While the mud is certainly looking good and cracked, the twigs just seem to be floating on top. Granted, I don't know if that's something you can fix in sub des. What reference are you going off of?
I feel in the reference the cracks are happening on different areas then yours. The cracks in the ref seem to be happening on the dry areas mostly, with some lying on the border between wet and dry.
One thing that I find cool about your ref is those small bulbous cliff like features. This will be bad for repetition on a large scale, but could add nice variation on a small scale.
Final pass on drying ground mud material. Updated the cracks to follow more along the shapes of the raised areas and cover a lot of the debris in mud and also had some disappear into the mud so its a lot less like the debris is floating on top.
Thanks for all the comments and feedback, helped a lot!
Looks awesome! Really love how you got the cracks to follow the main forms in the mud. Also appreciate how the sticks and what not sink into the mud in places. love your work, keep it up!
It feels like I'm a little late to the Substance party but seeing your work Josh has really inspired me to get stuck in. I find it quite hard to believe that no ZBrush, Photo sourcing, Photoshop or nDO was used but that's the beauty of procedural based systems! Thanks for creating a thread, it's been great to read through from the beginning and to see the work-in-progress images!
Hey Josh, The material and the flakes look great, I feel that the harsh medium forms are making this feel like crumpled paper. Some smoother larger forms and a reduction in the harsh forms might help this. Keep on kicking ace!
ANT1FACT - Thanks! The windows are not transparent. A lot of the heavy lifting is coming from the gloss and the HDR. Typically with glass a roughness that is very smooth / near mirror like helps to sell the material quality. Also glass is not metallic, it is a dieletric. For grunge its whatever is desired, add that to your albedo and roughness map and it will do a lot. Color hue is subjective and case by case.
QUACK! - Thanks for the feedback! I will take a look at the medium forms in my next pass .
kinda curious about the snow - is that metal/rough? Or do you use specular workflow for control over the the specular intensity and color? Have a marmoset viewer anywhere? thanks
PHILWINKEL - This snow was created using a Spec/Gloss workflow. I treated the Specular channel much like I do other Dialetric materials by giving it a RGB of around 55 - 60 and completely desaturated. I did toy around with putting some color into the spec but it felt fake and made it feel more like ice than snow so I scrapped it. I will be putting some of my other materials into Marmoset viewer very soon.
You got some awesome stuff going on here man, but I think you are over complicating the snow a bit. I think your small scale details are spot on for the snow, but those large scale details are not reading that well for a tileable texture. Clean snow is a really basic surface, and its large scale details come from the things it falls on, and blows up against. Something like this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9z83Lnye-Vc/UxyJpXFko8I/AAAAAAAAESI/NteVe9dNgVI/s1600/001.JPG.
Bardler - Thanks a lot for your feedback and the reference you provided! Your right, I think from the beginning I had over complicated the snow by having one variation try to carry too much weight. My intention with this snow was to show a clean snow in that its not dirty while indicating the surface the snow had fallen on via the larger movement in the material. I do agree having more variants would be ideal.
Tonight I got the urge to try out some different patterns and here they are.
Snow is looking really good Josh. The spec shine really adds to it. Windows look super good too, the glass is cool. I feel it looks a tad flat with the metal pieces? You using a displacement map or just using normals?
The material read is great, what I meant was the depth. Though I guess really it would be down to how close the player gets to it? Other than that, it's really nice, can't wait to see more.
Starting some overlapping wood planks, still very early on. Going for a raw exposed wood that has some movement in the normal from the grains, not a smooth polished wood.
Looking good so far. Edges are a little soft and wobbly, almost cartoony? I'd personally reduce the amount the edges are warped and try and sharpen them up a little for more jagged edges. Something to think about when you move on to colour is how it weathers. Here's a pretty good ref of how depending on placement the board will receive different weathering. Well done on the snow you did also. It looks really good!
Jakro - Great feedback and reference thank you. That is close to how the surface will look in the end, something similar to that for sure. Glad you liked the snow!
Had some time tonight so I did a ground render of the drying mud. Will get back to the wood soon.
I am currently working on the next Gumroad right now, it will cover the creation of the snow material, so it will be a broader look at material creation.
CreativeHD - Thanks! When working in Substance Designer I am constantly working my height map, and I do preview this with Tesselation mode on and I adjust the "Scale" via the Material Settings.
@josh_lynch You inspired me to get into substance designer, amazing materials I love those wooden panels. Having a lot of fun with it so far and starting to get a handle on the workflow. Hope you chuck out some tutorials I would be willing to support on GumRoad etc. Keep it up!
I was checking out your snow tutorial and stumbled upon your Normal conversion technique as seen in image below. What nodes do you use to convert your greyscale to normal? I am using the normal node but am not getting the normal strength you are getting.
Another question, on page 11 of your snow tutorial I am getting somewhat lost. You are using an uniform color. But what are you using this color for? And what color is it specifically? These crystals, do you plug them in the Metalic or Roughness slot?
Also, what do you use as your base color input? The same greyscale you use to generate the normal?
Thank you in advance, and thank you for inspiring us with your Substance work!
1. In this particular case I am using a "Height To Normal Blend". The height map plugs into the top and the bottom I plug in a "Normal" node. I do this so I when save out the normal map texture it doesn't export with an alpha baked in. This is just one way to do it.
What normal map strength are you using? The default is very low, try a higher value of 8-16 and see if that feels better.
