Arcane Tutorial Part 2 : Deep Dive Into the Arcane Look and Camera Projections (Blender 3.0 / EEVEE)

Part 2 of our series on how to replicate the stylized look of the Arcane animated series in Blender.
This tutorial was done using Blender 3.0 and the EEVEE rendering engine.
Watch Part 1 here : • Arcane Style Tutorial ...
To purchase the Lightning Boy Shader check out our Gumroad page : lightningboystudio.gumroad.co...
Tidal Blades 2 Kickstarter :
www.kickstarter.com/projects/...
Our Twitter :
/ lightningboyst1
Other credits :
Trailer Sound effects : Mark Donis [Pride Productions] - / 1mdonis
Opening Logo Sound Mix : Les Productions Underground
Arcane Cogs Reference: Magali Vidal - www.artstation.com/artwork/Vy...
Chapters:
0:00​​ Intro
0:57 Arcane Shots Analysis
4:50 Making an Arcane Style Default Cube
15:56 How to Bake Texture in EEVEE
22:05 Character Shading/Texturing
32:58 Texturing the Character's Head
34:05 Lighting Tricks
37:34 Eye Specular
37:51 Character Camera Mapping
39:00 Environment Camera Mapping

[@doublefuture]

I'm not a digital artist, but seeing someone this incredibly smart and completely devoted to their craft is really inspiring

[@ghklfghjfghjcvbnc]

.... brown nose much? or perhaps just a bit too thirsty....

[@albertobuscicchio3915]

PLEASE please continue this series covering all the Arcane's show aspects! It's simply mind-blowing 🙌

[@TheLolilol321]

Doing it now might be a bad idea, I imagine these videos take a lot of effort since you have to watch Arcane with a keen eye, isolate details, conceptualize them and basically reverse engineer them to an okay workflow in blender and with Blender shifting focusing texturing and texture painting, it may all have changed at the end of the year to allow for a better workflow.

[@kieranidris1103]

@@TheLolilol321 its still a good learning process. Thats like saying lets not make a tutorial until Blender 4.0 comes out

[@TheLolilol321]

@@kieranidris1103 It is not a good learning process, why learn an obsolete deprecated workflow that has significant disadvantages when we know there is one being designed perhaps for the explicit purpose? You are fundamentally misunderstanding the situation if you equate rework to small incremental changes. This video in particular is basically exclusive to Blender.

[@pipeliner8969]

will be also 2D FX and a lot of compositing stuff. Watched a talk last week at FMX and they didn't do much lighting.

[@RrowdyBeast]

@@TheLolilol321 Indeed, they're actually rehauling texture painting and how it works with Blender 3.3 on, taking out the current/old method in the process. Not sure how it'll affect how these will work in the future, hoping they do a follow-up to aid with the new texture paint implementations because this is amazing!

[@zeronolife5060]

i been following alot of 3d artist talk about attempts to emulate 2d animation techniques for many years now. This is the most innovative and informative video i seen in the past few years. I am going to thank you so much for the information that you are sharing with the community and artist.

[@klauszwegert6382]

3d emulated 2D effectively quite often: Klaus on Netflix, Spiderman Into the Spiderverse are the biggest examples

[@SpaceManRD]

@@klauszwegert6382 Klaus is not 3D.

[@Nataliia_Ria]

@@SpaceManRD Klaus is mixed media. Most done 2d with some parts in 3d blended together.

[@soku330]

im curious how Chainsaw Man does it

[@CptBlaueWolke]

@@Nataliia_Ria Don't claim I know everything, but didn't they say it was primarily 2D with complex lighting systems that gave the 2D a 3D vibe?

[@astronautgamer9199]

Animators: so you want it 3D animated or 2D? Rito: yes.

[@StefanoBorini]

The only thing I learned is that it's easier to send a rocket to the moon.

[@springwater3723]

😂😂😂

[@CharacterDesignForge]

This is so excellent for so many reasons. I love the in-depth advanced ways that LBS can be used with baking. Thank you SO much for making this!

[@CharacterDesignForge]

Oh and I instantly backed Tidalblades and look forward to playing it!

[@krysidian]

Wow, this series is actual gold. This quick edit menu is a hidden gem I never knew about. Your tutorials have been a tremendous help for me when it comes to stylized rendering!

[@_g_r_m_]

That texture projection back and forth between blender and photoshop blew my mind.

[@zonyzhao469]

This is for art directors absolutely. I need a good command of everything, 2d ,modeling, shading, texturing to fully understand how this process came into being.

[@frownie]

Absolutely astounding tutorial! So many advanced techniques explained both seamlessly and in-depth to include people from different entry points to be able to follow along. Truly grateful for this!

