This tutorial series was written for Blender 2.8x, Substance Painter 2020.2.x, Gimp 2.10.x and Unreal Engine 4.25.x.
Table of Contents
What it is about
This workflow tutorial will explain how to:
- Set up Blender for efficient modeling
- Blender's important hotkeys and controls
- Sculpt a high resolution organic 3D model
- Create a lower level of detail ( retopo ) of the model
- UV map the model and create a UV atlas
- Optional: Pose the rigged model
- Paint the model with Substance Painter
- Display the textured model in Unreal Engine 4
What you need
- Blender for 3D modeling, UV mapping, baking, rigging and animating ( it's free )
- Texel Density Checker to set a universal texel density
- optional: UVPackmaster 2 PRO to validate and pack the UV islands
- Retopo:
- Instant Meshes to automatically create a basic retopology ( it's free ) or
- MeshLab to automatically create a basic retopology ( it's free )
- Substance Painter to paint the model in 3D space ( 20 € / $ per month )
- Gimp to combine the textures of the models to an atlas ( it's free )
- Unreal Engine 4 to display the model ( it's free )
Optional:
A graphics tablet ( Starts at about 30 $ / € or even less if you buy it second-hand. )
What to make sure
You should save ( as... with a new name ) your work from time to time, even when it is not explicitly mentioned in this tutorial, to be able to change back to an older version, if this is necessary.
In general, I recommend using a revision control system like GitHub ( for Desktop ). However please keep in mind that GitHub still has a file size limit of 100 MB.. so it is not really useful for big, detailed sculpts with a size normally far above 100 MB ( 250 MB - 450 MB ).
Nonetheless, you should backup your work to external harddisks.. or for example to Google Drive if you have a good internet connection.