Sr Proj: Materials

Latest Version

Entry 7: April 9th, 2026

At this point, most textures and materials have been completed. Throughout late March, I made seperate, higher-res versions of texture maps for the walls, floor, and table for close-up shots to ensure the highest possible quality and artistic control for each shot.

Higher res table textures for close up shots in Substance Painter (above)

Shot 3 before table texture updates (left) and after updates (right)

The sword model and textures have also been updated, following peer critique that my sword didn't match the style/look of actual medieval Norse swords. After researching and gathering new references, the new sword design has a metal, curved crossguard, a rounded pommel, and engravings in the hilt and blade. For continuity, I reused the same celtic knot pattern that appears in the goblet, throne, and rafters, with mild modifications.

Updated sword model and textures (above)

Finally, I've lightened the throne color to make it stand out more from the rest of the wooden assets in the scene. Further detail was also added to the throne's engravings, and more imperfections were added to the throne geometry by increasing subdivisions and slightly adjusting the position of vertices to avoid straight/perfect edges on the model.

Updated throne model and textures (above)

Entry 4: March 7th, 2026

I've started moving beyond texture painting (I still have some texture maps to revise) and working within my shader networks to adjust more specific properties of my materials, including transmission, IOR and SSS values values. This past week, my focus has been primarily on the transmission for the goblet and preliminary frost material test. My first pass of goblet material was very noisy and barely transparent even with a transmission value of .98 so fixing that was a priority.

Initial goblet, IOR 1.5 (above)

Goblet w/t IOR of 1.1 (above)

Goblet w/t IOR of 1.0 (above)

I first checked my render settings to see if there were any issues there preventing the transmission from working properly, and after that I tried decreasing the IOR. This improved transparency significantly, but took away from the "glassiness" and real-world accuracy (the IOR of glass in real life is 1.5) of the goblet. I changed the geometry to make the glass edge thinner, but this didn't affect the transparency.

Goblet w/t thinner edges and IOR of 1.05 (above)

Goblet w/t .1 subtracted from roughness

Goblet w/t adjusted roughness and IOR of 1.5

After some further testing, I realized that the roughness values on my texture map had come in too high and solved the issue by subtracting .1 from the roughness texture map. I was then able to turn the IOR back up to 1.5

New Goblet Material in Shot 2 (above)

New Goblet Material w/t WIP Ice material in Shot 13 (above)

Once the goblet was finished, I spent some time on the plate textures so I could get shot 2 close to a final product. The plate material's gold rim was too bumpy and the porcelain was too reflective, especially in shot 13. I started with the rim and turned down the bump as much as I could without ruining the bump levels of the porcelain. Then I used the metalness texture map and a MtlxMix node mask out and adjust the gold's bump individually.

Initial Plate Material (above)

Gold Height Variation Reduced w/t Mix node

Plate Material w/t bump height decreased (above)

Adjustments to Mix node values/mask over intensity

I found that bringing down the bump meant some of the bright colors in the highlights disappeared, so I decreased the overall metalness by .1 to bring back some of the yellow color and slightly improve the refractions

Adjusted Plate Materials in Shot 3

Entry 3: Jan 25th, 2025

As I've made further progress on materials, I've been able to create smart materials and reuse metals and wood patterns for assets to speed up the workflow. However, for wooden materials, I've tried to avoid using the same designs and colors everywhere so that objects don't blend together. For instance, the wooden doors have darker colors for frames and paneling on the door to seperate it from the walls and pillars. Wooden pillars also have carvings to increase visual interest and add a sense of elegance and artfulness to the interior.

Pillar and Support Beam Textures

Wall Torch Texture (above) and Main Door Texture, w/o Door Knockers (below)

Entry 2: Jan 20th, 2026

First pass of textures for most assets has been completed, all using substance painter. All materials currently only have a base color map, roughness, and bump, except for the armor's chainmail which uses an opacity map for the holes in the chain design. Any other necessary material maps/adjustments will be done in the Houdini shader instead of Substance. I intend to wait to revise all materials until after they have been tested in Houdini in the lit environment.

I've also been experimenting with the look for the frosted over textures.

Banner texture WIP normal (left) and frozen (right)

Bench textures WIP normal (top) and frozen (bottom)

Entry 1: Jan 2nd, 2026

Over winter break, my access to certain softwares was limited, so I focused on creating the illustrations for the wall's paintings and designing alphas and decals for Substance Painter that I could use to add intricate details to textures quickly. I also checked my files and UVs to ensure they were ready to be moved into Substance Painter