[@warmination7891]

Thank you guys, i just really appreciate your art and beyond that, the fact that you share knowledge how you do it is just amazing

[@chained1755]

This is exactly the kind of approach I've been slowly developing over the past year. This tutorial just saved me months of research and experimentation I'm sure. Thank you SO MUCH!

[@cheetoschrist5685]

This is CRAZY work. Really pushing the limits of what Blender can achieve, and as an individual no less, talent OVER THE TOP

[@morgen3369]

you're an absolute beast. It's rare to have such detailed tutorials from someone with so much experience, it's greatly appreciated.

[@kenchen821]

omg this is the best blender tutorial I've ever seen. So many UNEXPECTED useful tools are learned. You are a true artist that can manipulate any tool to present your idea.

[@marcelofeijao8411]

I was smiling from beginning to end while doing this. You guys don't even know how value you are!!

[@joshpage4547]

The 3rd and possibly most dynamic way, would be to create 2 hand painted textures (one which is dark or default, and one which is light or colour dodge). Then inside blender's compositing, you create a live alpha texture to switch between the two based on a light's position. To get some randomness, you could distort the live alpha texture ever so slightly.

[@hlc617]

I just started getting serious about blender and I'm amazed by your channel. I feel like you're giving away mythical secrets for free! super inspiring, so excited about creating stuff, thank you!

[@yezzzsir]

This is the tutorial I've been waiting sooooo long for lol! I love how you analyze the problem before hand before working out how to approach the problem. Camera mapping & baking has been an issue I've had trouble with for a while This is gonna help my own projects so much thank you for your efforts here!

Damn, baking in Eevee? What a fantastic and unsuspected workaround! Keep it up David, wonderful work as always.

[@drewcomposed]

I'm a musician and just watched your whole video because I wanted to know how Arcane achieved some of those results. You delivered that and more! Great work.

[@ecmuppet9538]

2 minutes in and I can already tell you have a great eye and give acurate descripitions of whats going on in the scene. You just earned my sub

[@iden6075]

Gosh this series is an early birthday present, I just got into animation and blender and it was thanks to Arcane! This series has been my saving grace, thank you so much!

[@rotibasie]

I LOVE THIS SO MUCH OMG!! I've been really into studying blender recently and arcane has been a good motivation and this series is pure blessing!. Tho, if I may suggest it would be great to include the link to the original artist you use as reference - since you mentioned their artstation to begin with, not just so it'll easier for the viewers to find it, It'll be a nice form of support for the artist too!

[@LightningBoyStudio]

Great suggestion! We just added the link in the video description.

[@MexBotArts]

you guys are teaching the big things, you guys deserve may more views with this quality both in videos and products.

[@maddycat8873]

this is AMAZING, not only to know about the arcane style, but just so helpful for texture work in general thank you so much

[@wyattcoe8825]

Brilliantly informative tutorial! I am obsessed with Arcane’s art style.

[@zorika6554]

this is the tutorial I was looking for for months! I've tried and errored my way through learning camera projection as a 2d artist and I did manage to make scenes I'm happy with. But duuuude! Duuude the texture baking in Evee is such a game changer. I'm literally about to paint your god damn face with a halo into into my sketchbook! You! Are! The one I was waiting for!! This is SOO AWESOME!!! From the bottom of my heart, thank you for this. You're forever changing my creative process into something I enjoy and ,feel more passion, for. I really hope for more tutorials on ways to apply camera mapping in big scenes. This is blowing my mind!

[@LightningBoyStudio]

Thanks so much Zorika! Comments like yours make all the work putting these tutorials together worth it a thousand times over. Many of these techniques are new findings for us too and we were eager to share them with the community!

[@kentaro2121]

this. is. GOLD!! I've always wanted to learn Blender, but not sure where to start from. Arcane is one of my favorite show of all time. Then BOOM! TUTORIAL!! this is awesome. thank you for making.

[@AnaCristina-dv6qu]

Dude I just saw the made of arcane series and I was so frustrated that they didn’t show their composition process, sir, thank you thank you so so much you answer the questions that where in my head so beautiful, I will always cherish this information, what a wonderful person you are, I wish you all the success in the world

[@PedroMarinM]

Its insane how good this tutorial is , at first I did not understand the implications of the quick edit method so I was like ???? But as the video progressed I got it and was like !!!!!!! Omg this is brilliant , thank you for this tutorial , this is gold

[@theonlyartist1992]

this was an awesome breakdown of both the method but also how Arcane achieved their look. Fantastic work!

[@pleasedontwastefood]

I can't believe I'm watching this for free. This is phenomenal! Thank you!

