Creating Sci-Fi pipes in Substance Designer

Crimzan

Hello everybody!

I'm new to Substance Designer, and I love Sci-Fi. I created a few Bricks, Cobblestone, Dirt, Pebbles and whatnot, but now I would love to do some Science Fiction in Substance. Whereas I don't have that many issues with paneling or so, I really struggle with pipes.

This is how I would love my pipe to look like (the big pipe in the middle):



The pipe itself is easy to do, but how can I create these bigger, slightly beveled rings which go around the pipe?

I don't have a graph to show, I just made a shape with rounded off corners left and right, which tiles up and down. If this is not too difficult, can these be easily bent into a shape, or even around corners with a directional warp? Or is a different node better for this?
(I know I could basically model it in 3Ds Max and Bake Out a Hightmap - this is how I made it the other times, but I would love to know how to do it in Substance Designer.)

Maybe it is a rather easy, noobish question, but still that's something I am struggling with currently, and I didn't find tutorials on google that tackle interesting, detailed pipes in Substance Designer.

I made a little Heightmap in 3Ds Max. Basically I'd love to know how to make this in substance:

Thank you for any answers in advance!

-Crimi

Quack!

This is a very good question that has alluded me for a while.  Getting the soft and subtle gradients needed for a true heightmap is part of the art of Substance Designer.  I would like to give this a go when I get a chance and I'll post if I can achieve anything worthwhile.

kysg

Should be doable with gradient nodes.

Froyok

This is now easily doable in Substance Designer 6 with the new curve node.

If you want to do it in SD5, there are two ways :
- Create your gradient, linear. Add a gradient map (grayscale) on top and enable the "interpolate mode".
- Via a pixel processor with the following formula : 

Quack!

Froyok said:

This is now easily doable in Substance Designer 6 with the new curve node.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Edit] Just saw the release of SD6, yay!

Crimzan

Froyok said:

This is now easily doable in Substance Designer 6 with the new curve node.

If you want to do it in SD5, there are two ways :
- Create your gradient, linear. Add a gradient map (grayscale) on top and enable the "interpolate mode".
- Via a pixel processor with the following formula : 

Thank you very much Froyok!
I'm gonna try that out as soon as I'm home!

I'll download a trial version of SD6 to try out the new curve node. How would I approach doing this if I wanted to do it there?

King Mango

since I was just trying to figure this out I'll contribute that 2018 has gradient linear 2 which gets you really close to a pipe shape. If you put a pow grayscale after it and set it to a value like .8 or so, it will help round the lower values.
You'll have to play around with values and masking depending on the tiling you need to set your gradient L2 node at to get your desired radius.
The trick now becomes getting the pipe shape to be viable at different elevations in the heightmap which I haven't mastered yet.
I won't be working with tessellation in my final product so figuring out normal intensity and how it relates to my worklow is trial and error.
Is there any way to estimate what the different values for normal intensity are? Like normal node default is 1 but what depth is that simulating? What is it simulating at 3? At 10?