Was home due to being sick, so I decided to give this challenge a go. Not perfect, but I'm not going to put any more time into it. Was fun to burn a couple of hours though!
I have a question about sharpening my texture. I personally prefer the sharpened versions but I feel I need other opinions about sharpening textures. I may need to tone down the sharpening on the roughness slightly.
@Robeomega, Personally, I loathe sharpening myself, and rarely use it. You may be better off just exporting at twice the intended resolution, and then re-sampling to half resolution (although depending on the filter method you use, you can end up sharpening in that process). Otherwise for roughness, you can just increase the contrast by remapping your input range. For color maps, I have other methods that use cavity and curvature maps to make high frequency details pop more.. you can just overlay them a bit.
@Robeomega, Personally, I loathe sharpening myself, and rarely use it. You may be better off just exporting at twice the intended resolution, and then re-sampling to half resolution (although depending on the filter method you use, you can end up sharpening in that process). Otherwise for roughness, you can just increase the contrast by remapping your input range. For color maps, I have other methods that use cavity and curvature maps to make high frequency details pop more.. you can just overlay them a bit.
Thanks for your response! How would I go about changing the resolution of a Substance Designer file after it has already been made. (not while in the set-up of a new file)
I guess up to a point sharpening can be a bit of personal preference. I think I like it because of how details that are quite blurred without sharpening can look quite good and clear when sharpened.
For example especially on the right side you can clearly see where the dirt is while on the non-blurred version distinction between dirt and not dirt is much less.
This is one of the most inspiring threads purely because so many artists are making their own version of that same thing, and it confirms whether or not I'm doing it right!
I do think sharpening is more so a personal preference sometimes I use it to really gets those fine hair line marks to pop more just like you showed up above.
Though I agree with Brad that it should be the exception in most cases. Just make sure if you do it to one pass you do it with the other passes in this case albedo, roughness, and metallic.
At the end I would say whatever gets the result you want go for it.
Thanks for your response! How would I go about changing the resolution of a Substance Designer file after it has already been made. (not while in the set-up of a new file)
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You can change the resolution of the Substance Designer file at any point. There are a few times when I export a 4k texture from Designer, then I batch re-size to 2k with photoshop.
Sharpening is definitely a personal thing. And actually, the one form of sharpening that is super useful, is a low opacity, high radius Unsharp Mask type of sharpen. Even something like a highpass filter overlay in Substance can be useful.
I don't know if it's just the light that changed in your second iteration, but the smallest pebbles are way to even now. Both placement and size.
When I do textures, outside of SD, I try to group stones together a little bit. So that you have a big stone with three medium scattered around it and say eight small ones scattered around the bigger ones. It makes it feel a bit more organic and natural. I also always flatten my smaller stones normals with a cloud. Even values are never good for organic stuff.
Looks real good though, loved your first iteration!
@sltrOlsson I was thinking pretty much the same thing recently.. I just don't know if there's any way to get stones to respect composition.
Maybe the other guys can give a hint on that.. but there's really no other way than placing them randomly in SD, right?
(apart from placing them by hand which defeats the purpose of procedural textures)
Trying this one out in 3D space, but I think it's going to take some more practice to get this right. I'd like to add more small rocks but I'm at the limits of what my rig can handle.
I don't know if it's just the light that changed in your second iteration, but the smallest pebbles are way to even now. Both placement and size.
When I do textures, outside of SD, I try to group stones together a little bit. So that you have a big stone with three medium scattered around it and say eight small ones scattered around the bigger ones. It makes it feel a bit more organic and natural. I also always flatten my smaller stones normals with a cloud. Even values are never good for organic stuff.
Looks real good though, loved your first iteration!
Hmmm you're right. Maybe I've had added too many pebbles and now it seems too even. I think I will try to tweak it, the cloud trick could do the work (thanks for that!)
@sltrOlsson I was thinking pretty much the same thing recently.. I just don't know if there's any way to get stones to respect composition.
Maybe the other guys can give a hint on that.. but there's really no other way than placing them randomly in SD, right?
(apart from placing them by hand which defeats the purpose of procedural textures)
You can mask the elements you placed randomly, so they will appear only in the places you want them to be. For example, if I want to put some little stones around the bigger rocks, I can use a Bevel node connected to the rocks to mask the area around them, and use that mask with a Blend node to show only the stones that are generated inside this area.
