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The Bi-Weekly Substance Challenge (Challenge 5 & 6 & MeetMat17)

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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

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

  • N4meless
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    N4meless greentooth
    I like this kind of exercice, a lot of pattern work !!!
  • bobmartien
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    bobmartien polycounter lvl 11
    Great, I wanted to try this ! I'm in =)
  • JoachimC
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    JoachimC polycounter lvl 7
    In! Been waiting for roof tiles to pop up. :)
  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    I'm in. Trying to keep it simple this time but struggling with the initial shape. In this example I have a perfect GradientLinear2 that is tiling with a scale set to a perfect 1. Yet I'm getting little black lines. I've tried adding blurs and 2D transforms but nothing is working.




    Here is what I have if I cheat using the curve node but it limits my options.


  • bobmartien
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    bobmartien polycounter lvl 11
    @capone Maybe you should use the "tile sampler" instead ?
    But I tried to just plug a Gradient Linear 2 in both and I don't have your "little black line"
  • N4meless
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    N4meless greentooth
    Try to change the mipmap mode on the tile generator, that should solve the problem i think
  • Dickie
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    Dickie polycounter lvl 9
    Started this roof tile because apparently I've nothing better to do on a Saturday eve haha

    (excuse some funky warping around the edge due to pom)

    Based upon:

    Crit welcom!


    Changing the mipmap mode should work as N4amless suggests
  • Daniel_Swing
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    Daniel_Swing ngon master
    Woh! Been waiting for this one! I'll be doing two kinds this time. One slate with scale like tiles and one akin to the second given reference.
  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    N4meless said:
    Try to change the mipmap mode on the tile generator, that should solve the problem i think


    Just tried it and it worked, thanks!


  • Daniel_Swing
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    Daniel_Swing ngon master
    First height-pass:


    @capone : Good start! Though if you want some disorder between the roof tiles I'd suggest that you start with one tile and use it as input in a tile generator node instead of generating every roof tile with one gradient.
    @Dickie : Looking good!
    Though it doesn't look like your tiles are overlapping like they do in your reference, they're sort of just placed next to each other:


  • Dickie
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    Dickie polycounter lvl 9

    Heyo any of you guys have a solution to layering tile correctly in SD?

    I've got close ish but it's a bit crappy/not quite there. Explanation of problem 


    gif of current solution in action 


  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    I'm still working on just the single tile shape before making them all look more individual. Actually ended up going more in the direction of Dickie but with a flatter surface on top. I'm curious about the multicoloured tile generation, never seen that before. Are there any tutorials that show it being used?

    Here is mine, I think it's just about there as a standard generic shape. I don't know what all the weird lines are about, some kind of banding. I've tried blue in a few places but it just makes it worse.

     
  • Nathan3D
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    Nathan3D polycounter lvl 7
    have not started mine yet but looking forward to this one :), going to start streaming myself making some environment stuff as well as the substance challenges if ya'll are interested in seeing how I create stuff :D www.twitch.tv/nathan3da
  • Dickie
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    Dickie polycounter lvl 9

    update, fixed (hid) the corner issue
    and as @Daniel_Swing pointed out the tiles didn't look like they overlapped 

    dl - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5hEIzkZgS6EUVl6Tm94SmVUVHc

    @capone that's a lot of stepping you've got there, are you using a curve node? if so want to screen shot how you've produced those artefacts?


  • Merlynn
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    Merlynn polycounter lvl 8
    @Dickie wow that was fast. Looks cool!

    I'm going for classic Spanish shingles. Took me way too long to figure out how to get a good tapered shape. Still not too happy with it.


