The Direct Action Texturing Pipeline
Direct Action uses a hybrid workflow. Artists author weapon materials in Specular / Glossiness for direct control, then the Unreal Engine shader converts the result into the engine’s Metallic / Roughness representation.
For Direct Action, we use a hybrid approach.
Weapons are authored in Specular / Glossiness, and then the Unreal Engine shader converts the result into a correct Metallic / Roughness representation.
This gives artists the best of both workflows:
- Specular / Glossiness provides better control during texture authoring.
- Metallic / Roughness remains compatible with the engine-side rendering pipeline.
At the authoring stage, artists work in Substance Painter using Specular / Glossiness. Direct control over specular color and reflection intensity gives more convincing results for steel, brass, copper cartridges, anodized aluminum, polymer-coated parts, and other weapon materials.
Metal occupies a significant part of the visible weapon surface, and material response becomes much more noticeable when the player can inspect the object closely, rotate it, and see highlights move across the surface in stereo.
The transition problem between metal and non-metal is also much easier to handle in this workflow. Paint, dirt, oil, dust, and wear can be layered while preserving the correct behavior of the material underneath.
Viewport Matching: Painter, Toolbag, and Unreal
Matched LUTs, calibrated HDRI lighting, consistent tonemapping, aligned shaders, and shared references keep Substance Painter, Marmoset Toolbag, and Unreal visually close to the final result.
Before texturing begins, the artist needs to be sure that the image in the texturing application matches the final render as closely as possible.
Without this synchronization, texturing becomes a lottery. A material may look great in Substance Painter and then turn into plastic once imported into the engine.
To avoid this, we use a controlled setup with:
- matched LUTs
- calibrated HDRI lighting
- consistent tonemapping
- aligned shader behavior
- reference comparison across applications
This allowed us to achieve a very close visual match between:
- photo reference
- Substance Painter
- Marmoset Toolbag
- Unreal Engine 4 / Unreal Engine 5
As a result, what the artist sees in the Painter viewport is very close to how the asset will appear in the game.
This significantly reduces polishing time after export. Once the asset is integrated into Unreal, only small tweaks are usually required before it is ready for production use.
Building Materials Like a Layered Object
Materials are organized in the same order as the real object: clean substrate, factory finish, markings, use-related wear, and temporary surface layers such as oil, dirt, dust, fingerprints, carbon, and field repairs.
The technical part of the pipeline is only half of the work. The other half is how the artist builds the material itself.
Our layer structure in Substance Painter follows the logic of how a weapon is manufactured, assembled, and used in the real world.
It works much like building a layered cake: you start with the foundation, add each layer in the correct order, and finish with the smallest surface details on top.
The material is assembled in five clear layers, from the physical substrate at the bottom to temporary surface details at the top:
| Layer | Role | Typical elements |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Clean base material | Steel, aluminum, polymer, rubber, brass, glass, coated alloys |
| 02 | Factory finish | Bluing, parkerizing, anodizing, Cerakote, paint, protective coating |
| 03 | Factory markings | Stamps, serial numbers, engravings, logos, caliber markings, proof marks |
| 04 | Wear through use | Scratches, edge wear, contact wear, handling marks, magazine insertion wear, selector movement wear, charging handle contact, rail attachment marks |
| 05 | Temporary or accumulated surface elements | Oil, dirt, dust, fingerprints, carbon residue, tape, operator markings, small field repairs |
This is the same principle we follow during the concept stage: we build the object according to how it exists in the real world.
The logic of the material follows the logic of its real life. When an artist searches for references or physically holds the object, they begin to understand not only what the surface looks like, but also why it looks that way.
Scalability of the Layered Approach
The shared material foundation supports multiple wear states. Heavier variants can be created by adjusting upper layers without repainting the base material or losing its identity.
This approach also scales well.
If we need to create a heavily worn version of the same asset later, the artist does not need to repaint everything from scratch. The lower material foundation remains the same. Only the upper layers - dirt, oil, scratches, local damage, dust, and handling wear - need to be adjusted.