@Caser well yes I knew that you could just mask out certain parts, but what you'd get is cut off stones in the border region.
Whereas with the tile sampler node you can define a mask and it takes that as base for the generation (I guess).
So you don't get any cut off ones, it's either there or not. And that's pretty cool to know!
@Caser well yes I knew that you could just mask out certain parts, but what you'd get is cut off stones in the border region.
Whereas with the tile sampler node you can define a mask and it takes that as base for the generation (I guess).
So you don't get any cut off ones, it's either there or not. And that's pretty cool to know!
Finally got some time last night to polish the Rock Face and wrap that up. I'm working on a mini making-of / breakdown now that should be posted to my site soon.
Took some time to exposed all the parameters and added slots for custom inputs and variations. It could quickly generate a myriad of peeled paint materials in a timely manner now!
This is sick! I'm curious if you still do the zbrush tiling/photoshop workflow from your videos for environments, or if you've mostly moved on to using substance designer since we've moved onto pbr?
@xChris, Thanks! For MOST tiling textures and surface detail materials I'm 100% inside of Substance Designer these days. I use ZBrush still for architectural trim textures and stuff like that. Photoshop and XNormal however are collecting digital dust.
And actually, it wasn't even PBR that got me excited about Designer. At that time PBR wasn't a buzz worthy term :poly121:. Since you are familiar with my videos, you know that I like to automate things! Designer allowed me to re-create my photoshop workflow and do a whole lot more.
@xChris, Thanks! For MOST tiling textures and surface detail materials I'm 100% inside of Substance Designer these days. I use ZBrush still for architectural trim textures and stuff like that. Photoshop and XNormal however are collecting digital dust.
And actually, it wasn't even PBR that got me excited about Designer. At that time PBR wasn't a buzz worthy term :poly121:. Since you are familiar with my videos, you know that I like to automate things! Designer allowed me to re-create my photoshop workflow and do a whole lot more.
Oh wow thanks for the informative response man! Definitley going to push myself harder with designer now, thanks for that!:)
@bradhb3D woah, that's impressive, couldn't imagine you could achieve those results just inside substance, that VOLUME!!. Can't wait for you making-of/tut/breakdown haha.
@Caser well yes I knew that you could just mask out certain parts, but what you'd get is cut off stones in the border region.
Whereas with the tile sampler node you can define a mask and it takes that as base for the generation (I guess).
So you don't get any cut off ones, it's either there or not. And that's pretty cool to know!
This is something I've wanted in Photoshop SO much..
But it's really simple with that node.. You just use a wider threshold for you smaller rocks to make them populate "around" your bigger rocks. The bigger one being drawn on top of the small ones obviously..
Welp, here's my attempt at week 11's.
This was super difficult and I learned a lot from it. I'm glad I found this thread, i'm learning a lot from a lot of you guys, great work!
Critques are very much needed and welcome! :^D
Hey guys! Loving this thread, this is my first time posting so I thought I'd give the week 11 dirt challenge a go. Here's my first pass, working on layering and scattering variation.
Pretty awesome! Started playing with substance but my actual problem is no matter what, my low frequency noise look like shit (and I am holding my horses when I say that hehe). I wonder how you go about deforming / altering your low frequency shapes before combining them, to have the details not looking CG / procedural. That's my biggest peeve at the mo. Slope blur is often giving me stepped edges, then I am stuck without really knowing how to get rid of them. So if you have any tips / advices or what works or not, as I am sure you're experienced enough to know what works and what don't and have some recipes... hehe.
I tried making a muddy ground weeks ago but didn't get any closer to what I wanted, so decided to give a try at week 9 but giving it some watery mud. Think I achieved what I was looking for but there's still something of, any c&c is appreciated .
I'd add some more deaf leafs and things like that but I learned while I was working on it, so the graph is a MESS, I'll get a headache if I have to go back and add extra detail, I'll put that time in some new substances I guess haha.
@fr0gg1e, If you can post an image or two of the part of your graph in question, that would help me better target some specific suggestions.