[@Sant182]

Projecting into the UV is HUGE! Thanks for the tutorial

[@musubi-bi]

this is one of the most helpful videos out there regarding stylized 3D in between blender and photoshop, thanks for sharing your workflow, really tempting to buy your geonodes XD

[@Mewpet2]

This is incredible!!! I never knew you could do stuff like this, thank you!!

[@DrTheRich]

DUDE, as I'm pretty advanced in blender it's rare i still have mind blown moments in blender tutorials. But this just blew me away. That external edit feature is so powerful. I'll buy some gumroad stuff from you as thanks for bringing this up!

[@LightningBoyStudio]

Thanks, man! Really appreciate it!

[@Madlion]

randomly stumble onto this, very nice tricks. Especially the paint over technique for different angles, it can prolly be set to run procedurally when certain triangles faces camera enough or get closer, then this style can be transferred into video games.

[@zrinkokozlica8712]

One of the best tutorials about camera projections in Blender on YT, thanks for sharing! :)

[@activemotionpictures]

Spectacular. There has been so many artists asking about the eevee baking method, and I can finally refer them to 16:04 - Great video, sir!

[@dearage]

Insane!!! I wasn't even looking for this, but couldn't stop watching!!! Thank you for making this tutorial!

[@stephendowner6093]

This is amazing. You're doing amazing work in defining NPR shaders for Blender, and in sharing that knowledge. Thanks so much!!

[@MoonakaLadyYuna]

Thank you. I do a lot of research and training rn and this is really supportive for my projects and me as an artist

[@nerukas86]

Amazing series you have done. Watched whole 40 minutes with pleasure. Great content, huge love.

[@poszy6]

I always knew this took a lot of work for them, but know I truly understand how incredible Arcane is. Thanks :)

[@alejmc]

This is mindblowing. The whole thing is above and beyond, however, the one thing that I’m trying to come to peace with is that the EEVEE camera bake/quick-edit trick shown is incremental! It took me sometime to realize that it mixes up the incoming alpha information, leaving the transparent pixels from before untouched and all of that at the right place inside completely unwrapped uv… magic.

[@user-dx1kk7nj6g]

epic tutorials I've never seen you make everytime! INCREDIBLE!

[@gownerjones1450]

What a magnificently talented man. Just a joy to watch him work.

[@reke9942]

This is masterfully crafted. You're a hero for making this.

[@pentagramrecords3834]

This is one of the best Blender tutorials I've ever seen on KZbin. And it's FREE!! 😧

[@seanmackeigan2587]

Another great addition to the series! If you are having difficulty creating the textures for your cube using Photoshop, you can emulate a similar texture using the methods shown in the Character Shading/Texturing section without the need for hand painting.

[@tetedebug]

Wow!This is crazy to use texture projection like this (The hidden projection tip is great.) , Thanks a lot, I'm definitely going to try your approach.

[@jazzurll]

Wow! Bless your efforts, looks amazing!!!! Thank youuu

[@davidbennettarts2205]

I have no words... My mind is absolutely blown... Incredible thank you so much

[@saschakhan7651]

Thank you so much, this was exacally what I was looking for so long. You can't imagine how much time i've spent trying to blend both 2D and 3D teqniques. I will most definately donate for your Project. It's the least I can do

[@DarrinNoNAME]

This is just incredible. Thanks for the breakdown and tutorial of how to do implement camera mapping. Great Work and explanation. Seems like a lot of work too.

[@ipsey4794]

This has got to be one of the best tutorials for blender on youtube

[@PaulAnimatesStuff]

Thanks a lot for sharing your methods. Your entire series of videos have been highly educational; and I can't really stress enough how valuable a creator you are! (especially to a layman like myself) Keep up the great work! And thanks again!

[@loubna_khider]

This technic is just insane ! I was looking for that for so much time thank you !!!

[@lawrencetyrpa]

I'm just a beginner with Blender at the moment but I feel like this is going to be super helpful at some point. Thank you for sharing these techniques!

[@jumpkut]

This is one of the dopest tutorials I've ever seen.

[@Didjelirium]

Plain beautiful and awesome content... as usual, you guys share some incredible knowledge ! Thank you so much for taking the time to put this together ! :)

[@philhighfield4741]

almost 1M views! Thanks for sharing your workflow, great tut!

[@anjhap]

Hey I just wanted to tell you that the time you took to make this was really really kind and helpful. Thanks for sharing this, you explained everything beautifully

[@jazznezzz]

Dude thank you so much for sharing this masterclass video and spending time to structure the messaging and providing relevant examples/demos. Amazingly helpful.

