The Bi-Weekly Substance Challenge (Challenge 1 & 2)
interpolator
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.
Replies
Ref:
I'd really like to hit that rough diffused look like the ref, but it still feels too smooth atm.
@Budd nice pattern and @rgbeard that looks great!
@merlyn thanks! yours is looking much improved from the first draft already, if you were to change something making the white pattern less repetitive would give it a more natural look imo
This is my first attempt at creating marble, CC welcome
Some progress:
My biggest problem right now, I can`t figure out how to randomly rotate the pattern per tile. I guess this is done via the pixel processor as well? I would be grateful for any tips.
@Merlynn Nice! I like what you've done with the coloring, blending in some yellow with the greens. As for the pattern itself, like you say this is feeling a bit tiling too much. Getting a rotated pattern per tile may fix it but I'm not sure what the best practice is for more complex patterns. For now on mine, I've done the cheap shortcut of using a checker pattern to blend my marble with itself in a 90 degree rotated version of itself.
@makinmagic3 I like what you've done.
@Zombiecrackers Cool, I can't wait to get into the patterning stuff myself. Only thing I can say is the marble pattern probably wouldn't continue when it crosses into a different color/stone.
@derphouse Interesting color choice, I feel it sits nice in the lighting you've chosen. I'm not sure about the scratches though. They're not feeling super grounded or realistic to me.
@Freezy Demon That floor would make me sick in real life
@Kazperstan Also very cool with the patterning. No idea how to do that yet myself. I like the color of your background stone as well. If the edges on the green stone are gold I would say try to make them stand out a bit more as they are feeling a bit flat and blending into the background stone.
Here's my effort so far. Slowly but surely getting there, but I think I'm going to need quite a bit of tweaking to get it to look right.
If I find the time I also want to look into some fancy patterns to spice it up. For now I've been focusing on making it feel like marble in the first place.
CC more than welcome!
rough serpentine
striped marble :
Feedback is very welcome, particularly for the serpentine.
Now I will have to find a good tutorial to blend them correctly and add some weathering and dirt.
I'm planning on the last day to do a live stream feedback session. Let me know if you are interested in having your material on this.
For now here is some feedback.
@derphouse Your scratches are coming off a little to strong. Try making them a little more subtle and break it up with a slope blur or something to make them more jagged.
@Merlynn This is coming on nicely. I think @Shriken uses a pixel processor to change up rotation based on each stone/brick. Try doing something like this.
@JayS This is looking nice, however, I feel you got your bloom to high and maybe even the exposure. Tone that down and it will be more readable.
@Budd This is coming on well. Really digging the colors. Roughness is looking good too. I think you could do something with the edges to keep it more interesting like a small trim or something.
@Moist Looking good, I feel your marble could do with a little more variation.
@Zombiecrackers This looks nice. Try giving your pattern a slight blur and on the side of the stone you can see it looks rather jagged. Marble is looking nice, less like steak as some were saying.
@Kazperstan Is this suppose to be marble? I mean it looks alright if I got to be honest :P really digging it. Loving the subtle cracks on the marble.
@Freezy Demon This looks really interesting Freezy, very distorting however, I feel if that was in a VR game, everyone would just fall because it's kind of confusing. Don't get me wrong though, it looks really nice though. Marble looks very nice. Try playing with your roughness.
@makinmagic3 This looks pretty nice. I'm loving the veins. With your normal put a invert just before that as your subtle normal still shows in the lighting but the details look like they are sticking out and might look better with the details going in. Try adding some variation into your roughness as well.
@JoachimC Really looking nice, I feel the veins could maybe be to thick but depends on your reference. Liking the roughness very nice
@ninetitle This is a interesting pattern you have chosen, I look forward to seeing how yours turns out. I think your marble could do with some veins now even if it is subtle like this.
@Turks This is looking nice, I again feel your roughness could do with some love and in regards to the marble itself, the thing that sticks out to much is the pure white bit on the middle part just the second/third tile down. (if you don't know what I mean I'll upload a picture next time).
thanks , I'm more looking to replicate another kind of serpentine, this:
will need a lot more work.
I created a mask to blend the two kind of marble :
now I only need to figure out a way to blend it in a realistic way.
I would be grateful for advice on that and feedback .
Final
Reference
I know there are some changes to be made with the black marble but I feel I captured the essence of it enough to call it done.
@JoachimC Yeah I understand what you mean about the repeating pattern, I think it's to with the major/ larger veins and how I've blended them.
@3DKyle I thought something looked odd with the normal
@ninetitle Very nice recreation of the ref pattern. As for the serpentine you have a good start, nice color, but it could use more detail (some layers of veins and noise) and contrast.
@3DKyle Thanks! I've been playing with the marble veins generation and coloring today and got to a place where I'm a bit happier with it. There should be more variation in there now.
Everyone else, great progress!
For mine, I completely fell into the rabbit hole of creating parameters rather than an interesting tile pattern for the floor. I've hooked up a ton of variables and am trying to create a floor age slider that wears down the material more over time.
Fairly young and fresh tiles
Experimenting with aging it, one slider and a bunch of functions to have it drive my parameters
@MrSunabouzu looking good, there are/were a few malls in my area that must have used the same designer as that one :P , you might want to try and break up the white lines that are crossing multiple tiles though, unless they are supposed to cross them then disregard that!
Made a few subtle changes to the marble textures, playing around with a border of sorts, not sure if this is too much though. Crits?
@JoachimC Your top render is working better, I think the bottom render your chipped edges are too big (unless its a stylized floor? do you have a ref?) maybe check the scale of your noise in the slope blur if that's whats driving it.
@MrSunabouzu Good effort, your marble texture looks a little low resolution?
@N4meless The white marble is looking nice. Maybe add some smaller 'vein' details into the black version and add some variation to their color.
@Turks Nice, you could add some gradient and subtle height changes to some of the tiles to give more variation
Done a couple more renders below
Experimenting with colors also:
I might try a pattern next using them as a base
@Budd and @Turks nice pattern. I think the trim works very well on your tile @Budd.
@Soph=) are you going to mix that with the black marble you did before? That could look pretty cool.
Here's something I was thinking of going forward with for the final rendering. The crack generator still needs some work. It's amazing how cool looking patterns one can get with adding gradient map on top of these grayscale versions of such 'marble generator' node.
@Soph=) Thanks, you're absolutely right. I was going a bit mad yesterday night when I discovered parameters and went totally overboard. Below is a version with more subtle details. I love your white marble, and the gold feels very nice too. I'd almost want there to be less grouting lines to make the white marble stand out more and give it some more space.
@K Nice use of the text node there. I do feel that your green and blue colors are a bit too saturated, but maybe that's what you were going for?
@Xpecto Cool pattern. I think maybe the material as a whole is a bit too reflective and clean.
@Merlynn This has definitely improved, well done!
@ThePowFin I like your use of a central ornament in a different material but I'm not so sure of the border around it. Your marble veins are great though!
As for mine, I've toned it down again from yesterday. Trying to focus on lots of tiny details to make it feel more realistic rather than over the top damage. Also trying out some different lighting and presentation in Marmoset for fun.
A version without the coloured text
Well done @Soph=)
@JoachimC Yeah i see what you mean. Ill match some more muted references
By the way, great work on this one everybody. Love seeing all these awesome materials!