Overlapping Shingle Mask - How?

capone

I've sank about 50 hours into Substance, asked multiple sources how to do this and to no avail. This is the one thing really getting in the way of me progressing with this software so if anyone can help it would be much appreciated.

So creating the gradient version, super easy. However, I need a non gradient mask for it. If I plug the flat shape into the same tile gen as the gradient it looks like (A). If I scale the tiles or change them then they are no longer the same shape as the gradient map (B). I just want a non gradient mask version of the gradient tile gen that matches up.

Jerc

Do you want each tile to be a different flat color or to have all of them be white?

capone

Jerc said:

Do you want each tile to be a different flat color or to have all of them be white?

Flat white as a starting point, then I can add luminosity (different shades of grey) via the tile generator.

Jerc

The flat white version is what you have on A. From what I see since you likely used a max blending mode for the first tile generator, one of the ways to create a version with different shades of grey on each tile properly is to do it in 2 steps with 2 tile generators that skip every other line (1 tile generator is rows 1,3,5,7... and the other is rows 2,4,6,8...) and blend them together at the end with a mask.
You can also look at this material, it should give you some hints on how to deal with a similar material: https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/627

capone

Jerc said:

The flat white version is what you have on A. From what I see since you likely used a max blending mode for the first tile generator, one of the ways to create a version with different shades of grey on each tile properly is to do it in 2 steps with 2 tile generators that skip every other line (1 tile generator is rows 1,3,5,7... and the other is rows 2,4,6,8...) and blend them together at the end with a mask.
You can also look at this material, it should give you some hints on how to deal with a similar material: https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/627

I opened up the sbs but it wasn't using the separated row idea, I've seen this trick elsewhere though so I may dig it up. What I did find with this is that they are able to get what is essentially a edge detect from an ambient occlusion node which is interesting, just a shame you lose the luminosity opportunity in the process.

noosence

I would try to use a Histogram Scan node, and just play with the settings. This tends to be my go-to node for creating masks from heights.

Dustin Cruz

I haven't found a smart way to do it yet but I've made my gradient tile first like you did above, then sliced out the shape I needed in illustrator, brought it back in as a white shape with no gradient and made a tile that matched my previous one for my masks.  Won't work for a randomized size/position tile, but a standard shingle style tile like your first example should get you the luminescence variation/masks you want.

Made my overlap with gradient



Took my shape to make my mask to get different colored shingles


Hope that helps, I'm very much interested in finding a smart way to do this if you find one.