Anyone know of any tutorials to make cracks? Yes you heard me right, cracks. You'd think there would be many but I keep saying the same kind of method that comes from an old Joshua Lynch tutorial where you use warps and slope blurs on a cells node. Whenever I do cracks they look the same and I recognize it in other people's work too. I've seen others do cracks differently but no idea how they did it, every tutorial involving cracks seems to use the cells node approach. I'm looking for other ways to do it, any ideas?
Anyone know of any tutorials to make cracks? Yes you heard me right, cracks. You'd think there would be many but I keep saying the same kind of method that comes from an old Joshua Lynch tutorial where you use warps and slope blurs on a cells node. Whenever I do cracks they look the same and I recognize it in other people's work too. I've seen others do cracks differently but no idea how they did it, every tutorial involving cracks seems to use the cells node approach. I'm looking for other ways to do it, any ideas?
I have this node I made: https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/22 .sbs is included, so you can poke inside and see how I've done it. I do use a cell-like noise but with with a brick shape in a custom fx-map.
Took a look, I've not played around with FX maps enough to understand exactly what's going on with it. Need to look into those and then revisit this.
I found another solution that seems to be quite popular but again it feels artificial, even after warps and slopes.
Been awhile since I've posted here, but since I was just poking at this I felt I should give some response. Caveat: I'm relatively new to the whole substance thing, so my solutions to problems tend to be a little simplistic.
The method you're showing there, is the standard way to generate cracks, but cracks come in different forms and styles, and while this technique works as a base, as with anything in substance it can take a bit of work to get it looking the way you want. Here are three crack graphs I've done recently - mostly as experimentation; I'll probably do a final crack graph using things I've learned from all three eventually.
This one is fairly simple - it generates three patterns, similar to the one you've shown, each at a different scale. The patterns warp each other, as well as being warped by a perlin noise and a clouds. I forgot to get the graph to render before I grabbed a screenshot, but the red nodes are mostly just levels and blurs and things, before blending two of them at the end and feeding into a normal map (the last map is only used to warp the blended ones). There's no masking happening here really, which means it looks a little regular - more on that in a minute.
This one uses a different technique to generate the crack, and is also the simplest (though you could make it as complex as the other two easily enough).
I'm just feeding three blurred shaped into a tile sampler and making sure they all tile over the top of each other. Then I'm finding the edges, and doing a direction warp with clouds (slightly blurred, or you just get noise), and then warping it again with a tiled version of the original pattern. This gives the lines a less regular look than if you apply the warps to the pattern before finding edges.
After that, I'm doing a slope blur, and blending the blurred and original patterns with a mask - this gives you little chips here and there, but the mask breaks up the regularity.
This technique is good for getting nice long thin cracks, but breaks down really badly if you try to get to get a lot of smaller ones (like the one on the right). It also heavily reflects the shapes you input, so you can end up with cracks that look very geometric if you're not careful.
This one looks pretty complicated, but I've also got it doing things with height, that I have turned off here, as it's not directly related to the cracks. So, it generates two mostly identical cracks (Primary and secondary), with both having control over one variable, that effectively increases the subdivisions. Both cracks are generated the same way as your example. After that, the primary crack has all the usual warp and Slope Blur options (see the previous two), as well as a mask so that the cracks can fade in and out and look less regular.
The secondary crack has all the same options as the primary, but also has the option to be offset by the primary one, breaking up some of the regularity. To do this, use the initial greyscale pattern of the distance node, and adjust curves on it separately twice to vary the grey levels, then feed the two outputs into an RGBA Merge (with white in the bottom two inputs) to create a flow map of the primary cracks, and vector warp the secondary output with it. The main advantage of generating shapes the way you did in the example is that you get a greyscale map you can use to influence other things with.
The secondary crack also has the option to be masked by the primary one - so it only appears along the edges of the primary, giving the appearance of secondary cracks, rather than having to subdivide the primary shapes all the time.
