Adventures in substance - substance progress thread

gibson543

Hey there guys, been a while since I've posted here, been super busy with school, but the summer's started, and I can now dedicate way more time to game art. I figured that the best use of my limited time would be to learn substance, as it has pretty much solidified itself as an industry standard software at this point. 

The first texture I created was used with the aid of the tutorials of Hugo and Rogelio, so thanks to those guys, those tutorials were incredibly helpful to me, and I learned a lot in a pretty short period of time. 

This texture is the result of my first real attempt at substance. As far as firsts go, I'm pretty satisfied with it overall.



Now, this is my current WIP. It's a pretty standard, generic brick wall texture. As of right now, I've put most of the work into the grout, without touching the bricks much, minus some slope blurs and noise. If you guys have any thoughts, I'd love to hear em, thanks for looking!



Edit: And about five minutes after updating the thread, I've already found something I like better haha. Played with the grout some more and made it more solid with a lot fewer recesses. Looks better, I think. 

gibson543

Another grout edit, decided to make it extrude out more and add some more big shape variation. Just feels more solid now I think. Any thoughts on the change or anything else are more than welcome 

Drav

Looks good man! I dont think its top notch level yet, but its going the right way! I think practice is the key to getting good with substance designer, im in exactly the same boat as you at the mo, just trying to keep making stuff

gibson543

Thanks man! Yeah I agree, definitely has some ways to go, but I feel like I'm at least moving forward. Good luck with you're learning as well!

Alright, so, another update for today, probably going to be the last one for a little while since I'm starting my summer job soon. Teaching basic modding and modeling stuff at iD Tech Camps  , should be fun.

In this update, I focused more on the bricks, as I felt, or, well, I knew that I had put significantly less work into them than I had the grout. Pretty simple, just added some cracks, some bigger divets, as well as some micro noise masked out by the peaks and valleys provided by all of the prior details. I'm honestly not really sure where to go from here in terms of the height map, and I'm tempted to start working on the albedo, but if anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. Thanks for looking!

gibson543

Little update, started working on the albedo.

gibson543

Finished up the texture, pretty pleased with it. Still open to comments, I just have to move on to something else for now, I would fiddle with different settings and details forever if I let myself haha. Substance is a lot of fun in that regard. There are so many different things and options that you can do and they're all just mouse clicks or slider drags away, it's really cool. 

Wozner

Hey gibson543  that texture is on fire! Could you please tell where can I find those tutorials from Hugo and Rogelio? Thank you in advance  

gibson543

Thanks man, and yeah sure, Hugo's can be found here: http://polycount.com/discussion/164820/steam-tutorial-medieval-blocks-substance-designer-procedural-material#latest and Rogelio's can be found here: https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/substance-designer. 

Alright, so moving on ahead, started up a wood plank texture. Still some details in the normal/height to add or change up, and still a solid amount left to do on the albedo I think. 

stilobique

Great job ! Your latest rendering are good, but we see your patern, try to break it ! i think your normals ap are too strong, reduce it.

Steppenwolf

If you don't want the wood grain patterns to match up with neighbor planks you can use a vector offset node like explained in this pixel processor tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItBOrWIhNU

gibson543

So, it seems that every texture I start I end up having to go back and rework a lot of the main forms. Mostly because I think I'm just not strict enough with forcing myself to use reference. I was going for a worn, but smooth varnished floor, which relies a lot more on the diffuse and roughness than it does the normal map, but I still found myself using pointless slope blurs and stuff like that to add detail that I didn't really need, just because I felt like I should. Luckily, I realized most of the detail was pointless and started to look at some more ref and other artists textures to see how they approached it. So I stuck with that, a low detail normal map, with most of the info being in the albedo/roughness maps.

@stilobique - thats man! hopefully the two issues have been addressed.
@Steppenwolf - thanks a lot for the vid man, super useful!

gibson543

Lil update, decided to go back to the brick texture because well, some aspects of it were still bothering me and I couldn't resist going back and fiddling with it. Decided to play around with the presentation some more as well, as I feel like my prior shots really weren't doing my textures any justice. 


Edit: Decided to play with the presentation for my first texture as well, what a difference. Next up will be some more wood floor updates! Thanks for lookin

gibson543

Update on the wood. Just added a bunch of detail to the albedo and a tiny bit to the normal map. Probably finished with this one 

gibson543

So, I lied, wasn't exactly finished with that one, got some solid critique on it so I made some changes. Also started a plaster wall substance. By the way, thanks to Hugo Beyer for sharing some mask generators in his tut, really speeds up the albedo process. Gonna have to try making some of my own soon.