Texture Pipeline: Mobile Game Characters

*Disclaimer: This breakdown is fairly dated since my texture pipeline is now primarily based in Substance Painter like many character artists. The information in the videos below may still be useful for beginners looking to understand the basics of the high to low res pipeline for game development, using baked texture maps (curvature, ao, color ID, normal, etc), and painting with masks. Apps like Substance Painter, Quixel Suite, Marmoset and more are based on these pipeline concepts.*

This is a brief walkthrough of the texture pipeline for many characters in The World of Lexica, a mobile game on iPad created by Schell Games for Amplify Education. This pipeline can apply to mobile and online games in various engines and platforms, especially games with many characters on screen at once where more optimized meshes and textures are needed.

This is not a step-by-step tutorial on texturing or how to use a specific tool, but rather a one hour overview of the texture pipeline itself. Below you will find five short videos covering

• UV layout: Maya
  
• Texture preparation: Zbrush, XNormal, Photoshop, Quixel NDO/DDO (Legacy - free)
  
• Texture layer structure: Photoshop
  
• Diffuse texture: Photoshop, Quixel DDO (Legacy - free)
  
• Specular texture: Photoshop

These videos will open with media players supporting the mp4 format and H264 video compression. Also watch them online for free on my YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnDeRiggi, or on my ArtStation page, https://www.artstation.com/johnderiggi.

This pipeline walkthrough was created internally for studio needs and on studio time. Schell Games granted me permission to share, so I hope it is helpful!