There are a lot of options on this one, and I've had some good results out of it, but it's best use is for surfaces with a rough and varied surface (it's based on asphalt cracks), rather than something like tile, which I'd probably use a variant of the second method for.
I'm pretty sure I can get cracks looking better than this, but cracks usually look artificial when removed from the context of the surface they're cracking anyway. When I have surfaces cracked with these they tend to look a lot more natural, even though the cracks are exactly the same.
I'm learning SD, and while it's great software, one thing puzzles me, and that is documentation, or lack of it. Just as example, i was looking at some youtube tutorials, and i saw guy using "safe transform grayscale" node. I see it has some differences from regular transform node, but can't find any info on it. It's just kinda there. There's no documentation for it at all, like for example, what does boolean parameter "Tile Safe Rotation" actually do?
Am i missing something here? And in general, what can i really do, other then experiment, for nodes that i can't find any documentation, and have hard times understanding some of it's feature?
@N4meless I've notice similar errors with color in Substance Painter: Up in the right corner is supposedly the light orange color displayed in the small square.
Here is my substance, all layer are disabled, so i juste have the test color activated and the anchor in the input, the exact same problem than daniel swing, but with the anchor system it's really noticable, since we paint with the clear color, and the result is the "modified" color
I'm learning SD, and while it's great software, one thing puzzles me, and that is documentation, or lack of it. Just as example, i was looking at some youtube tutorials, and i saw guy using "safe transform grayscale" node. I see it has some differences from regular transform node, but can't find any info on it. It's just kinda there. There's no documentation for it at all, like for example, what does boolean parameter "Tile Safe Rotation" actually do?
Am i missing something here? And in general, what can i really do, other then experiment, for nodes that i can't find any documentation, and have hard times understanding some of it's feature?
Tnx in advance!
Pretty simple actually; it only allows you to make transformations that will still tile. The regular node will allow you to change and rotate things in such a way as to break tiling, which is sometimes what you want, but if you want to, say, rotate a tiling pattern and still have it tile, the Tile Safe Transform is the way to go. Having the Tile Safe Rotation set to TRUE limits the angle to 45 degree increments, and adjusts the scaling at 45 degrees to maintain the tiling.
You can see this for yourself - use the node, and hit space in your 2D view to turn tiling on, then rotate with and without the boolean set - without it you'll see you can break the tiling very easily, but with it it's locked. Less angles to rotate, but they're always guaranteed to tile.
Here is the first piece I created for my Portfolio:
and also the breakdown of the graph:
I believe that the graph became more complicated than it had to be as I was experimenting a lot. This is something I will try to improve for any future projects. Any feedback you might have is of course welcome.
Hey, dudes! I've been tinkering a bit and trying to wrap my head around getting a procedural generator along the lines of this;
I can get swoopy brush stroked, but nothing to the extent of this image example. Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!
Hi @GavinUnit, My approach to this would be making a swoopy brush stroke generator in a separate graph, and then use copies of it with different random seeds it as an input in a fx-map or a tile generator to splatter it around. There's also this really cool tool on share that might be useful: https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/2373
Hey, dudes! I've been tinkering a bit and trying to wrap my head around getting a procedural generator along the lines of this;
I can get swoopy brush stroked, but nothing to the extent of this image example. Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!
@GavinUnit, I gasped at first before realizing it's just a reference. It's a very interesting texture. I would definitely give it a go and experiment if I had more time now. Would you mind showing your progress so far, even if you think it's crappy?
Hello, here is some early tests of my Advanced Wood Material, I'm willing to share the substance package for free. If you see some features to improve, please critic and comment my work
I'm attempting a moss material but I need to put it away for about 3 weeks to finish an assignment. In the meantime, feel free to come over to my sketchbook and give me pointers and feedback on this material!
