#armorpaint

[thestormrebel]

I've been in a little bit of a downer mood this week, but I saw a 24-hour challenge, so decided to do it to perk up some. The prompt was 'Air Superiority', so I tried to make an F-35, spent 2 hours on that, gave up 'cause I didn't like it, tried to make a MiG-35, gave up in 30 minutes, and then put about ~5 hours into this strategic bomber (not all at once!).

It can't really do much for 'air superiority', but it was a fun project to work on and I learned some things about subd modeling, as well as ArmorPaint, which I picked up and fiddled with a little.

Pretty disgusting topology, but that's just for dorks.

[loewenmaulthings]

Fluffy Boy 2.0. Modeled in Blender, textured in Armorpaint. Inspired by Gulabi goats, lions and my cat.

[loewenmaulthings]

The fluffy boy

[crystallisedentertainment]

Moving Back to Substance Painter 2019

So it is with a heavy heart that I must withdraw Armorpaint from my workflow and put back in SP2019... I didn't want to go back to an Adobe product after working hard to replace those applications in the aforementioned workflow, but the issue is that ArmorPaint is still an Alpha-state program - and you can feel that AP is in Alpha: the weird performance issues, a strange cap of how many masks before it'll stop applying them to the model after the application restarts but still shows the information in the 2D preview, the amount of times I had to redo what I did in the previous session as it didn't save it when I clicked on the "Save" button.. Also the fact what was supposed to be a 6 minute job exporting the textures out of the program turned into a 5 hour job because the maps weren't exporting correctly!

It's incredibly frustrating, especially because I can see the potential of Armorpaint: it has the makings of a great texturing program, independent and open-source compared to the big-named walled-gardens of Moto and Substance Painter... But I've been taken out of the creative process too many times throughout the texturing of the AC unit owing to the unfinished state Armorpaint is in. I genuinely think 2 or 3 more years in the oven Armorpaint will be a great program to have in my toolbelt! For now though, I must confess that it's not ready to be deployed into production environment. =|

[crystallisedentertainment]

This took me way too long but I've added some detailing to the electrical box to the right of the AC prop! Honestly I spent about 3-4 days wrestling with Armorpaint as it wouldn't remember my writing decal you can see above, and I was just getting increasingly frustrated as it just wouldn't work! The project file itself is getting so big that I'm waiting 5 seconds on putting my pen onto the tablet and the program registering it (but not the actual stroke, so it's just a dot)... As I've been saying throughout the last month or so: you can definitely feel Armorpaint being an alpha program with these frustrations.

There is still more details I wish to add to the box before moving to the coolant box below it - but that is also having the same issue of it not saving my mask information, so I'm just repeating what I've already done with an inferior result to the first go. At this point I'm not sure what to do about it; I'm just going in circles and it's dragging the progress of texturing out longer then it should... It's incredibly frustrating (let alone how much it's taking me out of the creative process having to continuously redo something).

[crystallisedentertainment]

So here is the AC Unit's texturing progress as it currently stands.

I'm happy how I've applied a lightly worn effect to the model. Some additions is scratches to the chrome grille in front of the radiator, adding screw decals to the breakout box, and more text-based decals on the coolant hoses. Overall everything is shaping up nicely!

I was hoping to complete the entire prop by the middle of this week (14th May)... But having to redo certain things as the masks for effects just wouldn't stick after closing ArmorPaint. The grate scratching one is my own fault as I renumbered one of the screw decals as the same one to the scratch mask which erased everything; so I'll take responsibility on that one! I'll probably redo it again soon as I'm not happy with the current iteration. Likewise, I have noticed while taking screenshots that one of the rubber text decals is inverted, which I'll fix next week.

These are small changes however (relatively speaking), and I with any luck I'll finish the wall boxes to the right of the prop (and consequently the entire model) by the end of next week, followed by figuring out how to bake and export the materials out of ArmorPaint. This model has a very complex texture - which maybe attribute some of the woes I've had with AP during the last month, and hopefully the next prop should be easier to do being a simpler model comparatively.

[crystallisedentertainment]

Behind The Crystal - Texturing Cyberpunk-style AC Unit

Time to work on the break-out box portion of this model.Today I am:- Texturing AC Unit in ArmorPaint. -------------------------------------

Starting a little later then I hoped for, but I'm streaming some texturing again over on YouTube… Come say hi below! =)

[crystallisedentertainment]

So over the course of this week I've been busy working on making the actual condenser unit look slightly worn with the paint starting to come off, and I can finally start learning the decal system in ArmorPaint. For those who are struggling getting to grips with decals in AP: holding "Ctrl" while dragging a texture automatically turn it into a decal layer, and it's already facing the right way... Which is important as there is no exposed transform properties as of this release (something I hope will get added later).

I'm thankful that decal layers also work with the white/black masks: it has made it pretty easy to make it look worn in a non-destructive manor! Overall really happy on the progress made so far. =)

This is probably the last I'm gonna work on this until next Thursday as I'm gonna be away and I can't bring my graphics display tablet with me... ^^"