LEARNING PATH

Texturing and Materials

A Texture Artist's challenge is to define the material, history, function, age, and style of a diverse range of assets. From a castle wall to a fantasy creature, is it clean, weathered, damaged, dusty, dull, shiny – or a varied combination of all? The Texturing & Materials Path assembles 12 workshops by film, animation, and game-art veterans who share professional tips, techniques, and workflows for texturing props, vehicles, environments, and creatures using industry-standard software, including Maya, Substance, Mari, Houdini, and Unreal Engine.

The featured instructors have contributed to such projects as Guardians of the Galaxy, The Jungle Book, Uncharted, The Mandalorian, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor at studios including Framestore, DreamWorks, Respawn Entertainment, and Riot Games.

Beginner to Advanced 65h 04min 12 Workshops

By 12 Instructors

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Creating Production-Ready Hero Assets using Mari

VFX Artist Michal Zsigmund guides artists through the process of using Mari and Gaffer to create stunning, production-ready hero assets for film and TV. This 4h 11m workshop covers leveraging Mari's Extension Pack for detailed texturing, exporting meshes from Maya using Alembic...

by Michal Zsigmund

Intermediate

4h 11m

8 Lessons

Look Development Texturing & Shading UV Layout

Gaffer

Mari

Maya

Fantasy Creature Texturing & Look Dev

Senior VFX Artist Sohrab Esfehani provides a 6h 33m workshop on a full, film-quality pipeline for creature texturing and look development. Utilizing Mari, ZBrush, Nuke, and Houdini, the tutorial covers advanced techniques for creating photorealistic skin and complex fur...

by Sohrab Esfehani

Intermediate

6h 33m

23 Lessons

Creature Art Creature Design Digital Sculpting Grooming HDR Images Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading UV Layout

Nuke

Mari

Houdini

ZBrush

Material Texturing for Production in Mari & Maya

Lead Texture Artist Peter Aversten shares his 8h 40m feature film texturing workflow using Mari and Maya. This comprehensive course covers Mari node graph fundamentals, advanced material creation...

by Peter Aversten

Advanced

8h 40m

28 Lessons

Lighting & Rendering Texturing & Shading UV Layout

Mari

Maya

Substance Painter

Procedural Shading Techniques for Houdini & Arnold

Wojtek Piwowarczyk, an Environment Generalist TD, presents an 8h 30m workshop on creating photorealistic procedural shaders using Arnold and the procedural nature of Houdini...

by Wojtek Piwowarczyk

Intermediate

8h 30m

16 Lessons

Environment Art Environment Design Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading

Arnold

Houdini

ZBrush

Lighting & Look Dev Essentials Vol 2: Shading & Texturing

CG Supervisor Adrien Vallecilla shares a 4h 41m workshop on advanced look development and shading theory, showing how to create realistic shaders and procedural textures in Maya and Redshift...

by Adrien Vallecilla

Beginner

4h 41m

7 Lessons

Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading

Redshift

Maya

Vehicle Texturing in Substance Painter: From Clean to Mean

James Schauf presents a 9h 51m workshop on vehicle texturing in Substance Painter, demonstrating how to achieve two different looks: a clean, slightly imperfect hot rod (Night Fire) and a rusty, 'Mad Max' inspired rat rod (Rusty Scorpion)...

by James Schauf

Advanced

9h 51m

23 Lessons

Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading UV Layout

KeyShot

Maya

Substance Painter

Unreal Engine 5 Material System Overview

Lead Digital Projects Engineer Charleston Silverman gives a complete 5-hour overview of the Unreal Engine 5 Material System, covering both fundamental and advanced techniques. The workshop details efficient use of textures, PBR, material instances, and advanced material types like Parallax Occlusion Mapping...

by Charleston Silverman

Beginner

5h 00m

8 Lessons

Effects Animation Game Engines Look Development Texturing & Shading

Unreal

Creating Complex Materials for Games in Substance Designer

Senior Texture Artist Kat Tamburello presents a 3h 40m workshop, for beginner to intermediate artists, on creating a complex, multi-functional material in Substance Designer for games. The tutorial focuses on building a base material (dirt and cobblestones)...