Tried out Lighting in Marmoset on my Cobble stone floor texture (Designer only), sort of Dungeon kinda Lighting ! Artstation Link: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/P0v0n
I did not make this texture, however, I have been looking to make this pattern for a long while now and can't seem to think of a proper way of doing so. Does anyone have any idea how I could achieve this pattern?
I did not make this texture, however, I have been looking to make this pattern for a long while now and can't seem to think of a proper way of doing so. Does anyone have any idea how I could achieve this pattern?
Can you show a reference? It kinda looks like worn sandpaper sheets stuck to a wall
I did not make this texture, however, I have been looking to make this pattern for a long while now and can't seem to think of a proper way of doing so. Does anyone have any idea how I could achieve this pattern?
Can you show a reference? It kinda looks like worn sandpaper sheets stuck to a wall
That is the only reference I have, and to be clear, I don't want to make that texture. I just need to know how to make such an irregular pattern of "almost squares". Basically, I only need the normal. Warps cause the tiles to have curves on their edges and using an input in a tile gen repeats the same shapes. I have asked the creator of this substance but he has yet to get back to me.
I did not make this texture, however, I have been looking to make this pattern for a long while now and can't seem to think of a proper way of doing so. Does anyone have any idea how I could achieve this pattern?
Can you show a reference? It kinda looks like worn sandpaper sheets stuck to a wall
That is the only reference I have, and to be clear, I don't want to make that texture. I just need to know how to make such an irregular pattern of "almost squares". Basically, I only need the normal. Warps cause the tiles to have curves on their edges and using an input in a tile gen repeats the same shapes. I have asked the creator of this substance but he has yet to get back to me.
Ah i see. Well you could do a tile sampler, with like 4 inputs, where each input is a warped/distorted distorted square.
Yeah, I got the same kind of question, but a bit different. I need to achieve this type of overlapping. Maybe you guys have some thoughts on how would you achieve such effect that each tile of this bitumen has some distortions by other tiles lying underneath?
Yeah, I got the same kind of question, but a bit different. I need to achieve this type of overlapping. Maybe you guys have some thoughts on how would you achieve such effect that each tile of this bitumen has some distortions by other tiles lying underneath?
How about having a tile generator with a gray-ish square set to add mode? The overlapping parts will add up and make a bump. The wording changes a bit between the different tile generators, but play with the interstice x/y on the regular one (size on the others). You can have negative values there, so you can make them overlap.
Replies
.sbs is included, so you can poke inside and see how I've done it. I do use a cell-like noise but with with a brick shape in a custom fx-map.
I found another solution that seems to be quite popular but again it feels artificial, even after warps and slopes.
The method you're showing there, is the standard way to generate cracks, but cracks come in different forms and styles, and while this technique works as a base, as with anything in substance it can take a bit of work to get it looking the way you want. Here are three crack graphs I've done recently - mostly as experimentation; I'll probably do a final crack graph using things I've learned from all three eventually.
This one is fairly simple - it generates three patterns, similar to the one you've shown, each at a different scale. The patterns warp each other, as well as being warped by a perlin noise and a clouds. I forgot to get the graph to render before I grabbed a screenshot, but the red nodes are mostly just levels and blurs and things, before blending two of them at the end and feeding into a normal map (the last map is only used to warp the blended ones). There's no masking happening here really, which means it looks a little regular - more on that in a minute.
This one uses a different technique to generate the crack, and is also the simplest (though you could make it as complex as the other two easily enough).
I'm just feeding three blurred shaped into a tile sampler and making sure they all tile over the top of each other. Then I'm finding the edges, and doing a direction warp with clouds (slightly blurred, or you just get noise), and then warping it again with a tiled version of the original pattern. This gives the lines a less regular look than if you apply the warps to the pattern before finding edges.
After that, I'm doing a slope blur, and blending the blurred and original patterns with a mask - this gives you little chips here and there, but the mask breaks up the regularity.
