Another way I made cable clusters was by deforming a duplicated strip of cables along a curve, then I removed the geometry outside that curve. I also removed redundant geometry such as edge loops that didn’t create any prominent angles. I can also apply several UV channels on the cable meshes for easy texture swaps.

When texturing in Substance Painter I always want to make sure I can reuse my materials throughout my project. It can be tempting to use paint layers for texture variety instead of baked masks, or even smart masks, and I see this too often with beginners. They deviate from the standards before even learning the basics. Substance Painter is designed for a smart material workflow for very good reasons. It’s faster, it gives a more natural look when using generated and baked masks, and it’s great for continuity, and in time you will have built your very own material library.

A good example of a simple, yet effective smart material is the tempered steel material shown below. To create this, I made a layer group containing 6 fill layers. Every layer represented benchmarks from the various colors produced between 400 and 730 Fahrenheit. I then created a smart mask utilizing thickness, curvature, and Ambient occlusion to paint discoloring where heat would be most prominent. I gradually reduced the global balance in each mask the warmer the layer would be. This way each discoloring would have their own shades of grey to represent and give place for the whole spectrum regardless of mesh.