Substance Designer - Master Thread
ngon master
For those that do not know what Substance Designer is, it is a node based texturing package designed for next gen work flows. It's completely non destructive and non linear. It includes a real time texture preview and texture baking. It natively supports Unity, Unreal Engine 3 / UDK, 3ds Max, Maya, Modo, and Marmoset Toolbag 2.
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ETs6v9HlVk"]Substance Designer 4 New features & Tutorial - YouTube[/ame]
Substance is starting to get popular, figured we need a place where we can share some nodes and help each other fully utilize the software. Feel free to ask questions & post and share tutorials and nodes.
Resources
Tutorials and features
- Official Allegorithmic Tutorials
- Official Youtube channel
Download shared nodes
- rogelio's substance tests
- almighty_gir's full specular map shader (physically based shader without metalness)
- Jerc's rock substance
- JedTheKrampus's 100% procedural stone brick substance
Related threads on Polycount
- Ddo or Substance Designer
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ETs6v9HlVk"]Substance Designer 4 New features & Tutorial - YouTube[/ame]Substance is starting to get popular, figured we need a place where we can share some nodes and help each other fully utilize the software. Feel free to ask questions & post and share tutorials and nodes.
Resources
Tutorials and features
- Official Allegorithmic Tutorials
- Official Youtube channel
Download shared nodes
- rogelio's substance tests
- almighty_gir's full specular map shader (physically based shader without metalness)
- Jerc's rock substance
- JedTheKrampus's 100% procedural stone brick substance
Related threads on Polycount
- Ddo or Substance Designer
If there is anything that you think should be added to the original post, please PM me and I'll update it.
Replies
The video from the youtube channel are a bit more organized on their website : http://www.allegorithmic.com/community/tutorials
Have just created a modified version of the physically based shader for substance designer. This modified version allows you to work with a full specular map (like toolbag2, for example) instead of using the metalness workflow that the default physically based shader of SD4 uses.
http://crazyferretstudios.com/public...nce_shader.zip
place the contents of the zip file in: Substance Designer/resources/view3d/shaders
Outputs you will need to use are: diffuse, roughness, specular, normal. i'll add support for cavity map later if people really want it. roughness has been left the way it is as default in SD4 (ie - black is shiny, white is rough).
I'm gonna have to dig around in the stock filters and figure out how to adjust the number of quadrant nodes according to the texture resolution. It's 2048 only for now, and its the slowest filter I've ever seen.
Ill post it once it has some basic functionality.
I like stuff like the zebra skin in the substance database. Some of the cloth is nice too but I'd like to change the crease patterns.
For Patterns? as in like link
Than yes as long as you have a Normal map, AO, Cavity with it. Well you will only really need the normal for a flat texture like the brick walls etc since I was able to use the cavity node and AO node I made to get that information to use for the worldspace node.
AdrianST- Yarn, fur, and cloth. Substance comes with some yarn/cloth Patterns but I have a feeling those are not what your looking for.
Yarn and cloth would not be so hard since those use fiber like construction. Fur would be harder due to many different kinds of fur types but I can see both starting as an FX-node. I would open up the zebra skin one and see how it is made and try to reverse engineer it for your use. That is really how I learned substance opening up those substances and finding cool ideas.
I would start with an Fx-node connected to several warp nodes and blur nodes with some blends and overlays.
Fx-node- would be get the basic pattern I am looking for.
Transformation node- for tiling properties
warps or slope nodes- to get a more natural feel to the fur
blend- to blend several layers of fur ontop of each other to get it more randomized look.
Levels or histogram Scale - to get some contrast controls.
Everything would be done in grayscale.
Yep, this type of patterns. I was thinking about fabric tilling for character clothes.
Edit - also how to recreate common surfaces, like old painted wood:
i'll be documenting as i go (kinda like i did with rogue) to show people how i did it. if people are interested.
I would certainly be interested Lee
Count me in on the fun and games.
I've managed to make a start with an old mech model of mine but still have the lingering feeling of having fallen for a bait and switch marketing pitch (ooh look at the pretty robot, buy software, ha ha no robot). Anyways, here's my old sabre mech model in SD (so far)
And here's the (simple) substance for it:
There is a node called "normal combine" specifically for that..
Also, I apologize if this is more of a unity question but I just got done making my first substance and when I import it into Unity it looks nothing like the expected result.
The top left is what it looks like in SD's 3D view, while the bottom left is Unity. Does anyone know what the issue might be? Thanks.
