highlights

3D 3d animation animation loop motion design motion graphics stylized

highlights

Animating a Stylized Art Nouveau Lamp

THE PROJECT

I had the opportunity to work with the Substance team to create a triptych of 3 animated lamps and see how Painter’s pipeline and tools can help 3D artists. Substance 3D Painter is already well known as a great tool for photorealistic texturing, but what about for stylized textures?

Highlight on my new texturing workflow and the challenge of basecolor 3D painting!

Design, modeling, texturing & animation: Thomas CHARIER

Audio: Etap × Thomas CHARIER

Client: Adobe

Get the full breakdown on the Substance 3D Magazine!

~ 2022

instagram.com/toasty.studio toasty.studio

concept

For this project, I ultimately chose to cover the overall 3D process of creating three animated lamps, from the design phase to the final 3D animation. For my own creative brief, I decided that each lamp scene must have a unique theme, and use its own specific color scheme.

I settled on three specific themes: Antique Light, Candy Light, and Blossom Light.

basecolor painting

Base color texturing is a little like converting a conventional 2D illustration into a 3D mesh. Every color and every detail must be included in the painting process – including lights. I really love this style because it frees the artist from any technical aspect during the texturing process.

I found that hand painting the textures in this way was the ideal solution to push the stylized look of my scenes. This approach required me to paint almost everything, which made the project even more challenging.

I share my finds & new ways to create complex textures in the Substance 3D Magazine article.

takeaways

When I’m stuck in a creative dead end, I usually push my comfort zone by trying more dangerous design approaches. My previous freestyle series is a case in point.

This time, I completely reworked my texturing process from scratch, with an approach that was outside my skill set at that time. I’d always been curious to try base color only texturing; this project offered an opportunity to explore this technique.

By process of experimentation, and learning, I was able to gain precise control over the final appearance of the lamp scenes. I’m delighted with the final result of the project; I feel that I’ve leveled up in some small way as an artist, as well.

I can now paint light!