Substance Designer Experiments
Hey All,
Recently, I've started to experiment with substance designer and I am really enjoying it. The flexibility of the procedural workflow has got me hooked.
I'll start by showing a dirt material I am working on. It is supposed to feel like it rained a few hours ago and the dirt is starting to finally dry up a little.
For the next iteration I plan on adding some small leaves and rocks to replace the current small bumps scattered around.
Any and all feedback is welcome!
I hope these shots are not too dark for you guys, my monitor at home is on its last leg.
Recently, I've started to experiment with substance designer and I am really enjoying it. The flexibility of the procedural workflow has got me hooked.
I'll start by showing a dirt material I am working on. It is supposed to feel like it rained a few hours ago and the dirt is starting to finally dry up a little.
For the next iteration I plan on adding some small leaves and rocks to replace the current small bumps scattered around.
Any and all feedback is welcome!
I hope these shots are not too dark for you guys, my monitor at home is on its last leg.
Replies
Also, for those of you taking your shots in marmoset as opposed to right out of substance - how are you finding the parity between the visuals of the two programs? I am using the specular/gloss workflow and am finding things to be quite different between the two and was wondering if anyone has some good tips. Thanks!
edit: the shots are a little on the orange side because I have just adjusted the original shots in photoshop for now. I will have to re-render these better when I can, but at least they are visible now ;]
I was having similar issues with the maps looking quite different in Marmoset compared to Substance too, Marmoset was a lot more glossy. It might be something to do with the sRGB/ Gamma settings?
arvinmoses: Thanks! I am wondering how I could accomplish that. Currently, the raised portions of dirt are already white in the height or pretty close to it. Is there a way to push even more volume there? I know I could achieve something like that by amping up the value of the normal map, but I'll see if I can find another approach. Also, I love the work you are creating in your thread, great stuff!
Tonight I added more to the height of the dirt. I think that was a great call arvinmoses, thanks!
Also, tweaked the height gradient a little to experiment with something a little more shallow.
Any feedback would be great!
edit: added a couple more shots as I experiment with the lighting in my marmo scene.
Anyone have a preference on the lighting/presentation?
Do you have a specific kind of mud your referencing? If so can you post it?
Right now the water is feeling metallic, especially on the edges of the rounded cube. It feels like a raw metal. Water has very low reflectivity (spec), and high gloss, almost mirror like.
The mud could use some treatment over all. First, the material read could be tweaked a bit. Here is an example.
Second, near the water too to better sell a transition from completely wet puddle to wet mud to to dryer dirt/mud.
josh_lynch: Thanks Josh! You gave me a lot of good notes to think about here. I'll try to dial the gloss up a bit more on the water to see if it lands in a better spot. I'm finding it to be a weird balance in marmo getting the gloss to read more like what I have in substance.
Right now this material resembles something pretty wet so there isn't as much of a transition from dry to wet mud. I think that is a great note you mentioned and I'll go back in and reintroduce the dry areas while adding more of a transition between the two in my diffuse and gloss.
As for the read of the mud I was kind of shooting for something that could be flatter if needed, or very broken up like the ref you posted. Here are some ref shots for the muddy wet version:
Really appreciate the notes, thanks!
- Pumped up the gloss of the water a bit.
- added a small adjustment to the gloss and diffuse values of the dirt near the water's edge
- adjusted the saturation and value of some of the dirt that is furthest from the water.
@josh_lynch - Thanks Josh! The notes earlier were very helpful.
Next update will include my first pass at leaves. Stay tuned!
Here is my Ref:
Here is where I am currently sitting with the normal:
and here is the very start of some diffuse work:
Going to continue working on that normal before I dive anymore into the diffuse, here are some notes I have so far.
-start getting the base concrete's normal on each of the pavers.
-flatten out some of the smaller stones
Any feedback is always welcome, thanks!
normal:
w/ diffuse:
A few more materials and I might be thinking completely differently about my process, but this is where I am now: during construction I am trying to think in layers, just like I would traditionally work on a material like this. Macro details to micro. In this case I started with the large paver and worked my way into edge details, and smaller surface details like the pebbles. The dirt was made using noise nodes and then blending them together while masking out where I don't want the detail in the blend. Hope that helps!
@josh_lynch Thanks! Really digging your work man and I appreciate the feedback. I added some larger pebbles in to supplement the smaller guys. I think I may add even smaller, but am afraid it is going to just be too much surface noise if it's in the normal. I might try to achieve it with my gloss instead.
Here is my progress tonight:
normal:
all maps:
Out of curiosity, do you use a similar workflow than Rogelio's for the pebbles ? (multiple pebble generators scattered on the surface) or something different ?
It feels like you have lot of nice variation in the shapes and it looks really organic.
The only critic I would have is on the diffuse, It still feels a bit too procedural at the moment, especially the overall "cloud noise" feel to the darker variations in the texture. And it kills a bit all the work you put into the height.
But still, great textures.
@aelwine Really appreciate the critique! My approach to the pebbles was different than Rogelios, but the idea of using a scatter sounds better than what I did. In my setup I have two node groups for pebbles, each corresponds to a size for the pebbles - in my current iteration I have large and medium sized pebbles. Inside each node group I am using a cells node to give me the overall shape of the pebbles and then I use a warp node on them to change the form a bit. I add a blur to give the cells a bit more of a rounded organic form. After the pebbles are feeling a bit softer I went in and used a histogram scan to dial in the tightness of the edges I want on the pebbles as well as how much spacing I want between the pebbles.
Josh Lynch's tutorial was a very helpful starter for this workflow: https://environmentart.wordpress.com/2015/01/01/substance-cracks-joshua-lynch/
I then take that information and plug it into a transform node to tile it more. After warping the pebbles a little more I am going in and masking some of the information out to reveal more and less of the pebbles with a blend. Then it is a matter of layering it on top of the other normal information. Hope that helps!
I am completely with you on the procedural diffuse and I am currently in the process of re-constructing my node network for my diffuse. I found I wasn't really using a lot of the information I had generated for my normal in a way that was beneficial. So, fingers crossed, next iteration will be a bit more convincing.
Your method seems way more efficient, and the result is great, so I will give it another try.
Normal and Gloss:
The Asphalt material without any pavers:
And a quick variation test:
Some last tweaks:
-Adjusted the value of some of the pavers
-tightened the edges of some of the pavers
-reduced the amount of dirt spacing between them
-chipped up some of the edges a bit more
direwolf: it will definitely start to slow down for me, but it is never too cumbersome to work worth. The longest delays are if you are changing the output size (ie. going from a 1024x1024 to a 2048x2048 substance)
awlwine: Thanks! I really appreciate it.