Hand-Painted Texturing in Blender

We need to unwrap the model into UVs. UVs are the coordinates so that Blender knows what area of the texture to display on each polygon.

Blender is pretty good at UV unwrapping, but it's editing capabilities leave a lot to be desired. Thankfully, addons, such as TexTools, can help bridge the gap!

We continue organizing our UV layout for effeciency down the line. With some clever flipping, we can hide the repeating nature of the texture.

In this video we talk about value; how dark or light the color is. Value is fundamental to get something to look correct. Because our eyes tend to be so sensitive to it, it can be tricky to master.

Hue is probably what most people think of when they hear the word "color."  After this video, we hope to start thinking more in terms of "temperature."

Saturation can be a bit of a trickster to wrap your head around. But here I'll do my best to try to explain it.

Let's do a simple painting demonstration to see if we can't combine all three together in a way that makes sense. Situations in the real world may contradict the way I painted this. That is fine. What is important is that you're seeing that contradiction. Because once you can see it, you can reproduce it.

Blender ships with a Texture Paint tab. I often do use it, but it doesn't set up everything perfectly. So I just decided to run through all the stuff I change.

I like to try to maximize coverage as quickly as I can. So first I tend to "block in" the big areas/shapes of color. By the end we want to be 80% there.

Next we do a pass helping to define some shadow and light areas on our base block out.

We continue refining. If you're tighter with painting, you should be able to stop by the end of this step and have something nearly finished.

Mistakes happen. Just a reality. Fortunately, in the digital world correcting errors is usually possible.

Tighten and refine brush strokes. In this case I redid the lighting quite a bit, as I wasn't happy with my initial results. It's just the reality with making little art things sometimes.

Adding texture would be easier/simpler if Blender had a better brush system with decent presets. Alas, what would be the fun of being an artist if we didn't create things with basic tools? Here I show how to create texture with even a round brush.

Polish up a few things there, but mostly cleaning up sloppy brushstrokes.

The end. Roll Credits. Ride off into the sunset. Shows over. Nothing more to see here.