Inspiration can strike at any point. A new idea for a project can just pop in your head while you are watching a movie, listening to music, researching and browsing the internet or in this case… playing with your kid and some cardboard boxes… This "tip" works with any type of box or in fact anything that has an interesting shape and that you can take a photo from the inside. Pablo M. used a box from some toy that we got recently and stick his phone from one end to take a picture… and it got something that looks like a sci-fi room with a nice balcony:

Pablo M. has released a specialized ZBrush brush pack for scales and reptile textures, building on the techniques he uses to create seamless, tileable alphas. This shows you how to design your own scale brushes in ZBrush.

In this tip, Pablo will show you how you can use 3 fill layers, 3 paint layers, and a single effect to create a pretty complex painterly look in Substance 3D Painter for stylised assets.

Here is a render in Marmoset from Enzo’s superhero concept. All the high-frequency details, seams and panels were created in Substance 3D Painter. This help gives you a lot more control and is non-destructive in case you want to change and adjust things later on!

A few days ago I posted a smart material and one of the messages I got was something like: “Oh wow… I could never get to that level. How many days did you spend on this?” And that made me smile. Because the material looked cool… but it was actually incredibly simple. I didn’t spend days on it. I didn’t build some crazy 40 layer monster. When we think about “advanced” or “complex” materials in Substance Painter, it’s easy to assume we need tons of layers, complex generators and super detailed masks. But most of the time what makes a material feel good is controlled variation. Let’s say you’re building a synthetic fabric for a superhero suit. Stay with me for a second. Don’t start with micro detail.