[@AnubisTheMaster]

For the Light I feel it's best to project the base texture, but since you used a 3D Light, you can Bake the 3D Light with cycles as a separate layer, and then overlay with a Mix node

[@adrient104]

Incredible video. Thank you for putting this together for us, so much valuable tips there 🔥🔥

[@markarino9429]

Just finished the first part with the hair. Perfect timing!

[@gamerclan3606]

You guys are amazing. Keep up the great work and the great share. It helps the next generation to evolve through your teaching. Thank you again

[@norph1975]

Thank you so much for sharing the process. Result is awesome.

[@anaeyra_art]

I am sooo exited to try this. Thank you for the tutotrial :)

[@nellfallcard]

This tutorial is super useful! Thank you so much for sharing with us! 🙏

[@fleity]

Ohhh wooow, interesting is a grave understatement for this video. There are soo many useful tipps and insights in it. Thank you so much, really inspiring.

[@Arloc9]

Amazing work, and excellent teaching, congratulations and thank you !

[@ARuiz-ep1le]

this is amazing, Arcane is my biggest inspiration and this video is exactly what I was looking for

[@Alzeal07]

This is my new favourite Blender tutorial

[@ssduo5574]

More reasons for me to preach that Arcane is a true Masterpiece.

[@AlterMax24-YouTube]

mAn! As always, your tutorials are AMAZING! But this one here is CRAZY! Congratulations and THANK YOU sO much for everything!

[@ondrej_hrdina]

Holy shit, this changes everything! I was trying to do something like this for a long time but never knew how, THANK YOU!

[@nah3214]

gonna need you to continue this series I am obsessed with arcane visual style and character design, would love to see a video on charecter design

[@chibichanart]

I don't know, but i can't find words, it's just simply awesome!

[@sanyuktasrinivasan9157]

This is absolute gold, THANK YOU SO MUCH!

[@bs_art3625]

Dude you’re amazing. Would love to see a tutorial just focusing on hand painting in this style in Photoshop. Great video!

[@abdullahsinanoglu]

You are doing a great job at replicating the style, makes me wanna model

[@GavinBall]

Great tutorial! Awesome to see such an innovative way to bake using Eevee. It doesn't take as much time or cause as much noise as using Cycles. You'd probably enjoy incorporating 3D coat into your workflow. It has a pretty good back and forth with Blender and it's great for hand painting.

[@LeoKisomma]

First thing I did after the first video was investigate the Tidal planes 2 board game, first thing I did after this video was pledge to help it get created. You put so much hard work and effort into bringing all of this to life and I want to see you continue to do what you love :)

[@LightningBoyStudio]

Thanks so much LeoKisomma, that's really appreciated! My wife and I did put a ton of work into it. Tidal Blades and Dinomancers are really my two passion projects right now.

[@bao007fei]

The external editor auto project thing is like alien tech. Big thanks for introducing this hidden feature.

[@graythistle]

Wow... I've been projection painting for months now and didn't know about the quick edit thing... thank you so much!

[@LightningBoyStudio]

It's crazy, heh? I'm still amazed myself. My personal favorite discovery of the year, hands down. I used to do something similar years ago with ZBrush, there was an add-on that would help you bring a render in Photoshop and reproject, that's how we did all the textures for our short film Le Gouffre back in the days. But now I can do it right from Blender, how cool is that?

[@Mikefiser]

18:10 oh man, that drag select multiple value boxes is a hidden gem feature! Never saw this before

[@LightningBoyStudio]

It's those small things that make Blender so enjoyable what you get the hang of it.

[@snile_memes9978]

YOU ARE FIRST WHO SHOWED HOW TO DO THIS MAGIC THANKS

[@juliafisken5747]

Wow! I have never seen anyone texture like this, it's super cool! Such a great and informative video! I can imagine that this has some perks over substance painter as well :) Might try it out!

[@zuprazazel4380]

what a masterclass on this aesthetic. great vid

[@lorenzoferrante96]

This tutorial is pure gold! Thanks!!!

[@tatedinizbr]

Thank you so much! You guys are wonderful! 🤩

[@artinacart8035]

LOVE IT! You guys are wonderful!

[@moiseitachi1]

I'm so glad I subscribed. Thanks for this! My new project.

[@Robinssoncravents]

really hard work here... and it works! I am a cinema user and this is very inspiring

[@johnnyblaze2716]

Incredible. I can’t wait to do your tutorial. Thanks buddy

[@YoshiNotDino]

Oh my God! This is mindbreaking thank you so much for tutorial

[@vortaron8429]

I dont even work in blender, but this stuff is just fascinating to watch, amazing work man