I decided to take the low poly wood mesh of my candlestick into Substance, to practice painting normals. I followed a simple tutorial which helped me to understand how to do this, and I realised I didn’t have the brush I wanted. I needed a simple straight split, as driftwood often has this, and little other detail due to it being smoothed by the sea. I followed this tutorial, and created my own alpha brush to use.
I then applied a material on top, and adjusted the settings to make it look more like driftwood. I realised during this process, that my UV was really messing up my normal painting and textures, so this is definitely something I need to look into next. I feel as though I successfully learned the basics of hand painting normal maps inside substance painter.
I am pleased with the result, though when I checked the UV, Sketchfab made it clear how strange my map is. this will be my next task.
