Making 3D animation look painterly (it's easier than you think)

In this video, I'll go over a surprisingly simple way to make your stylized 3D renders feel like a painting. I do it by painting over Object Space Normal Maps, which is not as scary as it sounds. This technique allows us to capture the feeling of a 2D painting while maintaining the flexibility of 3D.

I used Blender, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, and Rebelle to make the stylized tea kettle scene.

Thanks for watching :)

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Chapters:

0:00 Intro
0:18 Top Five Favorite Things (about this technique)
2:19 Prerequisites
2:50 3 Basic Steps
3:05 Demo
4:30 Why does this work?
5:30 How Normals Work
6:39 Base color?
7:27 Conversions


Frequently Asked Questions

How do you paint World Space in Substance Painter/How do you paint on two channels at the same time?

In this video, I'm painting on a custom channel. The only reason it's "world" is because that's what I named it. Substance has no idea what it actually is and you can't preview it as a normal map in the software. You'll have to export it to your renderer to test it.

Tyson explains the setup in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snJXgLqXhb4


How do you convert your painted object space map to tangent space?

You can just bake it again to a new image texture, but this time in tangent space. Just make sure your painterly object space normal map is plugged into your shader when you do it.


Can I do this procedurally or semi-procedurally?

Yeah! Check out these videos:

Painterly shader with nodes: https://youtu.be/AtetvOEcZt8?si=dNj-8toj3XQxE4aO&t=890

Brush strokes with geometry nodes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgZsVBVZ3Nc&t=9s

Snapping normals (this one's in Korean, but is still pretty easy to follow from just the visuals): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wxvwwYWZHs&t=141s



Can I paint the normal map in Blender?

Yes! Check out these videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyxPN2HRaFk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoIwVWmdqL4


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