The Bi-Weekly Substance Challenge (Challenge 1 & 2)

3DKyle

Hello everyone, welcome to the Bi-Weekly Substance Challenge. 
Like the previous challenge that was ran by Tejay, this is going to be running everyone 2 weeks to give people a little longer to work on the materials.

How it works

• Every 2 weeks a new reference will be shared to be recreated, you are also encouraged to find your own reference, as long as it still fits the topic for that bi-weekly substance, for example if we share a mud reference, you can gather you own mud reference. 

• You can be creative with the reference and make it look either realistic, stylized or hand-painted, it is up to you.

Guidelines

• Try and give constructive criticism, giving and receiving this should help each of us artist grow.

• This is a Substance Challenge, so stick with that software.

• You can post Wip's and finished materials here. 

• Don't share work you've done in the pass, if you done a material before, try it again don't try pass old work off as something you did for this. 

• Final material renders to be rendered in a real-time engine (Marmoset, UE4, Unity, Cryengine, Stingray, IRay is also accepted).

• This is a learning experience for all, don't be afraid to ask questions.

• Learn all that you can and do share what you also learn. 

• Please be respectful to each and everyone. 

Discord
We have a channel in the Allegorithmic Discord group where you can share WIP's and final images as well as discuss the challenge, Click here to go to it.
If you have any other questions in relations to any of the Allegorithmic's software, use the appropriate channels for those questions.

Resources

• Allegorithmic Youtube Playlists
• Substance Academy
• Rogelio Olguin Substance Designer Gnomon Tutorial
• Joshua Lynch Substance Designer Tutorials 

Challenge 1 - Bricking it! (Brick Wall) || Time Limit 30th Jan - 14th Feb.
Every portfolio needs one. Click the pictures for bigger resolutions.

  

Challenge 2 - A marble-ous texture (Marble) || Time Limit 15th Feb - 1st March.
Be free with this, make a single marble texture, make marble tiles, just loose your marbles and have fun! 
  

Next Challenge
http://polycount.com/discussion/184104/the-bi-weekly-substance-challenge-challenge-3/p1?new=1

For those finishing up the marble and brick, make sure to keep them in this thread. 

picto

Cool, I didn't know about those videos. There is even one for creating a brick material
Thanks @acealmighty13 and @Adelphia

picto

Speaking about different techniques to scatter information across the bricks…
I've noticed that your vertical lines are perfectly aligned @Dave3d
It's not that obvious on the render but I can clearly see it on the maps.
What will it be for you? Pixel Processor or Directional Warp?

Adel0n

Hey guys! I was inspired by @3DKyle stream, which was very useful, and I learned a lot. I felt that ArtStation so miss my version of bricks, so I decided to make them, every portfolio needs one (c). So, here my WIP.

And my ref

alexholmesl93

Gruckel said:

@alexholmesl93 maybe a nice slope blur set to min would do the trick?
 

ahh classic slope blur set to min, I feel like I will see that node a whole lot in the future

I ended up giving the 'Paint wear' node a go, alongside a tip from this thread, https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php?topic=3060.0, for some peeling edges to the chips.

Still much tweaking to go!

I

acealmighty13

Here's an update with cracks and a little more varied color in the bricks. 

YGallagher

Hey guys! Here`s my brick wall. Want to made spreading mortar all around to brake texture and it was very challenging. Hope u like it
refernce bellow
 

Gruckel

@Adel0n really nice height difference on those bricks!
@alexholmesl93 that's quite an update, would've liked to see what it'd look like with some hue differences as well!
@acealmighty13 looking a lot more polished for sure, would love to see some more mortar.
@YGallagher nice mortar, really looks as if though someone just pushed the bricks into the wall.

acealmighty13

@Gruckel That's something I planned on working on this evening when I finish up at work today.  I have a Histogram Range node set up to control the mortar height.  Just have to tweak some things to get some variety in depth.

