CC SkinGen MasterClass #2: Workflow with Substance Painter, UDIM, & Cross UV Paint

Character Creator’s SkinGen MasterClass – with Luis Duarte

Luis Duarte – 3D Content Developer / Instructor

Hi guys, I’m Luis Duarte, a digital artist, 3D modeler, content developer and instructor on Libel Studios.com

Welcome to this Character Creator MasterClass for Character Creator’s SkinGen plugin, where I will explain tips and tricks on the new surprises that the latest Character Creator 3 updates bring us with tools such as the new SkinGen texture editor, compatibility of models with system UDIM, the new improved topology and many others.

This MasterClass comes in #4 parts, each carries its own tutorial video to guide you through the entire process. You can find links to the other 3 tutorials below. I hope this helps you!

Tutorial 2: Workflow with Substance Painter, UDIM, and Cross UV Paint

Base model integration from Character Creator and Substance Painter.

10. With the body shape defined, I add a hairstyle and a pair of horns; Then I take it to Substance Painter using the preset link. This process can be done from two options; using the Substance button at the top-right, or from the File menu. Later, I export in the main path of my project.

11. To integrate in Substance Painter, you have to select the .OBJ file, set the document resolution to 2048, then activate the ‘Use UV tile Workflow’ box and, finally add the textures located in the folder called ‘Std_Skin_Head’ (preferably only use the Normal map, Roughness, and Base color).

12. UDIM texturing is slightly different from the traditional way; that is, to integrate the maps and merge them with new materials, we must create a fill layer on the object in question, in this case it would be the body, then we verify in the UV Mask editor that only the one that corresponds to the head (UVs do not have a name, they are only represented by a 4-digit number) Finally we manually drag the textures to the preferences of the fill that corresponds to the same name, that is; Base color, Normal map, Roughness. I recommend doing it in separate folders.

A very useful tip is to separate the map styles into different folders in order to be able to work more organized.

13. As an additional point, we can do map baking, which can be very useful when applying new materials. I open the baking panel from the selection menu; I deactivate what I’m not going to need, keeping only the body object. Then I activate the Normal, Curvature, Thickness, Position boxes, and apply the bake. Also, remember to include the Hair and Horn bake maps.

14. Include a pre-defined smart material, to give the base texture of the body. Likewise, we add layers of shadows to exaggerate the expression on the character’s lips, eyes, and eyebrows. The set of layers at the end would be as follows:

16. To include some details on the texture, we take advantage of the full-body painting; We include another material with little brightness on top, then with a hard brush we begin to draw abstract lines on the skin; in areas such as the chin, upper part of the eyebrows, chest, shoulder, and back. Then we give color and raise the height value.

17. Next, we make a body painting with an artistic brush, looking for a more or less blue tone, in such a way that to balance the opposite side of the body that is free. An interesting piece of information is to make a duplicate of the layers and create masks with black and white, which we will then export to use with SkinGen’s Scalp.

18. Once we are satisfied with the texture of our model, (remember to texture the active hair and the horns so that they all go according to the style). We proceed to export the textures from the Export menu; from Global settings we leave the necessary objects active. We activate the Character Creator preset. Finally, we define a resolution of 4096 and export to the path of our project.

19. To integrate the new textures into the sample project in Character Creator, it is enough to select all the pieces of our character from the scene panel. Then from the File menu, we go down to Substance Painter pipeline, we press the ‘Update Textures from Substance Painter’ option, and we select the new folder created with the new materials.