Tristan Meere - Substance Sketchbook

AdvisableRobin

Hey everyone, I wanted a place to start posting whatever I've been doing in Substance lately. This for the most part will be dedicated to Substance Designer, materials, breakdowns, failed experiments.

Figure I'll start it off with what I'm currently playing with. I found a really neat wicker material on Clinton Crumpler's portfolio and wanted to try creating that pattern in Designer. Here is the work thus far, I wanted to get the height down and set up intelligently. The Albedo is just to visualize the control of blending for me so I can manipulate it without anything breaking. Which is ideal.

Next step from here is to start to make it look like wood.

AdvisableRobin

A little bit more work put into the wicker today. Getting some fatter wood shapes into it and redesigned the graph to have more lateral rungs to it, I might make them a bit thinner.

Wanna get some damage and splintering to the surface of the horizontal weave. 

Caiterade

The shapes are super uniform. Idk what node you are using to tile, but add a smidge of size variation. That's what i'd suggest right now

AdvisableRobin

A bit tangential from the wicker, but amidst a week of job applications and school work I decided I wanted to give myself a rest with something different. So these are some good ol' asphalt roof shingles, the foundation is pretty far along, but some aspects still aren't where I'd like them...ex. I have some of the shingles peeling up, but it doesn't really read well, you can hardly tell.

@Caiterade I agree, I'm kinda reworking that material too, but once I get the foundation of the graph solid I should be able to give it more variation without everything break or trying to random seed out errors.

Caiterade

No prob! On this new one, it'd be cool if you did a linear gradient on the main/preliminary block shape so you get a better sense of overlap and a cooler height map. They're overlapping on your tile but look like they're all on the same plane so it's confusing.

 Keep doing the stuffs! Each one gets better!  

AdvisableRobin

Finally found time to sit and work. Spend most of it refining the blend on the ripping/tearing shingles. Spend a little bit on creating the surface detail, I ended up blending the detail into the tiled pieces rather then the original tile so I had more unique control of the look. I also took a quick roughness pass to start giving it that bit of sparkle that asphalt has. Hope I'll have more time to finish this up soon since I'm pretty excited to see it finished.

AdvisableRobin

Forgot to update this page, silly me.

Took a pass at the albedo, the worn edges still need a color difference similar to some of the peeling. I also want to maybe push the green moss growth a bit harder, not sure if its too subtle or not pronounced enough. I would rather error on the side of subtlety though.

jfitch

Awesome stuff Tristan. Really digging the moss, would be dope to have an aging slider on the substance to just fully cover that bitch in moss. Maybe lil mushrooms. I like the peeling but idk if the color difference feels right...it almost looks like its stamped on top. 

These show some good peeling, with some kind of softer material base->asphalt->some kind of red coating to make it look like terracotta or something. The peeling doesn't really seem to change color, if anything some of them look darker on the edges. Also some cracks coming from the peeling might be nice! and have the color underneath the peels be darker maybe? And rougher? 

AdvisableRobin

@jfitch That is actually one of the ref images I've been using. There is three kinds of peeling on the shingles, a shallow speckle that can give the 'islanding' effect, a large surface level and holes that reveal the shingles underneath. I think the holes are still reading like peeling rather then holes through, maybe the top surface should be a bit colored like you suggested.

Here is the latest iteration of it

AdvisableRobin

Maybe part of it is that the damage is a bit over the top. Gunna have to play with that a lot for a final render me thinks.

AdvisableRobin

Finally finished with this one Artstation link for : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0ZNyw

AdvisableRobin

Getting a little bit of destress work in for a current portfolio piece that I am working on. Not quite done yet, but I'm getting closer to achieved the windswept look that I wanted.

AdvisableRobin

Made more progress on my snow, better defining the ledges and trying to work the 'soft' feeling into it without losing too much structure.

Stosh

Your roof shingles turned out awesome! Snow is looking good so far as well, just continue with the variation, especially subtle speckle variation. The current surface detail along the non reflective areas look a bit like wall plaster with the type of bump they have. Mix in those smaller details on the height/normal to layer it so you get less of that structured flatness and more of a softer transition look.  With those same smaller details, you could have some of them have a lower roughness value to allow another variation in reflectivity as well which should add a subtle amount of high sparkling in the snow.  

Are all of these done completely in designer? Or do you use another program for anything other than rendering in marmoset? 

Iuliae

The snow looks cool! I like the feel that's coming up with the normal. I'd add a bit more scattering, because in some parts it looks more like chalk than snow. I'd also make the flakes less numerous and more visible (they're my favorite part about the snow )

AdvisableRobin

@Iuliae Thanks a lot! I appreciate the good vibes! When you say the flakes do you mean the speckles in the roughness or high frequency noise on the surface?

@Stosh I appreciate the feedback! I do agree, some of the 'soft' areas start to get a little plastery looking with the high frequency detail, variation certain could help that. To clarify, when you say the smaller details, do you mean the small 'islands' of bumpy snow?

Yes it is all done in designer.

Stosh

The "smaller details" I'm thinking of is the variation of building of the snowflakes themselves that create very small peaks and valleys on the surface of the snow mounds themselves. In a softer snow look, it's spread all over the snow and flat areas only show up if another force pushed that snow into a flatter formation. What I've circled in red are a few the highest peaks of that snowflake buildup that has the higher reflectivity that I mentioned which will add another layer of variance to the roughness map along with the variance added from these smaller details. Subtle small details layered everywhere! 

Iuliae

@AdvisableRobin You're welcome! I meant the speckles in roughness, like in this photo (the general shading is a bit strange but the flakes are clearly visible):

AdvisableRobin

Been awhile since I updated what I was working on. The snow is now finished. You can check out the material here https://www.artstation.com/artwork/G9A04

I also wrote up a pretty breakdown for the material and went over some of the general tips and tricks I use in Designer. If you're interested you can check it here https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yRav9

I really appreciate the feedback that I got during this, it was quite an adventure from start to finish.

AdvisableRobin

Finished up a material not to long ago and got the right permissions to post it up. Rocky Ground material with a bunch of different variations to it.
You can view the full ArtStation post here https://www.artstation.com/artwork/wB41Z