Capone's stylized Substance Designer material practices

capone · Apr 2018

Thread name and top inspired by @kristof,

http://polycount.com/discussion/199692/kristofs-stylized-substance-designer-material-practices#latest

hope he doesn't mind but I'm on a very similar journey at the moment as I start to up my stylized skillset in Substance. Hopefully can inspire each other. I think we have different styles, I tend to go more towards the traditional WorldOfWarcraft handpainted style.

Still not finished with my first texture but part of the reason for this thread is to get feedback and any support I can. First is a top down of just the albedo.

Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/179932071773339648/431407104490995722/unknown.png

Current Height map;

Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/179932071773339648/431407329720795140/unknown.png

Obscura · Apr 2018

Sure bro, no problem

So if I understand correctly, the top image shows only the base color texture. In that case, it has unusually a lot of shading and hack with the colors, which isn't that practical in pbr, at least in case of more realistic representation of materials, but my ones also have a lot of hack in the colors to enhance the look of the shapes, and make them pop much more, so I would say this is kinda normal when it comes to very stylized pbr materials, at least in my experience. Yeah, I'm going for a bit more detailed style though, with strong depths. Why didn't you show the material with the base color applied?

The only proper feedback I can give you right now, because of the lack of shaded shots, is I think you should put some stone chips, small broken parts scattered in the crevices, if the edges are eroded this much. Also, I would add some color variation per tile. There are 2 easy ways to do that, flood fill, or mosaic node. The second one only work for this purpose, if the heightmap has varying depth - some of the tiles would need to be more deep down than the anothers, but I could use this approach in some of my practices, and with some certain shapes, it works better than flood fill.

Thats it for now, waiting to see more.

capone · Apr 2018

Not had time to tune the roughness so was holding off on the full shots. Here it is in marmo with a very basic roughness.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/ud/jsb4ii6tagsw.png

Good suggestion about the damaged 'chunks' coming off the sides, just worried it will make the texture too busy but will try just a few here and there. Was going to make the eroded 'sides' a more contrasting tone but yeah instead of just flat I'll try colour variation with the flood/mosaic nodes. Also feel like I need to add a few cracks but again cautious that any huge cracks will look repetitive if only used on a few select tiles. Also think I need more colour variation from tile to tile.

The thing about shading not working well with PBR is intriguing, you're right that this may not sell itself well as a 'PBR' texture but the main goal is trying to achieve nice 'hand painted 'albedos primarily which is why I showed a direct flat on shot above. I would like the finished piece to resemble a PBR ideally but yes, might not work so well with this kind of style. I've like to know more about what it is about this kind of texture that's problematic, I need to get a better understanding of these kind of issues going forward.

capone · Apr 2018

Did some more work on this. Added some stones in the grout, reworked the albedo. Still more tweaking to do I think, in the meantime any more feedback?