Quack's Substance Designer Sketchthread
polycounter lvl 17
Hey everyone!
My name is Nick Quackenbush and I am a Game Dev at Cold Iron Studios, a new company formed by a number of industry veterans. I have fallen in love with Substance Designer and decided to share some of my work.
Below is some work using Substance Designer, all are procedural with zero bitmaps used.
I plan on updating this thread with more of my Substance Designer works. Comments, critiques and questions are welcomed!
My name is Nick Quackenbush and I am a Game Dev at Cold Iron Studios, a new company formed by a number of industry veterans. I have fallen in love with Substance Designer and decided to share some of my work.
Below is some work using Substance Designer, all are procedural with zero bitmaps used.
I plan on updating this thread with more of my Substance Designer works. Comments, critiques and questions are welcomed!
Replies
Love the work you've done so far. How long have you been in love with substance?
I'm just starting out, and I love thinking about how im going to make my ideas a reality with a non-destructive workflow! As of right now, im trying to make this cobblestone flooring with cracks. I'm wondering how do you process your workflow from your head to the nodes in substnace diesnger? The current meathod i'm trying is extracting characteristics from my reference, and creating a group of nodes for each characteristic. (ie: cracks in molding, leaves, etc) Here's my reference if you're curious:
I do the same, every element gets broken down into its own contained 'mini' graph within the same graph. The layout of the stones would be it's own mini-graph all stemming from a singular mask input, the cracks would be their own mini-graph, each type of surface noise would also be its own mini-graph. By breaking up the details in such a manner we can make sure each one is held to a high quality and matches what we perceive, or want to be, correct. With a bunch of these mini graphs in my main graph I then will combine them further down the chain making sure I don't muddy the textures with details. It is very easy to have a sloppy graph that results in a muddy, procedural looking texture. The goal is to avoid this.
One key thing I also do is that I start with making a heightmap that feeds my Sobel Normal Map. Base color, roughness, and AO are all the very last things I do. Often my substance will just be a grayscale material for 90% of the project. If you can make a fantastic looking heightmap and normal map then all of your other maps in a procedural workflow will follow as they are very dependent on curvature and AO, and curvature and AO a very dependent on a good heightmap.
Good luck!
(You should start a thread if you haven't already)
P.S. I have been using Designer for about 2 years now.
You got a good amount of depth in them using parallax or tessellation?
Are these shots from designers viewer?
On the latest plywood, the transition between light and dark values comes across a bit harsh, like a softer falloff or less contrast in the colors.
I always use Tessellation to make sure the heightmap I generate has proper height values relative to the material I am creating. And yea these are all Designers Yebis 3 Viewport.
And yup! I agree that the transitions on the wood are lacking. I plan on iterating a bit more on that and will take your crit into account as I do, thanks!