups according to your UV seams in order to avoid issues; visible lines in the Normal map for example, created by hard edges/ smoothing groups transitions in the mesh.

If you have identical parts with overlap in your UV, do an offset ( of one unit) on the duplicated ones to bypass them during the baking. This way you’ll preserve the optimisation and get a correct result during the baking process.

In Substance Designer/painter use the Match by Name option for the baking. This will use the meshes’ names to give a perfect correspondence between

Add life in your textures by creating small scratches and relief imperfections; don’t forget to be coherent with the material type

your low and high poly. It’s always useful whether it is a character or a weapon your are doing.

Use mesh information through baked maps. For example ID maps quickly create masks for the different parts; use it as an additional map in a Substance Painter project, or as a source for a Multi-material Blend node in Substance Designer. Use Ambient Occlusion to localise some dirt in the concave areas of the mesh. You can damage exposed areas ( borders) by using Curvature to create some paint peeling, cracks and scratches.

Add life in your textures by creating small scratches and relief imperfections. Don’t forget to always be coherent with the material type ( its reallife properties).

Adapt it. For example, if you add dirt to the part/ context, you’ll not add the same type if it’s a fuel tank, a weapon barrel, or a part subject to frictions.

It can be really subtle; the amount and intensity can vary with the style, but when possible it will make the result more believable.