  • Daniel_Swing
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    Daniel_Swing ngon master
    Some more work on the height:

    I'm having a lot of trouble with the edges of the slates - comparing what I got here to my prior image, you may be able to see that I have reversed the "fibers" in the slates, making it look like they're chipped away from the outside of the roof:
     
    This heavily conflicts with the edges and makes them really ugly. So I'm trying to find a smart way to mask the slate-edges away from the slate-surface, so that I can blend two different tiles together. As of right now, I'm using Edge Detect, which I'm not too happy with at the moment:

    Any tips?
  • Quack!
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    Quack! polycounter lvl 17
    I have needed a kick in the pants to get myself doing more work, outside of work, so this challenge is the kick I needed!

    First pass at setting up the heightmap.  Will work on a couple more tile variations and get them to layer on each other better, then I will move onto secondary-read forms.


  • K
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    K polycounter lvl 9
    Awesome results already guys! The bar is set pretty high :D
  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    No way. I lost all my work! I never saved my pc cut out. Remember to save people! :smile: I wish SD had an autobak like 3DSMAX :(
  • Daniel_Swing
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    Daniel_Swing ngon master
    My problem was much easier than my derpy and tired self thought yesterday. I went back and edited my original tile instead of trying to fix the entire roof material:


    @capone : That's a shame :/ I always get an '.autosave' folder next to my sbs file with new auto-saved sbs files every 5th minute.
  • Daniel_Swing
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    Daniel_Swing ngon master
    I'm stuck now, don't really know what more to add (except dirt and moss). Any suggestions?
  • Quack!
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    Quack! polycounter lvl 17
    I'm stuck now, don't really know what more to add (except dirt and moss). Any suggestions?

    I think that you could drill down on some of the details.

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/e8/82/e4/e882e422a1c38a318cee55e23f2dda89.jpg

    I would consider making a couple more tile variations with some more dramatic wear and tear and place those around rarely.
    I think you could also make a couple more tile shapes that vary a fair amount from the ones you have, like they have been replaced years later.

    I think your surface noise, is just too noisy right now, look at references I don't really see that texture represented in them.

    Alot of the detail will come from the grim though!
  • Quack!
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    Quack! polycounter lvl 17
    Worked on mine over lunch today
    Added much more disorder to the tiles and started to iterate on the secondary-read forms.
    Not a fan of the "halo" of edges I am getting on some of the tiles tips. I need to re-jigger the mask there.


  • Zombiecrackers
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    Zombiecrackers polycounter lvl 5
    Had a quick mess around this morning very much a first draft, going away from the ref a little and doing a sort of round roof tile base shape is looking ok damage is looking a little crazy think I might use a warp or something instead of a slope blur CC welcome :)

  • Craig_Rogers
    Working on this for a few days now and decided that I need to make a function that would change the colour of the albido when the roughness was set to one. Used an empty function which detects the float of the roughness and then equals it to a set float. I then used a HSL node just before the output of the albido so that the empty function can change the lightness of the colour. Think this adds to the look of making it wet and rained on. 

  • AzzaMat
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    AzzaMat polycounter lvl 9

    Thanks to @Dickie who got the tiles overlapping correctly. Crit welcome :)
  • Dickie
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    Dickie polycounter lvl 9
    @AzzaMat could do with some hue/sat variation and some sweet edge wear
  • N4meless
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    N4meless greentooth
    My take for now, i played a lot with the dirtness and it was really cool to do !!! a little too much dirt i think i will make a more clean version later 


  • Daniel_Swing
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    Daniel_Swing ngon master
    Another WIP image:

    @Quack! : thank you for your feedback!

    I'll be dropping by tomorrow to give some feedback myself!
  • Quack!
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    Quack! polycounter lvl 17
    @daniel_swing NP!

    I spent some time figuring out how to make the main shapes of lichens. Zero details added yet, just basic forms.

  • suspectlogic
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    suspectlogic polycounter lvl 13
    working on the clay barrel tiles 

  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    3rd attempt. Few issues, firstly the output size at the top (as seen in SD6+) seems to be locked! Can't change it and it's set to 256 even though I originally set it to 512 absolute when starting. So that's why this looks low res. Any ideas how to unlock it? Can't find any answer via google.