In general though, I use a lot of directional warping. Often I'll warp one frequency by another 1-4 times before I blend. And sometimes I'll warp that FG layer before blending too. Get creative with your blends as well, try blending and then using that blend result as a mask for another type of BG / FG blend.
I know that people often use Slope Blur for a few types of effects, but I'm personally not a fan. I don't use that node anymore. There are better more explicit ways of handling those types of effects (usually with directional blur)
You mentioned the "looking procedural" issue; often times my textures don't stop looking procedural until the very last blend, and that's okay! For example, you can see my normal map result BEFORE I subtract the slice layers. It's certainly not bad, but it's definitely not shippable!
IDK of any out there right now. Most of the ones that cover more organic mats are walkthroughs. Rogelio Olguin has a pretty good one covering creating mud and rocks. https://vimeo.com/user474658
It's kinda cheating but I worked on these about a week ago. Gonna try to refine my juniper and pine bark this week and see what I can pull off:
Might also be a good starting point for people this week. Much of my refining shapes I got by using direction blur to get a vertical noise, then slope blur grayscale to create some more solid shapes:
IDK of any out there right now. Most of the ones that cover more organic mats are walkthroughs. Rogelio Olguin has a pretty good one covering creating mud and rocks. https://vimeo.com/user474658
It's kinda cheating but I worked on these about a week ago. Gonna try to refine my juniper and pine bark this week and see what I can pull off:
Might also be a good starting point for people this week. Much of my refining shapes I got by using direction blur to get a vertical noise, then slope blur grayscale to create some more solid shapes:
Do you guys only use the stuff that is built in substance or do you import your own maps to create stuff like that?
Im looking at youtube tutorials and unfortunately, they dont cover stuff like rock surfaces, things iam actually interested in.
I know its crazy but is someone willing to record/livestream the next creation?
This thread is 100% substance made :-)
And for the rocks: taka a look at Rogelio's tutos on Vimeo ("Rogelio substance designer" in the search bar should do the job )
Replies
I always feared this software might be a bit complex to apprehend but it was actually pretty fun and friendly
Here's the .sbs file. It's a true mess, but I thought it could be interesting to share it
Loving this one! I hope to have time for doing both of them. I will start with the beginner one this time
I'll try to add more variations on the metal layer later.
Also tried to expose parameters (if you have like 5 minutes to waste, my computer had a hard time recording it) : http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2015/39/1443296040-subs2.jpg
I'm so pumped for this week
You can see more images and a little more info on the making of this one on my site:
http://bradfolio.com/art/substance/substance-diamond-plate-metal/
Nice catch Robeomega, I have update it and it's more readable now.
Better late than never, here is my try to the Sand :
Thanks for your response! How would I go about changing the resolution of a Substance Designer file after it has already been made. (not while in the set-up of a new file)
I guess up to a point sharpening can be a bit of personal preference. I think I like it because of how details that are quite blurred without sharpening can look quite good and clear when sharpened.
For example especially on the right side you can clearly see where the dirt is while on the non-blurred version distinction between dirt and not dirt is much less.
Though I agree with Brad that it should be the exception in most cases. Just make sure if you do it to one pass you do it with the other passes in this case albedo, roughness, and metallic.
At the end I would say whatever gets the result you want go for it.
You can change the resolution of the Substance Designer file at any point. There are a few times when I export a 4k texture from Designer, then I batch re-size to 2k with photoshop.
Sharpening is definitely a personal thing. And actually, the one form of sharpening that is super useful, is a low opacity, high radius Unsharp Mask type of sharpen. Even something like a highpass filter overlay in Substance can be useful.
The big rocks were made using the super useful tutorial frm rogelio as a guide ( link )
I don't know if it's just the light that changed in your second iteration, but the smallest pebbles are way to even now. Both placement and size.
When I do textures, outside of SD, I try to group stones together a little bit. So that you have a big stone with three medium scattered around it and say eight small ones scattered around the bigger ones. It makes it feel a bit more organic and natural. I also always flatten my smaller stones normals with a cloud. Even values are never good for organic stuff.
Looks real good though, loved your first iteration!
Maybe the other guys can give a hint on that.. but there's really no other way than placing them randomly in SD, right?
