Weekly Substance Challenge - Week 1
polycounter lvl 8
Hey everyone. Recently I've been trying to up my game on substance designer, like many of you. After working with someone else proved most helpful, I decided what better way to expand on that than create one of the many loved challenge threads.
How it works
- Each week I will be posting a new texture for us to make.
- You are free to approach it from any way you would like.
- Deadlines aren't enforced. Just encouraged, but feel free to do any you have miss.
Guidelines
- Rookies to pros, all are welcome to join in.
- Please critique when possible, this is for learning.
- Ask questions. If you are struggling you can ask for help.
- Posting WIP's is encouraged. It's always good to see peoples process and development .
- Use of height/displacement maps are welcome.
- Display the textures in any real time engine. (Marmoset, UE4, Cryengine, Unity, etc.)
- Procedural only, no importing masks, diffuse or normals. It's rough at first but the best way to learn.
- If you display your nodes please make them close enough to read.
- Sharing of substance files is most welcome. It's a great resource to learn from. (please list your version for ease of use)
- If you are game, go further and use parameters to create alterable textures.
If you feel anything should be modified or added to these guidelines, please let me know.
There is a skype group, PM me if you'd like to join!
Resources
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Substance_Designer
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/PBR
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-toy9WMImypmLAiU9h_SzQ
Week 1- Concrete tiles
A nice easy one for beginners but plenty of places to take it for more advanced.
Reference 1
Reference 2
Replies
Here's my start at it, just the base shape of the tiles. I'm trying to add more damage and variation to the edges, like chipped off corner(s) and such but couldn't get it to work so well :[
Trying to target (mask) only the edges of the shape but have no idea how haha.
mrgesy: I did sort of just google image the reference. I will try for better stuff next week without water marks. Personally I have been using high res stuff from CGtextures as my reference but I dont know how right/legal it is to download and relink them as reference as that is technically redistribution. But its not like everyone has to follow the reference exactly its just for a base idea. So everyone can look for more reference if they prefer.
I'm currently waiting on my Unreal 4.8 download to finish, so I'll post an engine screenshot later.
I think I'm going to try to put some plants in next.
EDIT: I forgot to post a small overview over my graph:
That you can't make out everything is intentional as it's still WIP. I'll keep you guys guessing a bit :P
When it's done I'll post the .sbs for people to download.
And i was thinking about using marmoset. Im using the trial for this and i cant seem to be able to make a chamferbox with proper UV's, anyone have anything they want to share?
Anyhow here is my first attempt. Still struggeling with the colors a bit. Havent started on the grout.
Tzur_H : a good way to get damage on edges is the slope blur node. Turn up samples to 32, pick some noise like clouds and adjust to your desire.
Visceral : Nice start. I've recently been finding it best to leave colours until last. I found the best way to get a rounded cube with correct uvs is to make some edge loops closer to the sides (like in hard surface) so when you turbo smooth it holds up much better.
f1r3w4rr10r : Someones eager to dive in. Great to see the enthusiasm! You have a solid start, but your edges feel a little too damaged, maybe scale it up and blend the mask with your tile so you have some clean edges mixed in.
EDIT2: Problem solved, thank you!
Im still working a bit on the presentation. This is the same substance i posted before btw.
EDIT: Latest Update
EDIT: BTW awesome idea for a thread.
@Visceral Looking really good. You said you were struggling with colors? Did you know you can use the color picker in designer to pick any color on your screen? I usually keep my reference up and pick colors from that, then tweak them to balance everything back out.
Hey, thanks man. I think most of the colors right now come from the environment really. It kinda overpowers the grey tones.
@JonConley
Nice, needs moore normal map info. And i think you dont have to tile it so much, kinda hard to make out the details. I have 2048px on 4x4 tile.
I've begun on my take
Thanks for the crit. Yeah I'd agree with the normal map info. The reason I did so many (2048 map with 12 in each direction that gave me 3 tiles per meter at 512 pixels per meter) is so that when tiled it would not be as noticeable and I could get more variation.
Updated, dropped to 5x5 and a 2048 map
That looks fantastic!
@JonConley
Nice,i just figured if you're making a tiling texture repetition isnt that bad, you can always break it up with like vertex painting or decals. Thats atleast how i thought about it when i made a smaller pattern.
wip2
Decided to give a shot, looks like a nice chance to grow up your library:
In UE4:
Here is my second pass for today. Basically added the grass, and made it so that crack distribution, tile amount, grass distribution and crack size in relation to tile size were all adjustable. Will continue to refine this and hopefully come up with something cool! =]
somedoggy - I would love to hear some tips on creating a good height map. It looks great!
Still working on the height/normal only - I want to break the edges of the tiles more with some sharp angled shapes, to just a tiny bit of bigger damage spots and to add more variation to the detail on top of the grout before I move to albedo and roughness.
using the relief shader in SD
And an idea of how i made it:
Some of your substance look really good but could use a bit of variation especially when you have a large gap, adding a bit of rotation on the tiles make it look more natural in my opinion. still nice work everyone.
ok. my contribution
Here is mine
Holy shit Jerc, that looks incredible man!
Finally figured out how to use the height map in designer.
If you are wondering, you have to 1) add an output for the height map in the graph, right click it and select view in 3d -> height. Next go to the 3d view and go through Materials->Default and then Edit. once there you can up the relief amount.
Updated:
There are tons of ways of doing this, but a simple one is to choose a shape that has smooth borders or blur it, then blend it with a noise using an Add Sub blending mode.
You can also use warps and Non uniform blurs to add some cool variations.
I like using the Slope Blur method to make edge damages. It gives really nice sloped chipped away looking damage.
I used this to make two slope damage variations, one for the large breaks, and a finer noise damage. Then blended those two together with the original tile height map to get the effect.
Still not a satisfied with my brick work but I wanted to experiment with other things tonight.