    Secondly I'm getting banding again (though perhaps this is also related to the low resolution?). It is 100% being cause somewhere in my selection box in the pic. If I hook that first blend direction into my outputs that is where the banding begins. The blend is just a copy, if I hook any of the inputs into the output there is no banding but combined there is a sign of banding. ALL transforms in the scene are set to manual mipmap mode (as opposed to default of auto).





  • Sean VanGorder
    capone said:
    No way. I lost all my work! I never saved my pc cut out. Remember to save people! :smile: I wish SD had an autobak like 3DSMAX :(
    SD does have an autosave feature, but it requires you to manually save the file at least once before it kicks in :(
  • Quack!
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    Quack! polycounter lvl 17
    capone said:
    3rd attempt. Few issues, firstly the output size at the top (as seen in SD6+) seems to be locked! Can't change it and it's set to 256 even though I originally set it to 512 absolute when starting. So that's why this looks low res. Any ideas how to unlock it? Can't find any answer via google.

    Secondly I'm getting banding again (though perhaps this is also related to the low resolution?). It is 100% being cause somewhere in my selection box in the pic. If I hook that first blend direction into my outputs that is where the banding begins. The blend is just a copy, if I hook any of the inputs into the output there is no banding but combined there is a sign of banding. ALL transforms in the scene are set to manual mipmap mode (as opposed to default of auto).
    Look at your nodes, do you see the L8 in the bottom right?  That means the node dropped to 8bits which means it has a limited color range, which in turns causes banding.  Select that node and in it's "Base Parameters" set its "Output Format" to forced to 16 bit.
  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    Quack! said:
    Look at your nodes, do you see the L8 in the bottom right?  That means the node dropped to 8bits which means it has a limited color range, which in turns causes banding.  Select that node and in it's "Base Parameters" set its "Output Format" to forced to 16 bit.

    Aha fixed, thanks. I wondered those values meant ever since updating to SD6. Curious, what's the general purpose of it? If you're just doing portfolio work I guess it's ok to just ensure they are all 16bit but if calculation times are vital you can go in there and enable 8bit on nodes that do not result in banding?

    I'm still confused about the locked out size input at the top?





  • Dickie
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    Dickie polycounter lvl 9
    @capone when you select you substance in the explorer window is the Output Size type set to 'Relative to parent' or 'Absolute'?
    the parent size thing is only usable on relative to parent. But you're probably better off having it set to absolute and then setting the 'Output size' to be higher, try setting it to 1k and see if you still get banding
  • Daniel_Swing
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    Daniel_Swing ngon master
    Good work guys!
    @Zombiecrackers : I think your tiles are a bit too thick and the perlin noise is a bit too intense.
    @Craig_Rogers : You should make some variation between the tiles (I'm mostly thinking color ) and also look over the tiling in general; I can see the vertical seem very clearly.
    @Quack! : Nice start on the lichens! I'd really like to take a look at that graph later! The lines and crevasses on some of your tiles makes me think you're going for a stylized approach but your edge wear says the opposite. It could be just me but I don't think they mix well.
    @suspectlogic : Really like the cracks, though you should break them up so they don't overlap from tile to tile (I think someone posted a pixel processor in the first challenge that took care of this very effectively).

  • Daniel_Swing
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    Daniel_Swing ngon master
    My progress for today:

  • Merlynn
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    Merlynn polycounter lvl 8
    @Daniel_Swing I think that really improved.
    @suspectlogic your height information looks very clean! The overlapping looks cool too.
    @AzzaMat Like that stylized look. Maybe the concrete underneath could be a bit less glossy?


    Quick update from my side, worked on the color a bit. No work on the roughness yet.

  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    Fixed the ratio issue so thanks again to this thread. Started attempt 4 and have confused myself. I'm not sure how the node should look before putting it into a tiling generator as no matter what I obviously get lines all over when random scaling/rotating. Initially I thought it was the gradient background but even with a perfect flat grey background it still creates gaps. 