Ratchlar

Hi everyone, I found this video from Allegorithmic's livestream where they go through how to make a brick material in substance designer if anyone is stuck. Here is the link 

jeffvhuard

My WIP! C&C are very welcome! Thank you all! 

jeffvhuard

Adel0n

@Gruckel Thanks you!

So, finished with color and presentation, think it's done.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3x95B

ThePowFin

 @Adel0n Looking good! The grout could really come alive if you added a bit of 'living' around the bricks; now the brick seem like they had just been placed into a flat plane of grout, and it didn't change the grout at all.

@YGallagher Looks interesting! Nice colors and the grout looks awesome! Maybe you could tone down the dripping effect from some places so it wouldn't try to chomp each and every brick? Perhaps you could also tone down the biggest sloping of the bricks while at it, it looks like there are big portions out of some brick, but they don't look any rougher on the surface. Looks top notch already, though, much more interesting than that of mine.

Anubliz

I have finally gotten to the point where my materials kinda looks like what they are supposed to be , so here's my contribution.

Bomber

Stylised attempt:

Budd

Lots of tasty bricks around here!

@Gruckel Thanks!
@Adelphia Cheers, nice tip with the pixel processor, i'm yet to really delve into that so seeing that is a good place to  start   

Calling this done, not sure ill have any more time to work on it. Crits welcome  

Gruckel

After 8 years in Unity it was a lot of fun to try and create a presentation in Unreal, might have to call this one done, but I'm still very much open to some C&C!

PolyBrother

Here's my go at it for now. There are some pretty good submissions here!

Zoryall

Hi guys!
First try for me (it's actually harder than expected), and I only started to use substance designer since 1 or 2 months in my spare time. I've got some problems on this one, mainly the cracks who are a bit too sharp and the bricks a bit too uniform, I'll see what i can do next but I miss time so I'll do that later.
Very good entries here, it's quite impressive. Thanks for the challenge, I'll try to stick to it as mu
Anyway, here's my entry, feedback is welcome!
Iray:

Marmoset 2:


@Adel0n Nice! Your final version looks really cool.
@Kid.in.the.Dark haha, saw your submission a few days ago in arstation, I really like it, nice mortar work.
@Daniel_Swing Maybe try to softer your height, looks a bit too sharp to me.

Btw, if anyone have tricks to create masks in the edges of the bricks, i'll gladly take them, I struggled a lot with that.

Nathan3D

@Zoryall good start, try plugging in a normal into a curvature node then level it out to get an edge mask

Some good stuff been posted since I last checked  

acealmighty13

@Gruckel Here's an update.

Budd

@acealmighty13 looking good! if you push the height and roughness a bit more it will really help sell it too imo.

Kazperstan

Zoryall said:

Btw, if anyone have tricks to create masks in the edges of the bricks, i'll gladly take them, I struggled a lot with that.

This is a pretty standard way to do it:

Daniel_Swing

My last post, I swear! I'll get back to my project and stop making bricks!

I'm actually quite happy with my last attempt... Thanks a lot to Wes and his amazing tutorials.

Nathan3D

@Daniel_Swing nice work I like the third one the most really interesting shapes and colours

3DKyle

Tons of amazing stuff coming out of this already. Finally back from holiday so planning on getting more of my material done before the deadline. 
Keep up the good work everyone. 

Zoryall

Kazperstan said:

Zoryall said:

Btw, if anyone have tricks to create masks in the edges of the bricks, i'll gladly take them, I struggled a lot with that.

This is a pretty standard way to do it:

Thanks!

alexholmesl93

Might call this done for now, would still appreciate any C&C's for next time Well done everyone and thanks @Gruckel for all the great feedback!
Here it is in UE4, where I am working on breaking up the tiling with some vertex painting:

acealmighty13

A new update....