Also I just got back from a month off, I'll probably submit some stuff here too
@ AdrianST,
I've found that one way of creating fur or grass is to use a shape node, then run it though a scatter node, and adjust the pattern width and height.
I don't have Substance in front of me right now, but when I get home I can make a mock up to show you the effect that I am talking about.
You can also deconstruct any of the tutorial substances that come with the program. When you launch substance, go to the learn tab, and then click samples and say yes you want to install the substances.
Just like @Rogelio said, many of these patterns that come with the program start with an FX node, however I'm also still working out how to make those efficient.
@almighty_gir I'm really excited to see what you're going to make!!
So under Generators - Patterns - grab the Shape node and drag that out into your Substance editor. For this test I used the pyramid shape, but I've messed around with others and gotten interesting results.
Then under Noises grab the Splatter node and run the Shape node through the Splatter.
Changing the parameters of the splatter node ended up producing these two very different results. To change the length of the shape that you input into the Splatter node, adjust the Pattern Size Width and Height. You can also adjust Rotation, Rotation variation, etc.
The node on the top tiles more than the node on the bottom which is caused by increasing the Grid Number. However as you can see, this also increases the time that it takes to render the node.
SO you can do a lot with the splatter and shape nodes, its just getting them to work efficiently that is the trick.
I hope that helped or was useful in some way
I recommend running through all the Allegorithmic tutorials to get a basis on adding textures, baking models and creating AO/Curvature maps.
Once you've got a curvature map, try the Edge Wear filter, and then open the source of that filter and study it.
When you know what that does you should be able to figure out how to create a filter that does dirt build up in creases.
Now, I'm going to go a bit different here and build up a peeling painted wood effect using a single diffuse texture.
I'll start with something VERY simple - taking in diffuse wood texture and getting a basic diffuse, spec and normal set up.
It's indeed very simple:
* The diffuse input goes to the diffuse output
* The initial normal map is done by using the Normal node to convert the diffuse to a normal map. It's not a great map, but it's a starting point.
* The spec has had a little more work - I've used a few levels to separate the planks via the joins. I've kept the contrast as it'll be useful later, then levelled that to make it much darker for the spec.
Oh, incidentally that grayscale conversion node lets you do some nice channel mixing to help the separation:
Anyway, there's a basic network, next we need to make the normal and spec maps better.
I've found that a nice way to add extra detail to the normal maps is to use a blurred clouds or grunge generate, convert that to a normal map and blend it with the normal map that was created from the diffuse. I've also used the plank mask to give more definition:
To get a little more interest in the spec I've overlaid a grayscale+levelled version of the original diffuse, and then blended in a little bit of noise to break up the surface a little (like the normal maps did):
The only thing I would say would be to be careful how often you use the actual 'grunge' nodes because they are very heavy. The one you have going into your normal map takes 311ms to process, so you can imagine if you have a lot of those in your substance it can really slow things down.
What I have found is that a lot of those 'grunge' nodes are made from the clouds 1-3 nodes. When you get a chance open up that grunge node and see how they went about making it.
Keep up the awesome work!
What looks odd is that the bump goes across all planks try using a some masks and shift the same noise with transformation 2d node. that way you can get the bumps offset on each plank before being put ontop of the height or normals.
I agree with the grunge those are too expensive to be of any good. I think those grunges can be done cheaper, but I have not really looked into them I rarely use flat grunge overlays on my textures just looks flat.
One huge important thing is start with grayscale if you do get a rgb information and your just using a grayscale information to create your masks or effects keep them as grayscale or quickly do a conversion so it is more optimized. It is also easier to figure out what could be going wrong.
Also remember you have overlay and screen those are two node functions not in the blend node... Idk why substance guys did not include those in the blend node but those functions are in separate nodes and will help in blending height maps together.
I do know that the grunge maps are heavy, I'd actually used clouds previously by the effect isn't as nice as the grunge. Still, there's a project for us - Cheap Grunge.
Rogelio, yeah when it comes to the blend node I also wondered why they didn't have screen and overlay built into the blend node. You can see that I did use the blend node to mix the flat spec and the desaturated diffuse, and the result I got in this case was nicer than most of the other Blend node modes.
Incidentally, open up that Overlay node and have a look at that network....
Another thing that I've found is that I often get better resusable grayscale levels if I use two node in sequence. Node 1 is my ball park adjustments, Node 2 is my fine tuning. It's not so important if I expose the nodes and give them sensible labels, but in a network it works better for me.
