The Bi-Weekly Substance Challenge (Challenge 5 & 6 & MeetMat17)
interpolator
Hello everyone, welcome to the Bi-Weekly Substance Challenge.
How it works
- Every 2 weeks a new reference will be shared to be recreated, you are also encouraged to find your own reference, as long as it still fits the topic for that bi-weekly substance, for example if we share a mud reference, you can gather you own mud reference.
- You can be creative with the reference and make it look either realistic, stylized or hand-painted, it is up to you.
Guidelines
- Try and give constructive criticism, giving and receiving this should help each of us artist grow.
- This is a Substance Challenge, so stick with that software.
- You can post Wip's and finished materials here.
- Don't share work you've done in the pass, if you done a material before, try it again don't try pass old work off as something you did for this.
- Final material renders to be rendered in a real-time engine (Marmoset, UE4, Unity, Cryengine, Stingray, IRay is also accepted).
- This is a learning experience for all, don't be afraid to ask questions.
- Learn all that you can and do share what you also learn.
- Please be respectful to each and everyone.
Discord
We have a channel in the Allegorithmic Discord group where you can share WIP's and final images as well as discuss the challenge, Click here to go to it.
If you have any other questions in relations to any of the Allegorithmic's software, use the appropriate channels for those questions.
Resources
- Allegorithmic Youtube Playlists
- Substance Academy
- Rogelio Olguin Substance Designer Gnomon Tutorial
- Joshua Lynch Substance Designer Tutorials
- 80.lv Substance Designer Articles
Previous Challenges
Challenge 5 - Raise the roof! (Roof Shingles) || 1st April - 15th April.
Click the pictures for bigger resolutions.
Challenge 6 - Taking a swim (Sea Foam) || 16th April - 30th April.
Click the pictures for bigger resolutions.
MeetMat17 - Allegorithmic Contest || April 27th - May 11th.
Click here for more information.
The guys at Allegorithmic wanted me to hold off on the challenges for now and I think as a cool challenge it would be good to see people trying out Substance Painter also and trying out this new contest.
Now for those who may not be interested in doing this, you can either push the other challenges that have been done and make them better or if you never got the chance to do one, go back and give it a try. So this gives people time to catch up with the challenge.
I will be posting a new challenge between the 8th and 11th however if you want to wait.
Hope you guys are okay with this.
Replies
Here's mine so far. Ideally I'd like to make quite a few improvements + add realistic moss forms and colors before deadline.
@Nathan3D Looks very good. The moss I feel seems a little stringy at parts. Would be cool to see a little more definition on the moss too as it's seems a little flat. What kind of reference did you use for the moss?
@Zombiecrackers You want to tone down on the chips on the edges because at the moment it looks a little too wavy. IT's also looking really flat in parts like you kind of just painted over the material. Like this image, this part just doesn't look right, the brush stroke makes the material look really flat on that part.
Have you got an ambient occlusion map as well? Might help with some definition.
@JayS I love the way each tiles sits on each other. Try no to go to overboard with the height on the bricks and some look super thick but I'm not sure what reference you based it on.
@Merlynn I agree with Nathan, you cracks look a bit odd, you want to try and make each tile separate and the cracks make them seem like they are built from the same tile.
@capone Looks like it is coming together, next time try upload a different angle of your material as it's hard to see the whole thing in that image. Make it a little more faced on.
Keep up the good work everyone.
As for the roughness: I usually start with the height map as a base and adjust the levels a bit (I invert the values sometimes, depending on the material, if the surface or the crevasses/edge-wear/cracks are rough). I think your roughness is a bit too diverse in values, I think you should pull everything more towards a very light-gray value.
As for the dirt: I didn't learn it through a tutorial, I just played around with the mask generators until I got the hang of it. The 'dirt mask generator' and the 'mask builder' (also exists in Substance Painter) are really good dirt masks.
Here's my final entry! More images on Artstation : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/V9QPX
@JayS would be good to see your reference, I might pull the saturation in a little
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Been working on it a bit more, mainly splitting into generators for reuse, in Substance:
In Marmoset:
Final Textures:
Having some issues getting Marmoset and Substance to line up properly, otherwise pretty happy with it. Crit welcome!
1) On the far right I've posted a close up of my base colour. I often plug a noise map (with various blurs/levels/scans etc) into a gradient node and use 'pick' to get a set of colours. Looks fine from a distance on the model but looks ugly when up close in the flat base colour map. It looks very noisy but on the other end if I use the original noise or blur it looks like artificial swirls everywhere.
2) How do you hide the environment background in the 3D viewport? Can't even find it in the help menu.