  • N4meless
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    N4meless greentooth
    @capone
    Well i think you should separe your two tile (curved one and flat one ) on two tile generator, the problem you have is juste that when you rotate your shape you break the tile, and the tile make your height look good since it's on the middle.
    If you separate both you can rotate both surface and offset the flat one so you hide the break under the curved surface. Hope i'm clear ^^ i can show you what i have in mind if i'm not clear.

    And here is my take.



  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    N4meless said:
    @capone
    Well i think you should separe your two tile (curved one and flat one ) on two tile generator, the problem you have is juste that when you rotate your shape you break the tile, and the tile make your height look good since it's on the middle.
    If you separate both you can rotate both surface and offset the flat one so you hide the break under the curved surface. Hope i'm clear ^^ i can show you what i have in mind if i'm not clear.



    Thanks for the info. Attempt 5 is coming along better, trying to do something closer to what you have just for the purposes of learning rather then going off and trying to do something that nobody else is doing. Here as suggested I have 2 tiling generators, I've yet to offset/distort them etc but I did a quick test and it seems to be working with the shingles. The 'backtiles' are currently just long strips, I'll need to turn them into separate tiles if I want them to have slight rotations. Looks like you did the same from what I can see.


  • Meloncov
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    Meloncov greentooth
    Decided to finally join one of these. Here's what I have so far:


    I think I have the big shapes where I want them to be (curve node was super useful). The challenge I'm working on now is figuring out how to get a good mask to change the color per tile.
  • N4meless
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    N4meless greentooth
    @Capone It's exaclty what i've done yeah here is a quick breakout of my base height map if you want




  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    @N4meless Thanks for sharing. I'm tempted to try and make the tiles curve inwards similar to the post above yours from Meloncov but I don't know if that will work well with this setup. Will give it a go over the weekend. 

    I've noticed with some shingles you have a double overlap. Similar to what SuspectLogic had,



    I like it but I've not seen reference of shingles that do this? What's the idea? There was a shingle, it broke and got replaced by just placing a new one on top of an old one? or it's a crack that goes straight across? I'm wanting to try it but don't quite understand what it's supposed to represent.


  • N4meless
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    N4meless greentooth
    it's an easy way to add diversity to a texture so you don't have something too generic, i take the idea on a reference posted on the discord 





  • K
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    K polycounter lvl 9
    I've gone off reference, but i like it :)
  • ansh0488
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    ansh0488 polycounter lvl 11
    Nice work everyone. Here's my take on the rooftiles. Still WIP. Albedo is a very quick mix of colors. Nothing final yet. C/c are most welcome.
    Happy weekend!! 




  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    Still struggling on attempt 5 but trying to start attempt 6 and sit this out. I'm starting to get the artifacts banding issue again even though it's at 2048 resolution. Top image shows before I do some slope blurs and below shows what happens once I apply 2 slopes.

    In the past I've discovered two reasons why this happens,

    1) In transform2D nodes were set to automatic (default) instead of manual. In most cases it doesn't matter but every now and again it will fix similar issues.

    2) In the tiling generator there is a setting called Image Input Filtering, by default it's set to Bilnear when it should be set to Blinear+Mipmaps.

    In my case below none of these are the issue it's something else. My slope blurs are set to full resolution (32), I've tried adding blur nodes but those don't help. I've ran out of ideas. Tempting just to move on but would rather only 10% complete a challenge and learn something than fully finish a challenge and continue making the same mistakes. 






  • Daniel_Swing
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    Daniel_Swing ngon master
    If I'm not mistaken, you're doing a 10x10 pattern - this means that you will have to split those 2048x2048 pixels between 100 tiles, that leaves each tile with not many pixels to work with. If you scale your pattern down to 6x6 or even 5x5, you will only have to deal with 36 or 25 tiles, which will grant each  tile x2 to x4 as many pixels to work with, which means that you can detail the material much more and avoid certain artifacts.

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