2. Regarding page 11, this section is where I create the gloss. The uniform color is to establish a baseline value for the gloss read. The color can be eye dropped from Photoshop, though it doesn't have to be exactly what I used. If your working in a Metalness / Roughness workflow you would just invert the values I have presented.
3. As far as your question for "base color input" do you mean for the albedo?
Hope this helps explain it further. Feel free to ask more questions and thanks for checking out the tutorial!
Ah ma gaad! I love that there seems to be a slight wobble along each plank instead of completely straight. Do you tend to start with the normal generation and then kick out the other maps? How about parameters (eg. number of planks), do you bother exposing these or are you simply working on the texture as an inidivdual piece?
Griffiti - Glad you like it. Yeh I didnt want it to feel so completely straight, a little Warp node does the texture good . All materials I make I start with the height/normal maps. This is the foundation for the material and the albedo spec/gloss or metal/rough will be fed by the height/normal maps. For this I havent exposed anything, I am working as an individual piece.
I have done another pass. Adjusted color, added some larger splits, and tried to get the splits to follow some semblance of the grain in some spots.
Replies
I feel in the reference the cracks are happening on different areas then yours. The cracks in the ref seem to be happening on the dry areas mostly, with some lying on the border between wet and dry.
One thing that I find cool about your ref is those small bulbous cliff like features. This will be bad for repetition on a large scale, but could add nice variation on a small scale.
Chase - Good call, I will try some of that tonight :-).
Thanks for all the comments and feedback, helped a lot!
Luthyn - Thanks! Those touches came at the end, SD made it really easy.
More materials and tutorials coming!
Keep up the great work!
Started some "Industrial Glass Windows". WIP renders below. Open to comments and critiques. Thanks!
Hi Josh,
amazing quality throughout all your materials. Are those windows actually transparent?
I'm modelling a phone booth at the moment and I don't know how to do the glass panes in Substance Painter.
Do you have any tips or suggestions?
Cheers
The material and the flakes look great, I feel that the harsh medium forms are making this feel like crumpled paper. Some smoother larger forms and a reduction in the harsh forms might help this. Keep on kicking ace!
QUACK! - Thanks for the feedback! I will take a look at the medium forms in my next pass
Also updated the snow crystals to be easier to read and added a ground render and slightly increased displacement amount.
When snow melts and gets all dirty and chunked up like this: http://www.skimountaineer.com/TR/Images2005/ShastinaDillerCanyonLookingUp061105-1200.jpg. Then you start to see those large scale details you put in the texutre. Maybe you could do a couple different snow variants for different stages of melting and dirtiness.
Tonight I got the urge to try out some different patterns and here they are.
Windows look super good too, the glass is cool. I feel it looks a tad flat with the metal pieces? You using a displacement map or just using normals?
3DKYLE - Thanks for the kind words! The windows are normals only. Is it flat in terms of depth or material read?
XHI - Hey thanks really appreciate that!
Other than that, it's really nice, can't wait to see more.
Comments & critiques welcome as usual!
Well done on the snow you did also. It looks really good!
Had some time tonight so I did a ground render of the drying mud. Will get back to the wood soon.
I am currently working on the next Gumroad right now, it will cover the creation of the snow material, so it will be a broader look at material creation.
I released a new tutorial, "Creating Snow In Substance Designer", on Gumroad tonight.
I was checking out your snow tutorial and stumbled upon your Normal conversion technique as seen in image below. What nodes do you use to convert your greyscale to normal? I am using the normal node but am not getting the normal strength you are getting.
Another question, on page 11 of your snow tutorial I am getting somewhat lost.
You are using an uniform color. But what are you using this color for? And what color is it specifically?
These crystals, do you plug them in the Metalic or Roughness slot?
Also, what do you use as your base color input? The same greyscale you use to generate the normal?
Thank you in advance, and thank you for inspiring us with your Substance work!
1. In this particular case I am using a "Height To Normal Blend". The height map plugs into the top and the bottom I plug in a "Normal" node. I do this so I when save out the normal map texture it doesn't export with an alpha baked in. This is just one way to do it.
What normal map strength are you using? The default is very low, try a higher value of 8-16 and see if that feels better.
2. Regarding page 11, this section is where I create the gloss. The uniform color is to establish a baseline value for the gloss read. The color can be eye dropped from Photoshop, though it doesn't have to be exactly what I used. If your working in a Metalness / Roughness workflow you would just invert the values I have presented.
3. As far as your question for "base color input" do you mean for the albedo?
Hope this helps explain it further. Feel free to ask more questions and thanks for checking out the tutorial!
1. Thank you! That's a nice and quick workaround.
2. Alright, got it. So you plug the node in the roughness. As for the metalness, do you use a uniform black color?
3. Yes indeed, I meant albedo
How did you achieve the tesselation on the model above along the edges?
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my question!
On the color I just used a small swatch of white.
I output a height map from Substance Designer and plugged that into Marmoset Toolbag 2's displacement..
No worries at all!
I cant seem to get the exact details of the snow, can you tell me which Output nodes you are using ?
Excssivezero - Glad you like it! :-)
Deathstrokeftw - Can you provide more information regarding the trouble spots?
I have updated the albedo on the wood planks. Comments and critiques welcome!
I have done another pass. Adjusted color, added some larger splits, and tried to get the splits to follow some semblance of the grain in some spots.