Nira's VFX Blog
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Tag: Spaceship

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Advanced & Experimental Group

Week 6: Spaceship UV Maps in Maya & Textures in Substance Painter

This week I focused on finishing my spaceship by editing the UV maps and creating the textures in Substance Painter.

UV Maps in Maya

Since I consider that my knowledge about tidying up UV maps was basic and my spaceship model had a lot of complex shapes and details, I decided to research about how to lay proper UV maps in complex objects. Therefore, I found the following tutorial which had a useful workflow to do proper UVs.

UV maps tutorial (On Mars 3D, 2021)

After this tutorial, I carried on to do my spaceship UV maps and get it ready for texturing in Substance Painter. Since there were lots of different parts of the spaceship that needed a lot of space in a UDIM, I decided to separate each part in a different UDIM to have the best resolution when adding textures. I also cut each section in pieces to then unfold them properly and use layout to spread them in the UDIM. Sometimes, some of the UVs were layout really mixed up and not properly oriented, like in the main body of the spaceship, so I manually corrected orientations and tidied them up (so they were also easier to spot when texturing separate sections).

Outer cover UV maps
Outer cover poles UV maps
Side wings UV maps
Side wings poles UV maps
Back wings UV maps
Side engines UV maps
Back engines UV maps
Back engines pipes UV maps
Base UV maps
Top UV maps
Main body UV maps – manual layout

Textures in Substance Painter

I wanted to achieve a realistic texture result with my spaceship, so I decided to use Substance Painter for this. Since I have never used this software before, I researched some tutorials in YouTube and also asked to Marianna and one of the technicians at uni for advice. I found the following tutorial that teaches the basics of Substance Painter.

Substance Painter beginners tutorial (Adobe Substance 3D, 2021)

I mostly used the preset textures for my base, such as copper, copper worn, chrome blue tint, and glass firm dirty. Then, from these base textures I started building up with fill layers, masks, and generators to add dirt, scratches, burns, and rusty borders. Once I was happy with the textures look, I baked them all.

Side wings copper texture
Main body copper texture
Scratches effect added to edges on top of ‘Copper Worn’ material
Added some red rust to the borders so it looks more damaged
I also added this red rust to the tips of the tubes manually with a paint brush
Side windows texture with ‘Glass Filim Dirty’ material and tweaking the dirt mask to accentuate the contrast of this
Added same effect from side windows to front windows
Outer base copper texture
Engines ‘chrome blue tint’ textures with a ‘metal dirty’ mask added on top
Engines ‘copper’ textures with a ‘metal dirty’ mask added on top
I also added some burnt effect manually with a paint brush
After I finished with the textures, I baked them all

However, I had some issues in the outer cover of the spaceship, since the UV maps were not unfolded properly, so they were overlapping and showing like stripy patches in some areas. Therefore, I went back to Maya and corrected the wings UVs, cutting the inside parts of each piece, unfolding them and then laying them out properly. Once this was corrected, I had to search for another tutorial as I was not sure how to update the UV maps in Substance without having to start from the beginning the whole process of texturing. Therefore, I found the following tutorial that has a really quick way to update this:

Updating UV maps in Substance Painter tutorial (On Mars 3D, 2020)
Outer cover with stripes issue
Outer cover UV maps updated in Maya
Outer cover UV maps updated and rebaked in Substance Painter
Outer cover textures now showing without any issues

Once the textures were finished, I exported them and relinked them in Maya as shaders following this tutorial for a quicker way to relink all texture maps in Maya:

Exporting textures from Substance Painter to import and relink in Maya tutorial (What Make Art, 2022)

I also added some emission effect to the windows so it looks like there are lights on inside the spaceship.

Textures relinked in Maya
Spaceship render in dark background – side view
Spaceship render in dark background – front view
Spaceship render in dark background – bottom view
Spaceship render in dark background – 3/4 view
Spaceship render in dark background – back view
Spaceship render in dark background – back engine close up
Spaceship final model with textures – 360 render

References

Adobe Substance 3D (2021). Substance Painter 2021 Getting Started – Part 01 – Materials & masking (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j27AS0VQOw [Accessed 20 May 2023]

On Marrs 3D (2020). Substance Painter – How to Update Models AFTER You Textured It! (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjYzLgVOqrc [Accessed 21 May 2023]

On Mars 3D (2021). How to UV Map Complex Objects in Maya (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiEQNDZapXs [Accessed 20 May 2023]

What Make Art (2022). Export Substance Painter Textures to Maya with Plugin Tutorial (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCKc_6nTRPM&t=227s [Accessed 21 May 2023]