First you need a good grasp of Absolute vs relative resolutions of a node. Each node can have its resolution controlled in 3 ways:
- Absolute or fixed, never changes. You should only use this for a full documents, pretty much never on a node except in rare, rare cases
- Relative to input. Simple, uses whatever resolution gets fed into it. Often works well, but can have a cascading effect. If you drop in a 2k bitmap in a graph intended for 1k , the 2k will cascade on until the end unless you interfere.
- Relative to Parent. Relative to whatever is the parent graph. This will mirror the fixed resolution set when you click on an empty spot in the graph. Allows for one single, central global resolution control. Safest bet in most cases, it's too bad this isn't the default. Also this is your only choice when manufacturing nodes to share with other people.
Both relative modes support multiplier on whatever they are relative to, such as "half of the parent res", "double the input res" etc...So here's what I do for noises, compared to the single, full res method:
Keep in mind, even though it's not identical (that's not the point of a noise though, to be "exact") you have much more control over the multi-blended version than the single node one. Single node has 1 single control, while there's about 12 things to expose in the other one (3 scales and rotation, blend mode and opacity). You'll get a lot more mileage out of it, at a lower cost. I tend to pack these things up in my own "cheaper" versions of their noises, since the standard ones don't nearly offer enough control for me.
[ame="
node:
I think it's because they can't fit all blend modes into their "atomic" nodes as quick, simple, single tick instructions. Some blend modes actually have IF conditions in them (like overlay).
That said, their overlay is pretty complex and slow. I made a cheaper one that looks 99% the same. I'll see if i can share it.
Nice! Here's a thought: do the bricks proecdurally as well (instead of bitmap based). There's some really good tiling brick generators in there, you can do some cool stuff with those.
I'd love to see some examples, so far all the bricks I've done in it look like shitty procedural textures. I'll need to start with breaking up the uniformity of the hard edges.
It's some warping, blending, blurring and contrast adjustments on a grayscale mask of the edges. This was fully procedural (i wouldn't recommend trying to go full procedural for a marble pattern though)
tintable Leather
Rust
more to come
Did you overlay a clouds or some subtle big shapes into the height map to get the coins to look like they were piling up at different heights?
I'm trying to replicate something more like these:
@Octo
This looks awsome...I suddenly have to think about a movie I recently watched. Something about small people and a big dragon...
Shooting in one of my attemps to far. I like the runtime manipulation of Substance, I am working on a horror level with a Silent Hill esque transformation of the textures. WIP so far:
A bit more tweaking and it could look quite close I think.
Update
The bricks are too rough, and it's not got quite the amount of colour/saturation differences in the brick, but it's really close.
I guess I'll share some of my filters and textures too.
This one is some kind of rock texture generator, you can easily swap out the normal map and AO bakes for it to adapt to new geometry.
The substance: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9804576/RockSubstance.7z
The mesh: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3bg0c4nneau266g/Rock.FBX
Also, an awful attempt at grass, complete with png. (I don't know how to include linked textures in an sbs)
I'm using the gradient pattern in the fxmap but you could replace it with a custom grass blade.
The noise I used as an input acts as a flow map for the grass, you can replace it by anything else to create crop circles or what not
It could use some more randomness on the bigger blades though now that I look at it again.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9804576/Grass.sbs
This one is an fxmap that acts like a multi purpose image processor. You can input any image and a mask, and put your custom function in the bottom quadrant node.
Useful for creating mask driven effects such as hue shift, levels, etc.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9804576/perpixel_function_template.sbs
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9804576/hue_from_input.sbs
Here are two muscle cars I did a couple of years ago. I had high resolution models for both and I used them to bake normal maps and ambient occlusion maps in Xnormal. Then I used these maps in Substance Designer to bake world space and curvature then used all of these bakes as inputs to generate the output textures (albedo, roughness, metallness) which were then used for the final render in Marmoset Toolbag 2. This was also my first time playing with Marmoset Toolbag 2 and PBR textures.
Took me about two days to create the graph with little prior knowledge of Substance Designer mostly because I was testing all the nodes to see which looked better. Each texture set then took something like an hour as I only had to tweak some parameters to make the various details look ok on each car.
I'm quite confident Substance Designer will change the way people texture... forever
Here's the first car, a 69 Chevelle which seems to have been quite neglected but very much used.
For the Cuda, I saved two texture sets to exemplify how the same graph can bake both clean and used/dirty textures. Ignore the similar wheels, I forgot to also save a dirty version for those.
Finally here's a screenshot of the graph I made. On the right are the parameters I exposed to control the wear ad tear.
PS: I'm going to start my own thread as soon I get the number of posts required to get permission to do so. Watch out for the link in my signature as soon as it's available.