This allows one asset to support multiple wear states while preserving a consistent material identity.
Weapon Wear: Where We Set the Bar
Direct Action aims for light wear: handled and used, but not heavily abused. It provides enough visual story and material variation without overwhelming the player or consuming excessive production time.
For Direct Action, we intentionally aim for light wear.
The goal is to create weapons that have been handled and used, but not dragged through several wars. This is the middle ground between fresh out of the box and heavily abused.
This decision is both artistic and practical.
A perfectly clean asset gives the artist very little room for interpretation. It often ends up looking similar no matter who creates it. On the other hand, a heavily damaged asset can consume days of work on details that the player may never consciously notice.
Light wear gives the artist the best balance. It allows room for craft, storytelling, material variation, and personality, while keeping production time under control.
Realistic Assets Should Not Fight for Attention
A realistic VR weapon should feel natural in the player’s hands. Excessive damage, contrast, and surface noise make an always-visible object distracting instead of believable.
One of our internal principles is that a realistic weapon asset should not constantly demand attention.
This may sound paradoxical, but a good realistic asset is often one that feels natural enough to disappear into the world. The player should notice it when they want to admire it, not because it looks like a junkyard object or a Christmas tree without any narrative reason.
The weapon should feel accurate, readable, clean, and friendly to the player’s eye.
This is especially important for FPV shooters.
Start With Clean Materials
Correct color, specular response, roughness or gloss, micro-surface variation, and lighting behavior must make the clean base believable before dirt and damage are added.
Another important rule is to learn how to create realistic and artistic materials before adding dirt, scratches, oil, or wear.
A strong base material should already feel convincing through:
- correct color values
- correct specular response
- controlled roughness or gloss
- believable micro-surface variation
- material structure
- proper response to lighting
Dirt should enhance a material, not hide weak material work.
If the asset only becomes believable after adding a lot of damage, the base material is probably not strong enough.
Artist Motivation as Part of the Pipeline
Creative engagement is a production concern. Light wear gives artists room for interpretation and storytelling while keeping the work focused and achievable.
Texturing is not only about technical correctness. It is also about keeping the artist creatively engaged.
An artist may spend one or two weeks with a single weapon asset. During that time, they need to remain interested in the object, its surface, its story, and its final quality.
Supporting the creative state of the team is not just a nice bonus. It is part of the production process.
When artists are genuinely interested in the asset they are working on, they are more motivated to improve it, study it, and make better decisions. Light wear gives them enough freedom to add interpretation and storytelling without drowning them in endless micro-scratches.
Why Subject Knowledge Matters
PBR knowledge alone is not enough. Understanding firearm construction, moving parts, finishes, wear, dirt, and material behavior turns technically correct surfaces into believable assets and keeps work consistent across artists.
Everything described above - the pipeline, the layers, the wear logic, and the material consistency - works because the decisions are made by people who understand the subject.
Weapon texturing is one of those areas where theoretical PBR knowledge is not enough.
An artist may understand F0, energy conservation, texture compression, and roughness response perfectly. But if they have never held a firearm, do not understand its proportions, do not know which parts move, have never seen how parkerizing fades under sunlight, or have not noticed how dirt behaves differently on polymer and metal, the asset may remain technically correct but still feel unreal.
This experience settles into the materials.
Over years of working together, we have built our own internal material base:
Each of these materials has a defined visual language in our pipeline, developed across dozens of assets.
Because of that, steel on an AR-15 and steel on an AK in Direct Action can feel consistent even if they were created by different artists. This is not only a written rule in a document. It is a collective production reflex built through experience, repetition, review, and shared reference standards.
Production Principle
Good weapon texturing combines material truth, controlled artistic interpretation, and a pipeline that preserves consistency from Painter to the final engine render.
Good texturing is not just about making an asset look detailed.
It is about understanding what the object is made of, how it was manufactured, how it is used, how it ages, and how it should behave under light.
A believable weapon texture is built from material truth, controlled artistic interpretation, and a pipeline that keeps the result consistent from Painter to the final engine render.