Josh Lynch Substance Designer Sketchbook
interpolator
Substance Designer has been on my mind for a while now, and recently I decided to really dive in. So far its been a blast and am loving the workflow.
The team at Allegorithmic does a fantastic job of providing training on their YouTube channel. The videos from Richard "Pipes" Piper and Rogelio Olguin are really inspiring!
With all that said I wanted to start a thread dedicated to my personal Substance Designer projects.
The first material I decided to tackle was a set of interior/subway wall tiles that have aged showing dirt and scratches.
The team at Allegorithmic does a fantastic job of providing training on their YouTube channel. The videos from Richard "Pipes" Piper and Rogelio Olguin are really inspiring!
With all that said I wanted to start a thread dedicated to my personal Substance Designer projects.
The first material I decided to tackle was a set of interior/subway wall tiles that have aged showing dirt and scratches.
Replies
I still can't wrap my head around what Substance does, and I've seena chunk of their tuts already.
I would describe it as a workflow that is liberating and has a lot up sides. The main one to me is working in Substance Designer is very adaptable. For example, now that I have everything created for this tile material I can change the amount of tiles in the pattern and everything will update. I can change anything I have on this material and see it real time. The color of my tiles, my gloss map, the grunge, scratches on the surface of the tiles, etc.
Your not painting when using Substance Designer, your using a network of nodes to create whatever your going for.
I had watched a lot of tutorials before I got started and it wasnt until I got in there and started messing around that things really clicked. And once I started to see what was going on I felt a lot more creative and working in nodes wasn't a burden to me.
I agree with this. I would add interactive and fun to liberating. I have a bunch of materials that I can easily adjust sliders of to alter the final render in real time. Edge needs to be a bit wider for edge wear? Hmm, lemme try blurring this map. No clicking and waiting for DDO to save maps and update, it's more or less instant, which is a ton of fun.
I think the main problem that I have seen is that people are scared by the crazy technical parts of the software. For the time being, I've completely ignored all of that tech-y stuff and just use the nodes provided. I also bring in a decent amount of outside maps to plug in.
Anyways, back on topic. that first substance looks great. Are you doing everything inside of substance designer, or are you bringing in outside maps?
Beefaroni - You bring up a lot of great points! As I mentioned in my initial post I am loving how adaptsble everything is and you can see all updates in real time making iteration something to look forward to and not be annoyed by. Like you said it makes it fun :-).
I also don't find myself seeing the same maps tile like dDo, because everything I make has its own style and story. And there isn't a factor of clicking and waiting for results.
As far as the technical side goes I think that's something that is not as big of a factor as it may seem. It's a mode based creation workflow, you can't get around that. But that's not a problem because everything is non destructive. I was able to watch available videos online and get in there and make art. Once I got some basic things down it was just about experimentation and iteration. And honestly everytime I open it up I discover something new!
To answer your question everything was made in Substance Designer with out of box options. No outside maps were used. I wanted to see what it could do and I was not disappointed.
That's not unrealistic for a metro station in pretty much any city lol.
As usual, great application man!
In all seriousness though, I've used Designer and Painter, as well as dDo and nDo and I find substance to be a bit more liberating, workflow-wise. It's been awhile since I've worked with dDo but the node system in Substance is incredibly powerful.
Art Director doesn't like a certain aspect of a material? Takes about 5 minutes to change, rather than a complete texture overhaul.
Each tile is angled differently. Right now the specular reflection of your tile is implying that every one of those tiles is completely planar with each other.
Keep it up!
wpetrosky - Thanks!
Lulufinder - Thank you for providing that. I agree with you that there needs to be more of an angle to the tiles. As of right now I am working through the best way to achieve this in Substance Designer. Dig the ref :-)
Jerc- Thats what I was going to try tonight. I was going to try that or the brick generator as I know that has great slope features.
I wish slope was just part of the tile generator node itself. Theres no reason for them to be seperated that I can see :-)
Regarding what Lulufinder refereed to, look at how the reflections appear bent, it's like a wave pattern. It's probably connected to how the tiles are made.
sltrOlsson - Evened out the gloss a bit.
Lulufinder - Added shift to normal map on tiles.
Slosh - Thanks! Glad you like the subtlety :-)
if so how did you manage to mask them to unique tiles ?
Huntard - Thanks for the feedback on the cracks I will take another look at them.
AshuraDX - All the cracks are procedural. Everything in the image was generated using nodes in Substance Designer :-). I used the same node as I used to generate the tiles to mask them out the cracks.
would you mind sharing the graph for this once you are done ?
I'd love to dig into that and see what I could learn
How much do your values change in the different tiles? Would be great to see one using white on all tiles..
If you wanna take this even further it would be great to see you push one version towards being as clean as possible and one with boken tiles/chipped tiles.
roegelio - Thanks! I think later on I will revisit the tiles and do a couple of variants.
sltrOlsson - Glad you like it! Values dont change on the tiles, its 1 solid value. I think the lighting and the tilt in the normal map is affecting that. I like the idea of a really clean version ;-).
Recently started watching "Marco Polo" on Netflix and the palace interior tile caught my eye. Thought I would give it a shot using Substance Designer through and through.
Trying to match the surface qualities of the pocks and scratches as well as the striations on the stones.
Tutorial coming today :-)
Any questions let me know!
Click image higher res version.
mantragora - Thats a great point. Love how in SD u can throw nodes around and see what happens.
A bunch of stuff in this update.
- Surface flakes tweaked and pushed further for more depth variation and thick to thin look.
- Noise added in grout.
- Tweaked spec and gloss for further separation between grout and 2 stone surfaces.
- Contact dirt applied to crevices of flaked stone and pits/dips.
Thanks a bunch for that crack tutorial! I used to create cracks in tiles with a crystal generator and painting out some areas with an SVG but your method seems to deliver a lot more natural and believable results.
Special KBS - Glad you like the tutorial and thanks for the kind words!
AkiRa - Cool thank you glad the tutorial was helpful. I to started to use an SVG to mask it out but I found it very destructive. Happy to hear you find the result more natural and believable :-).
Bugo - Thank you! :-)
Thanks for sharing the tutorial. After going through the thread I feel like giving Substance painter a shot myself as well!