Sicilian Food Meet Mat!

Hi everyone! I'm Giulia Filipputti and this is my fourth and last update for this contest, where I brought a very important part of my culture (aka food!) to life through our dear Meet Mat. I really enjoyed taking part in this challenge, as it allowed me not only to improve my texturing skills, but also to familiarize a bit more with this amazing software that is Substance 3D Painter.

Food is something I really feared to texture, as it is very difficult to achieve a result that looks appealing, and most of all edible. I would say that the main challenge I had to face was getting all the different consistencies right, especially working on the roughness and subsurface scattering levels. Base color was an important piece of the puzzle too: although most of the food on my Meet Mat contained some sorts of brown shades, I had to be very careful not to make it look burnt, and therefore not very yummy.
Working on each map of my MeetMat separately was the only way to be in control of all the aspect mentioned above:

I particularly enjoyed the MeetMat3 Contest: it allowed me to go out of my comfort zone and to explore new consistencies I never had the pleasure to work with. Moreover, it was very interesting to see all the different approaches and ideas and the unique Meet Mats that came out of them.
'Til the next challenge :) 

Long time no see! It's time to post some new updates to my entry. Main change was the base: as I was not satisfied with the flag-table cloth idea, I tried to gather some more ideas. In the end I went for some Sicilian maioliche, which are some decorative patterns used on different ceramic products, plates included. I made sure to add the inscription on the side to make it a bit more souvenir-like.

I added some displacement on the head to make the saffron rice filling visible. I played with the displacement on the arms as well to give a more realistic vibe to the Ricotta cheese cream.

For the body, I made sure to make the chocolate decorations look really hand-made, as in the Sicilian Cassata they are everything but precise! I tried to adapt the traditional design to the Meet Mat shape, in order to make them look like some sort of T-Shirt Pattern or necklace.

I would say I am pretty much done, in the next and last update I will probably just add the candied fruit decorations both on the belly (over the white circles) and I am going to refine some parts of my displacement.

See you soon with my final Sicilian Meet Mat!

It's time to post an update! As you can see, I decided to concentrate on the "dry" (and fried!) parts of the food at first. This first approach with these dishes was a real challenge, as they all have different displacement patterns from each other. To make the head I worked with different shades of base color, ranging from yellow, brown to bright orange, while creating some "crumbly" displacement through one of the "Kyle" set brushes. I tried to play with the roughness as well, in order to keep it dry as a crust, while giving some occasional greasy reflections.

The making of the cannoli's crust for the arm was made much easier by the newly added Curve Tool, which allowed me to create some sharp outlines, following the reference as closely as possible.

The legs have been quite a challenge, as it was pretty difficult to create a good base texture without taking the honey coat (which will be tackled at a later stage) into account. I tried to give almost the same colour variation as the head, keeping the legs a bit lighter as "Crispelle" looks more on the yellow-y/beige-y side than Arancini. The main feature is the displacement map: I wanted to recreate the typical fried and bubbly appearance, trying to take into account how it will have look with the honey cover on top.

As for the base, I basically used a simple image of a Sicilian flag and tried to enrich it with some slightly perceptible fabric displacement map, layered with some folds, also obtained by using a height map.

When it comes to the next challenges I will have to face for this MeetMat, I believe that giving the right creamy texture to both the Cannoli's ricotta cheese filling and the Cassata will be one of the hardest task. I will also have to work a lot on the displacement maps in order to create all the candied fruit decorations, which again can be found both on the hands and on the belly of my Meet Mat.

This contest has been real fun so far. I will see you all on the next update!

Hi everybody! For this Meet Mat Contest I wanted to pay tribute to the Italian region I come from, Sicily, and to its amazing food, which is a strong part of our identity and culture. 

The head of my Meet Mat will be an "arancino" (also called "arancina" in some other parts of the region, but be aware that the name of it is a hot topic among Sicilians, so never engage in a conversation about it!): it is a fried dish that comes in ball or drop shape, made of rice and meat sauce and covered in a simple batter. I chose to go for the ball one, as it would be closer to the Meet Mat original head shape. I am also thinking about making it look bitten through a displacement map, so that I can show the rice and meat parts, therefore obtaining some variation when it comes to colours and textures.

Cannolis will be my Meet Mat's arms, they are basically a dessert made of a fried crunchy crust (get used to it, we basically fried everything we can), filled with sweetened ricotta cheese cream and sometimes chocolate chips. To make the arms look a bit more interesting and less repetitive, I will take advantage of the different nuts caramelized fruit decorations, which are the strongest visual feature of cannolis. 

Body will be made of Sicilian "Cassata", that is a very sweet kind of cake also made with sweetened ricotta cheese cream. I think it will give coherence to the design of my Meet Mat, as Cassata also has caramelized fruit decorations like Cannoli.

My Meet Mat's tasty legs will be made of honey-coated rice "crispelle", which are once made of a very basic (once again) fried dough, covered in honey or powdered sugar, according to one's taste. I may exploit these two different flavours to give again some variation to the design, and I want to make the honey drip on the base.

Talking about it, for the base I chose to use the Sicilian flag, but as a tablecloth. As I wrote in my scheme, the flag could make my design more recognisable and making it a tablecloth would make it more cohesive with the whole theme of the Meet Mat. Which is food.

I am really excited for this challenge, as it will be a good occasion to test my texturing skills and be closer to my region through my work. I hope you'll enjoy seeing the updates of it!