Blog

Things learned the expensive way

Short, practical writing about texturing, material authoring and getting hired — the notes I would give a student sitting next to me.

LatestSubstance PainterSmart MaterialsWorkflow

I sell smart materials. FlippedNormals is half right.

A video with 200,000 views says beginners lean too hard on smart materials. I make them for a living. Half of it is right, and most people took the wrong half.

September 23, 20264 min read

AIRetopologyBaking

AI retopology in seconds: what it does to your bake

The vendors' own documentation says the quiet part. Run the one test that matters — a high-to-low bake — and retopology in seconds stops being retopology.

September 18, 20264 min

CareerPortfolioEnvironment Art

No trim sheet, no environment art job

Ten hero props and nothing that tiles. The missing trim sheet is not the problem — it is the evidence, and here is what a lead reads into it.

September 13, 20264 min

Lumen cannot see your base mesh, and Unreal will not tell you

Lumen puts 12 cards on a mesh, culls small props out of the scene, and cannot hold a one-sided surface at all. Your prop renders and gives back no light. The view mode that shows you is one dropdown a

September 10, 20264 min

ZBrush sends straight to Painter now. Read what "Low & High" actually sends.

The ZBrush to Substance Painter bridge deletes the export step, and its recommended setting hands Painter your lowest subdivision level as the low-poly. Adobe's own polycount guidance is a hundred tim

September 9, 20264 min

ZBrush moved your brushes. Every install readme is now wrong, including mine.

Since 2026.1 ZBrush will not write into its own Program Files folder. Every brush pack readme that says "drop it into ZStartup" is now out of date — I checked my own catalogue and nine of my listings

September 8, 20264 min

TexturesOptimisationWorkflow

I sell 4K textures. Most of you should not use 4K.

A 4K PBR set costs 64 MB and covers one small crate. Here is the resolution your prop actually needs, and the arithmetic that decides it.

September 8, 20264 min

Blender said animation got three times faster. On the file that mattered it was four per cent.

Blender 5.1's own table reports gains from 4 per cent to 304 per cent. Every write-up quoted the 304. I rebuilt all three tests on 5.0.1 and 5.1.1, and my rig file gained nothing at all.

September 7, 20264 min

Four bone influences is all the engine keeps

Blender stored 44 weighted groups on one vertex without complaining. Unreal keeps four, sometimes eight, and nothing warns you — so I measured what falls off at a 90 degree shoulder raise.

September 6, 20264 min

Blender 4.2 LTS is over. Here is the number I put on 18 add-ons.

Blender 4.2 stopped getting fixes in July. I installed my own Lego Generator on four Blender versions to pick a new minimum — it failed on two of them, including the one my listing claims.

September 5, 20264 min

The texture cache saves 4.4 GB. It does nothing for a packed .blend.

Blender 5.2's texture cache cut one benchmark scene from 5,417 MB to 1,052 MB. I tiled and mipmapped my own 4K set to price it: 643 MB became 1.26 GB, and a packed .blend gets none of it.

September 4, 20264 min

Nanite Foliage deleted the LOD chain. Read what Epic actually shipped

Epic's 41-million-triangle tree costs 29 MB instead of 3.5 GB. The trick is not Nanite. Divide two numbers on that page and you can see what it is.

September 3, 20264 min

BlenderAsset LibrariesWorkflow

Blender 5.2 remote asset libraries: do the arithmetic

Blender 5.2 hosts your asset library off a static web server. I packed one of my own 4K packs to find the real cost: 643 MB to download a single plank.

September 3, 20264 min

Your UV padding is wrong below the 128 mip, and that is not an opinion

I measured it: 226 ruined compression blocks at a 2 px gap, and 21.77 of error once the mips run out. Padding is a number, not a vibe. (135 chars)

September 2, 20264 min

Your AI albedo has the light painted into it. Their own docs say so

Every generator paints light into the base colour, then your engine adds its own. There is one checkbox, and the vendors' own docs say to keep it on.

September 1, 20264 min

AI models are one upload in six and one dollar in ninety

Two reports ten days apart measured the same thing and disagreed. AI is one upload in six and one dollar in ninety. Both numbers are true. (137 chars)

August 31, 20264 min

The art test is graded in the outliner, before anyone opens your render

I ran a lead's outliner check over 46 real Blender files: 831 objects, 2.2 seconds each. Fifteen passed. Here is what the other thirty-one failed.

August 30, 20264 min

You are not competing with the laid-off veteran. You are competing with 225,000 other juniors

The laid-off seniors are 43,000 people. The graduates are 225,000. I read the workforce numbers, and the advice juniors keep hearing is a quarter true.

August 29, 20264 min

BlenderAdd-onsMarketplaces

Superhive's support period, from the seller's side

I sell eighteen add-ons there. Everyone is arguing about the wrong clause — the one that matters ties you to the Blender LTS, and your customers are not on it.

August 29, 20264 min

Unity deleted a whole region's sellers in 28 days. Read your payout page today

Unity gave publishers in Greater China 28 days before delisting them. Nobody broke a rule. Open your payout page and work out one number.

August 28, 20264 min

Everyone still says bake in Marmoset for skew. That stopped being true on 23 June

Painter 12.1 added skew painting. Half the internet's baking advice is now out of date, and half of it is still right. Here is which half.

August 27, 20264 min

OpenPBR is the default now. The thing that breaks is your file names.

Painter 12.1 made OpenPBR the default shader. Your smart materials are fine. Your export naming convention quietly changed, and that is the one that costs you.

August 26, 20264 min

Blender 5.2 broke every add-on that drives Geometry Nodes from Python

Blender 5.2 changed how Python writes a Geometry Nodes modifier. I audited all eighteen of my add-ons. Two use the old API, and both broke.

August 25, 20264 min

ArtStationMarketplacesIndustry

KitBash bought ArtStation. I sell there. What I do now

Epic sold ArtStation to a company that sells what I sell. Every article says nothing changes. I can show you the last time that line was used.

August 24, 20264 min

CareerPortfolio

Portfolio mistakes that quietly cost junior artists the job

After reviewing several thousand student pieces, the same five problems come up again and again — and none of them are about talent.

May 12, 20263 min

Substance DesignerCloth

Why I build fabric procedurally instead of scanning it

Photo textures are faster on day one and slower on every day after. A note on why the Designer graph wins for cloth.

February 24, 20263 min

Substance PainterWorkflow

Mesh maps are not optional: the bake decides your texture

Most 'bad texture' problems are bad bakes. Here is the checklist I run before a single layer goes down in Substance Painter.

November 18, 20254 min