Underpainting Brush Textures for FL Modeling

[aerelm]

• First, what is an "underpainting"?

In traditional mediums (commonly, Oil paint) the first layer done is usually a thin subdued coat of paint to cover the blank canvas (to avoid blank white poking through the painting during the process) which is usually used for refining the sketch and setting up some basic values to later built on.

In digital painting (and more specifically, texture painting a 3D model), using an underpainting with a subdued texture instead of a solid color can help greatly speed up the process, since you can then just focus on adding more textures and details on top to the surfaces that actually need it, without having to worry about rest of the model.

There are some really good textures out there to use for this purpose, but unfortunately, they are mostly made for the current gen of graphic engines and don't look all that good as just a single defuse layer, and so aren't really a viable choice for FL models because of the outdated engine. So I decided to make some which are more suited to how the FL engine handles textures.

• Would you need these in your modeling process?

Only if you're texture painting. If you're using tiled textures, you won't need any of these.

• How to use these textures:

It's quite straightforward. When in Texture painting mode in whatever 3D modeling program you're using, there should be an option to add a texture to your brush.

Set the texture to any of these files
Set the brush pattern to Random instead of Tiled
Set the brush strength based on the intensity of the texture you want
Set the brush color to white if you want to use the base color of the texture, or colored if you want to mask a color on top of it
Then cover the entire UVMap with it

It should give you a decent enough textured surface to start working on.

Example:

• And of course, the textures:

Borderworlds:


Rheinland Lawful:

 
Note: These aren't seamless because I'm lazy trying to tile the underpainting could end up looking stretched in some bits depending on the unwrap and geometry. So when using these, you'll get a much cleaner, more consistent and subtle look with randomized brush anyways.

• Will I add more of these?

Yea, I'm making these as I go. So, the more ships of different lines I go through, the more of these I'll need, and whenever I make them, I'll post them here as well. Though, don't limit yourself to these textures. I'm still figuring stuff out, so these are just frankensteined from existing vanilla textures and aren't even half as well-made as they can be. If you have more experience with making game assets, you can probably make better ones yourself.