by Kat Tamburello

Intermediate

3h 40m

10 Lessons

Environment Art Environment Design Texturing & Shading

Substance Designer

Creating Props for Games, Vol. 2: Texturing and Shading for Production

Senior Environment Artist Nick Reynolds presents a 7h 35m workshop focusing on the texturing and shading of game props using a non-destructive, iterative workflow in Substance Painter. Volume 2 begins with a detailed lecture on Physically Based Rendering (PBR) fundamentals before moving into practical texturing techniques...

by Nick Reynolds

Intermediate

7h 35m

16 Lessons

Game Engines Lighting & Rendering Texturing & Shading

Unreal

Substance Painter

Marmoset Toolbag

Photoshop

Getting Started With Look Development in Houdini

Look Development Artist Brent Le Blanc provides a 2h 20m workshop on texturing and shading, or "look development," utilizing an industry-standard workflow combining Maya (for UVs), Substance Designer (for custom tools), Substance Painter (for texturing), and Houdini with Redshift...

by Brent Le Blanc

Beginner

2h 20m

6 Lessons

HDR Images Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading UV Layout

Redshift

Substance Designer

Houdini

Maya

Substance Painter

Creating Stone Wall Materials in Substance Designer

Senior Texture Artist Josh Lynch provides a 2h 50m workshop detailing industry-standard workflows for creating believable stone wall materials in Substance Designer...

by Josh Lynch

Intermediate

2h 50m

7 Lessons

Texturing & Shading

Substance Designer

Marmoset Toolbag

Creating Complex Designs and Patterns

Principal Artist Nate Stephens demonstrates the creation of a complex decorative medallion asset using Substance Designer, ZBrush, Maya, and Marmoset Toolbag. The 2h 03m workshop starts by building complex shapes in Substance Designer, moves to ZBrush for sculpting detail and retopology, then to Maya for UVs...

by Nate Stephens

Advanced

2h 03m

10 Lessons

Game Engines Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading UV Layout

Substance Designer

Maya

Substance Painter

Marmoset Toolbag

ZBrush

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about the Learning Path.

Learning Paths have been organized to help both aspiring and professional artists, who are looking for training based on the fundamental categories of creative work in the visual effects, animation and games industries. Each Learning Path has been curated to contain a collection of workshops that guide artists through a series of topics relevant to that path, but they are not necessarily sequential. When appropriate, however, we have organized the workshops in a path to be in a logical order. All workshops are tagged with their level (beginner, intermediate, advanced) so that you can browse the path and choose a title that matches both the subject matter and level that you are looking for.

All Gnomon Workshop instructors are professional artists from the entertainment industry, who have worked with us to structure their time, experience and knowledge into practical and inspiring training. We believe that it is important to learn from masters of the craft, who have honed those skills via years of experience working in production, collaboratively with their peers. Through time and experience, artists develop not just their creative and technical ability, but also their communication skills. These become critical aspects to being an effective lead artist, supervisor or, in our case, instructor.

Whether you choose an Annual or a Monthly Subscription, your plan will give you unlimited access to all 26 Learning Paths, allowing you to learn at your own pace. Your subscription also gives you access to the entire catalog of 350+ workshops, with new comprehensive workshops added every month.

While many workshops include Project Files, these are at the instructors’ discretion. You will find details of any project files provided on each workshop page, along with the software/tools required to tackle the workshop. If you have any questions, you can contact us via our Live Chat or email the team at support@thegnomonworkshop.com.

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Over 350 Workshops. 250+ Instructors.
Concept Art, Visual Effects, Games and much more.
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Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced Levels

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Texturing and Materials

Creating Production-Ready Hero Assets using Mari

Fantasy Creature Texturing & Look Dev

Material Texturing for Production in Mari & Maya

Procedural Shading Techniques for Houdini & Arnold

Lighting & Look Dev Essentials Vol 2: Shading & Texturing

Vehicle Texturing in Substance Painter: From Clean to Mean

Unreal Engine 5 Material System Overview

Creating Complex Materials for Games in Substance Designer

Creating Props for Games, Vol. 2: Texturing and Shading for Production

Getting Started With Look Development in Houdini

Creating Stone Wall Materials in Substance Designer

Creating Complex Designs and Patterns

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