Click environment at the top of the 3d view and should be edit then in the properties window beside your graph view check enabled to say false
@JoachimC Love the colour variation and shapes
Here's my entry:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/JzB9R
I need to really look into this pixel processor node. I currently use the luminosity in tiling nodes to get a map to plug into a direction warp to avoid patterns like cracks crossing over (though clearly it's not working properly here). The other method is a node someone made called 'Randomizer_Mask_v2' that takes any pure white areas surrounded by black and gives them a different tone like a luminosity map.
I think part of the issue is where I had to clamp (with a levels) on my tile/shingle shape to make it pure white for a mask to then turn into a luminosity. I notice that you have to be really careful with the clamp as too much one way will make it bigger/smaller than the original. Can't find a sure fire way of making sure they stay exactly the same size.
@kellyk7 Thanks very much! I like the subtle hue variations and dark grime you have in yours.
attempt 2
Made better cracks, though I think they could be implemented better.
Think a big part of it is the 'random mask' setting I use is pretty limited. Hard to explain but the end result always ends up with two many close together where it doesn't look natural.
Added moss too but not quite sure how I can blur JUST the edges of the moss mask. Tried bevel, edge detect, distance etc.
I'm trying to aim more for this ref...
@etienneh99 Nice entry. Very interesting design too.
@kellyk7 Looks good, height looks like. I think you could push the roughness a bit more.
@Dickie Lovely work. Very clean looking. Well done.
@JoachimC Awesome material, looks pretty stylized, like has that Borderlands look to it. Good work!
Hopefully you guys like this one and I look forward to seeing what people come up with.
If you want any tips on this you can grab Chris Hodgson's Substance Material Collectrion for $25. It is full of great stuff and one of them being a foam sea Substance. https://gumroad.com/l/yKuIQ
@capone - Love the grunge.Just one thing that's standing out is, there's no damage on the curved ones.
@Dickie - Nice one. And yes, it's a hassle to get the same look in Marmoset as the one in Designer. Have to go back & forth a couple of times.
Here's my entry for the challenge. Normal & the moss variation. C/c are most welcome.
@3DKyle
Thanks
skipped the roof but here is my try for the Sea Foam
First pic is from Substance Designer and the second from Marmoset
What do you think?
Dunno why but my Marmoset renders always looking not that good, cant handle this well
Im begining my 2 years degree in Game art in a few month and i am really looking forward to it
Also, awesome idea for challenge #6! Really wasn't expecting that.
It's always interesting rebuilding other artist's substances, with this one I'm really curious about the 'multi directional warp' because I couldn't find it in SD6 so had top copy/paste that node. Would I be right in thinking that this node was before 'directional warp' was made and it overtook this node? Though they do both seem to behave different so perhaps both have their advantages. Also I had never used 'Non Uniform Blur' before, really interesting being able to blur masked areas. Am sure I'll be reusing that node elsewhere in the future.
Anyway, here it is. I'll try adding/changing it over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully can get ideas and inspiration from other people here.
In regards to the Multi-directional warp, this following tutorial was used.
I totally agree this is a strange one, but that is what is fun about it. I think materials with subtle details can be pretty challenging as I know I do as well as others like the details to stand out, but realistic most materials have such subtle details.
I look forward to how you go about doing this and looking forward to seeing everyone's.
Yes, just to be clear the above isn't my entry. I've never done a liquid in Substance so wanted to follow someone's process to get an idea of what it involves. I've since been looking up reference and noticing some have these super fine lines, almost like the fat in a piece of meat. I'd like to try and capture that. I know someone recently made a substance meat but I don't know if they showed any of their techniques, not quite sure how you'd get those kind of lines. I'm sure it's more complex than making multiple warped cracks.
As well as a more 'dirty' color I'm also going to try and make the water seem more shallow, with hints of rocks underneath.
On a more microlevel detail would be nice to do something like this with the bubbles
but argh I keep getting too ambitious with my substances and end up rushing them towards the end so will see how this goes.
Here's where I'm at with the tile roof:
And here's my manhole from the previous challenge: http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2539301/#Comment_2539301
this is a start, not in love with it yet though will do some more to it later
Did my file setup and a couple of first experiments today. Not clear where I'm going yet either but playing around has been interesting...
And here is my first iteration for the sea foam:
Not the greatest looking thing in the world but I was mostly trying to get the colour of the water to work. Will probably start from scratch again when I'm happy with how the colours end up.
Current state of my tile roof!
@K awesome stuff man
@KevMcG
I like the feeling of depth in the water you have looking like a good start
the water challenge looks like fun btw, can't wait to get started.