_rethunk

Hi everyone! Lots of inspiring brick walls here! It's my first time posting here on polycount; I'm new to Substance, and to 3D in general but I'm taking the plunge this year. Here's my effort:


Learned loads through this exercise, can't wait for the next challenge. Crits welcome!

Darkmirth

I guess this is it for me. Was really fun making this. Can't wait for next one

Vorontsov

Here's my go at it

Nathan3D

@_rethunk welcome to polycount. your wall looks good, maybe try offset some or bricks a little so there not all in line with each other
@Darkmirth Looking good very vibrant should the bricks be sticking out that much from the grout though? seems kind weird to me.
@Vorontsov not a bad start, id work on your roughness some and try add some colour variation

jessnado

This is my first attempt at brick! I see a few details I totally need like not perfectly rectangular brick, more interesting surface details, and play with the grout line so it's not all flat. I'd like to know primarily how you all got non uniform shaped bricks. I used the brick generator and tried breaking up the shape with noises but it was fairly time consuming with poor results.

Nathan3D

@jessnado what do you mean by brick generator, do you mean a tile random or tile sampler node?  What I think is generally used and what is used is a shape node going into a tile random or tile sampler etc node and then tweaked in there to get different sizes, rotation, height etc then that comes out and then slope blur and directional warps are your friend  

alexholmesl93

@jessnado if you haven't seen this , then it should cover everything you need! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpsLg44gSg8 

You base colour is looking great so far though!

ThePowFin

Alrighty, I tweaked mine further. Added mor damage and reworked on the grout. Also, added some more variation to the basecolor.

picto

I totally rushed just to post a last update on this brick wall. Unfortunately I haven't had much time to work on it.
The base color is definitely the most difficult part for me
Hopefully I'll do better with the next references…

Gruckel

Time to call this one done, thanks for all of the great feedback everyone, really looking forward to the next one!

https://www.artstation.com/p/yyN38

N4meless

I'm done for now on the "sculpt", going to colorize it now, and before the deadline I hope.

Ref:

My Take:

JLeeD

Jumping in right on the last day Still learning Substance designer, this was done largely based on the tutorial on the algorithmic youtube channel but mixed a few things of my own in there fun challenge and increasing my substance knowledge!

3DKyle

Just finished up my take on this. I'll be posting the second challenge early morning on the 15th (GMT time zone). 

JoachimC

There's some cool and inspiring stuff here! Well done everyone, and thank you @3DKyle for organizing this! 

Here's my take on the bricks. I had a lot of fun figuring out Substance and playing with the render and light settings in Marmoset. Can't wait for the next one.  



And here's a little video for fun to see how light plays off the material.

Bruno Afonseca

Nice stuff Kyle
(I've edited this and removed the outdated picture, final version below!)

Darkmirth

Adelphia said:

@Darkmirth Looking good very vibrant should the bricks be sticking out that much from the grout though? seems kind weird to me.

 I'd say it's uncommon, sure, but I was ok with it as it is. The truth of the matter is that I should have added more control for the grout. But, you know what they say, making bricks the first time is fun, making them 3258th time is a charm.

Bruno Afonseca

I've done a second and final pass at it, with some nicer renders:

Sullum97

You guys are so inspiring! I normally never do this but kyle has been pushing me to do so and has been so helpful in learning designer so I guess why not! Nowhere near as good as your guys' but hopefully I can get some tips to learn from in designer, please feel free to tell me how I can improve if you'd like I love feedback! Cheers,
Corey

N4meless

Here is my final, I learned a lot thx @3DKyle.

I need to improve a lot of point and i made some mistake but didn't have enough time to change it.

Nette

   
Joining late but here my wip of the brick substance. I wanted to focus first in the details having a big shape before adding more rows of bricks. Hopefully in the next few hours I may have a finished version of it. 

Also awesome works here, love each version of everyones bricks. 

bobmartien

Cool challenge ! Here is my contribution !



PS: I will redo better screens later. Right now it's quite dark and a soft lighting is missing