This technique is good for getting nice long thin cracks, but breaks down really badly if you try to get to get a lot of smaller ones (like the one on the right). It also heavily reflects the shapes you input, so you can end up with cracks that look very geometric if you're not careful.
This one looks pretty complicated, but I've also got it doing things with height, that I have turned off here, as it's not directly related to the cracks. So, it generates two mostly identical cracks (Primary and secondary), with both having control over one variable, that effectively increases the subdivisions. Both cracks are generated the same way as your example. After that, the primary crack has all the usual warp and Slope Blur options (see the previous two), as well as a mask so that the cracks can fade in and out and look less regular.
The secondary crack has all the same options as the primary, but also has the option to be offset by the primary one, breaking up some of the regularity. To do this, use the initial greyscale pattern of the distance node, and adjust curves on it separately twice to vary the grey levels, then feed the two outputs into an RGBA Merge (with white in the bottom two inputs) to create a flow map of the primary cracks, and vector warp the secondary output with it. The main advantage of generating shapes the way you did in the example is that you get a greyscale map you can use to influence other things with.
The secondary crack also has the option to be masked by the primary one - so it only appears along the edges of the primary, giving the appearance of secondary cracks, rather than having to subdivide the primary shapes all the time.
There are a lot of options on this one, and I've had some good results out of it, but it's best use is for surfaces with a rough and varied surface (it's based on asphalt cracks), rather than something like tile, which I'd probably use a variant of the second method for.
I'm pretty sure I can get cracks looking better than this, but cracks usually look artificial when removed from the context of the surface they're cracking anyway. When I have surfaces cracked with these they tend to look a lot more natural, even though the cracks are exactly the same.
I'm learning SD, and while it's great software, one thing puzzles me, and that is documentation, or lack of it.
Just as example, i was looking at some youtube tutorials, and i saw guy using "safe transform grayscale" node. I see it has some differences from regular transform node, but can't find any info on it. It's just kinda there. There's no documentation for it at all, like for example, what does boolean parameter "Tile Safe Rotation" actually do?
Am i missing something here? And in general, what can i really do, other then experiment, for nodes that i can't find any documentation, and have hard times understanding some of it's feature?
Tnx in advance!
anyone notice a switch colorimetric when you use an anchor in substance painter with a custom substance made in designer ?
I made a quick test with and custom substance with only an input and an output , and when i use an anchor a color in it, the output is different ...
Did i miss something ?
Up in the right corner is supposedly the light orange color displayed in the small square.
Here is my substance, all layer are disabled, so i juste have the test color activated and the anchor in the input, the exact same problem than daniel swing, but with the anchor system it's really noticable, since we paint with the clear color, and the result is the "modified" color
You can see this for yourself - use the node, and hit space in your 2D view to turn tiling on, then rotate with and without the boolean set - without it you'll see you can break the tiling very easily, but with it it's locked. Less angles to rotate, but they're always guaranteed to tile.
I've been tinkering a bit and trying to wrap my head around getting a procedural generator along the lines of this;
I can get swoopy brush stroked, but nothing to the extent of this image example. Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
and also the breakdown of the graph:
I believe that the graph became more complicated than it had to be as I was experimenting a lot. This is something I will try to improve for any future projects. Any feedback you might have is of course welcome.
My approach to this would be making a swoopy brush stroke generator in a separate graph, and then use copies of it with different random seeds it as an input in a fx-map or a tile generator to splatter it around. There's also this really cool tool on share that might be useful: https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/2373
Here is my 1st attempt to SD
Critics and improvements always welcome.
here is some early tests of my Advanced Wood Material, I'm willing to share the substance package for free.
If you see some features to improve, please critic and comment my work
I recently finished my internship were I made a bunch of materials for their new trailer, more here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DGOKe
More renders and video here.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Qq2W4
More here.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/WoB1y
I'm super happy that we made the Polycount Recap | October 2017! Its an honor to be in such great company
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/N08Nd
Artstation Link:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/P0v0n
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0KJvw