Week 4 - Trim sheets

My plan for week 4 was to create a single 2k trim sheet material which I could use for multiple meshes throughout my piece. We had been taught to do this by baking high poly meshes onto a plane before texturing them in substance painter. To gain a bit more understanding on the subject before I started, I watched a couple YouTube tutorial on trim sheets by Abe Leal 3D (Abe Leal 3D, 2025a; Abe Leal 3D, 2025b).

I also used an article breaking down a high quality trim sheet (Collins, 2026) as inspiration.

Once I had become comfortable enough in the subject, I took one of my walls and colour coded it with a plan of my trim sheet.

Chosen mesh

Colour coded mesh

The blue sections on my mesh was where I would create a wood texture, and the red sections was where I would create a stone wall.

To begin creating the high poly sculpt for this, I watched two tutorials on how to sculpt wood and rock (Abe Leal 3D, 2025a; Polygon Acadamy, 2019). I took this knowledge into to Zbrush and created my high poly using the knife tool, TrimDynamic, HPolish, DamStandard and TrimSmoothBord. I also read an article on how to create another type of rock (Coulman, 2026) so I could combine techniques in my workflow.

High poly trim sheet rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 5

High poly trim sheet rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 5

Once I had created the high poly, I realised that the material no longer would tile within the UV space it is allocated. This is due to ZBrush edits I had made on either side to the material that do not match up to the other. To solve this issue, I decimated my sculpt in ZBrush to decrease the poly count, and exported it into Maya to reorganise it.

While in Maya, I reorganised the tiling of my sheet so that it would match up, and added another section of trim in replacement of some of the rock wall area. This new section placed between the rock wall and the wood would be a concrete trim, for the lower parts of some of my other walls.

Reorganised High poly trim sheet rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 5 with additional concrete trim

Reorganised High poly trim sheet rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 5 with additional concrete trim

I then colour coded each section of my trim sheet with lambert materials in Maya which would allow me to distinguish between meshes when the high poly is baked to a plane in Substance Painter.

Colour coded high poly

Rock wall - Red

Concrete - Green

Wood - Pink

Welding - Blue

I was now ready to export my high poly trim into Substance Painter and bake it onto the plane.

I created a 2k material in substance painter and baked on the high poly onto the plane.

Baked trim sheet, rendered in substance Painter

I researched already created wood textures as well as photos of wooden planks, rocks and concrete as reference to create the materials (Caradon Stone, 2024; TimberStore UK, 2022).

I then created all three materials needed for the trim sheet and used colour selection to apply them to each section of the trim.

Final trim sheet rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 5

Final trim sheet rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 5

Final trim sheet rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 5 (Tiling example)

I took this trim sheet back into my Maya project and applied it to two of my meshes. By moving the UV's I was able to apply different parts of the mesh as different materials and make the material tile as best as possible.

Trim sheet colour applied in Maya to create UV map.

UVs

Trim sheet colour applied in Maya to create UV map.

UVs

Once I was happy with my UVs and the tiling, I took the walls into Marmoset Toolbag 5 to test all the material maps on the mesh, as well as tiling multiple walls together.

Trim sheet tiled on walls, rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 5

Trim sheet tiled on walls, rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 5

Trim sheet tiled on walls, rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 5

Trim sheet tiled on walls, rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 5

Drawing for games work this week:

Working with compositions and tone

Bibliography:

Abe Leal 3D (2025a). Sculpting Rocks in Zbrush for your Environments! [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyYvRLKAC9E [Accessed 22 May 2025].

Abe Leal 3D (2025b). Trim Sheets for Games - Modelling and Organization. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsKGqD8GVNY.

Abe Leal 3D (2025c). Trim Sheets for Games - Sculpting and Bakes. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skgF3V8ipJo [Accessed 4 Dec. 2025].

Caradon Stone. (2024). Walling Stone | Cornish Granite & Slate for Landscaping & Building. [online] Available at: https://www.caradonstone.co.uk/product-category/exterior-stone/walling-stones/ [Accessed 18 Feb. 2026].

Polygon Acadamy (2019). TUTORIAL: Sculpting Wood in ZBRUSH - 3 EASY STEPS! | Polygon Academy. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiwV_C3IWQI.

TimberStore UK. (2022). TimberStore UK. [online] Available at: https://timberstoreonline.co.uk/ [Accessed 18 Feb. 2026].

Collins, E. (2026). Check Out This Stone Trimsheet Material Created with Substance 3D. [online] 80.lv. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/take-a-look-at-this-stone-trimsheet-material-created-with-substance-3d [Accessed 5 May 2026].

Coulman, K.J. (2026). Learn How to Sculpt and Texture Rocks with Moss for an Environment. [online] 80.lv. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/learn-how-to-sculpt-and-texture-rocks-with-moss-for-an-environment [Accessed 5 May 2026].