You manage to jump from a handpainting texturing style to realistic rendering work. How do you decide which look you are going to achieve in your personal work, and are what the challenges for each of them?

It really depends on how stylized the model is. I always try to put a bit of texture in the skin or cloth even if it’s super cartoony to give it some substance (pun intended), but I’m not going to add skin pores, wrinkles and moles if the face does not even have nostrils or ears modeled; it would look awkward. It’s about finding that balance between “believable in its own universe” and “realistic”. It also brings us back to the previous point: “What is it I like about this concept?”. If it’s the anatomy and the level of detail, then I will give it a more realistic treatment. On the contrary, if it’s the shapes and how simplistic it looks, then I’ll have a more stylish approach. And since I’m more into cartoon than super realistic paintings to begin with, so I tend to go the stylized way.

You recently jumped onto the Substance Painter wagon. What’s your overall feeling about the software? What does it bring compared to your previous workflow?

I may sound biased, but it really took my shading skills to a whole new level. Before I would just paint a diffuse map (in Mudbox generally) and that was about it. Painting a roughness map would scare me. I know what it was supposed to look like, dark is glossy, white is matte. But making it actually work requires a lot of back and forth between Mudbox and Maya, with a bit a of Photoshop in-between. Personal projects are about learning new stuff but also having fun. Spending three days trying to get that specular right is not. So I would end up using a procedural map, add some SSS and call it a day. In Substance Painter, I can paint all these maps at the same time, with real-time visual feedback, no guesswork. And I don’t waste any more time with test renders. I just export the maps with the Arnold preset, plug them in the right places, and voila. I work faster and get better results.