(apart from placing them by hand which defeats the purpose of procedural textures)
[sketchfab]8cbbb6592f3e4156a7745807db3b0750[/sketchfab]
GroundMaterial by Steve Peters on Sketchfab
Hmmm you're right. Maybe I've had added too many pebbles and now it seems too even. I think I will try to tweak it, the cloud trick could do the work (thanks for that!)
You can mask the elements you placed randomly, so they will appear only in the places you want them to be. For example, if I want to put some little stones around the bigger rocks, I can use a Bevel node connected to the rocks to mask the area around them, and use that mask with a Blend node to show only the stones that are generated inside this area.
Whereas with the tile sampler node you can define a mask and it takes that as base for the generation (I guess).
So you don't get any cut off ones, it's either there or not. And that's pretty cool to know!
I didn't know this node! Thanks cgvinny and Cay!
Took some time to exposed all the parameters and added slots for custom inputs and variations. It could quickly generate a myriad of peeled paint materials in a timely manner now!
Template download link:
https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/518
This is sick! I'm curious if you still do the zbrush tiling/photoshop workflow from your videos for environments, or if you've mostly moved on to using substance designer since we've moved onto pbr?
And actually, it wasn't even PBR that got me excited about Designer. At that time PBR wasn't a buzz worthy term :poly121:. Since you are familiar with my videos, you know that I like to automate things! Designer allowed me to re-create my photoshop workflow and do a whole lot more.
Oh wow thanks for the informative response man! Definitley going to push myself harder with designer now, thanks for that!:)
http://bradfolio.com/art/substance/substance-red-rock-cliff-face/
This is something I've wanted in Photoshop SO much..
But it's really simple with that node.. You just use a wider threshold for you smaller rocks to make them populate "around" your bigger rocks. The bigger one being drawn on top of the small ones obviously..
thanks a lot!! :thumbup:
This was super difficult and I learned a lot from it. I'm glad I found this thread, i'm learning a lot from a lot of you guys, great work!
Critques are very much needed and welcome! :^D
Pretty awesome! Started playing with substance but my actual problem is no matter what, my low frequency noise look like shit (and I am holding my horses when I say that hehe). I wonder how you go about deforming / altering your low frequency shapes before combining them, to have the details not looking CG / procedural. That's my biggest peeve at the mo. Slope blur is often giving me stepped edges, then I am stuck without really knowing how to get rid of them. So if you have any tips / advices or what works or not, as I am sure you're experienced enough to know what works and what don't and have some recipes... hehe.
I'd add some more deaf leafs and things like that but I learned while I was working on it, so the graph is a MESS, I'll get a headache if I have to go back and add extra detail, I'll put that time in some new substances I guess haha.
In general though, I use a lot of directional warping. Often I'll warp one frequency by another 1-4 times before I blend. And sometimes I'll warp that FG layer before blending too. Get creative with your blends as well, try blending and then using that blend result as a mask for another type of BG / FG blend.
I know that people often use Slope Blur for a few types of effects, but I'm personally not a fan. I don't use that node anymore. There are better more explicit ways of handling those types of effects (usually with directional blur)
You mentioned the "looking procedural" issue; often times my textures don't stop looking procedural until the very last blend, and that's okay! For example, you can see my normal map result BEFORE I subtract the slice layers. It's certainly not bad, but it's definitely not shippable!
IDK of any out there right now. Most of the ones that cover more organic mats are walkthroughs. Rogelio Olguin has a pretty good one covering creating mud and rocks.
https://vimeo.com/user474658
It's kinda cheating but I worked on these about a week ago. Gonna try to refine my juniper and pine bark this week and see what I can pull off:
Might also be a good starting point for people this week. Much of my refining shapes I got by using direction blur to get a vertical noise, then slope blur grayscale to create some more solid shapes:
Nice start on that Micaki!
I would really appreciate any advice or critique as I am just beginner with Substance Designer.
edit=I got the images embedded finally..
fantastic!
This thread is 100% substance made :-)
And for the rocks: taka a look at Rogelio's tutos on Vimeo ("Rogelio substance designer" in the search bar should do the job
my sands test ; i'm not in time ^^ .
More rendering on my Art Station.
Here is the first pass of the bark: