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
Anyway here's mine so far
Thought I'd mix it up a bit and decided to make something a little more prestigious and royal hall like
Parameterized my marble to get some easy variations, too much fun this!
Totally fell in-love with marble and wanted to keep practicing Unreal Engine, so I created this little scene to show off the versatility of the substance.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/GVR1z
Thanks dude
Other than that good job.
@Darkmirth nice colors. I really love the green marble
Awesome thread!
extracted from reference
here is my latest iteration:
Someone has some idea on how to improve it ?
@Zombiecrackers
your substance is really beautiful but I doubt moss would grow on a refined surface without some damage
@ninetitle If I'm not mistaken it seems to me that you lack the little white dots present in the reference picture. Try adding more BW spots, transform them at /2 and then mask off parts to kill off obvious repeats, ,and afterwards I'd probably play with blending them in using overlay or Add and with levels to cancel any excess grays and get through satisfying amount of noise/dirt... Also it might help to create a working normal map just to better visualize it as you work (and you can even try adding a sharpen node to normal map to get that fine "tinge" out of it)...
@Zombiecrackers I like your pattern, but I think your colors and contrast need some balancing so they sit better together. I personally think the marble has too many light tones and the green moss is a bit too light as well. And as @ninetitle said, I don't believe moss would grow on gold that looks so smooth.
@rgbeard Very subtle marble you've got there. I like it, feels real.
@wpetrosky Well done, looks just like your ref and feels very realistic!
@kevAkom Also quite realistic looking, cool! The only thing I can say is I can spot the repeating due to the somewhat more saturated yellowy spots that stand out.
@K Definite improvement there! The colors are working much better now imho.
@JAKEALEXDUN Cool, good start.
@Gruckel Thank you!
@M.Petersen Looking good. A simple but effective pattern. You could try playing with some randomization in the tiles, their height, rotation, position to add more detail.
@plord I think you're not too far off with the grout to be honest. I do think you've gone a bit overboard with the horizontal offset of the stones as you're creating some 'crossroads' in your grouting in places. That might also be due to your tiling of the material on your cube. As for your presentation I think that's also going in the right direction. You could exaggerate the lighting so there is a more clearly lit and clearly shadowed side, to show off how your material reacts. And I don't think you really need the horizontal bands in your renders, they are just empty space hiding your work in this case.
@ninetitle I think it's improving! At first sight some things I guess you could try is more contrast in the smaller noise layers, and adding some subtle straight lines/scratches. Maybe also increase the size of your medium/large siz@Gruckel
@Martoon Good start! Personally I would prefer if the brick color variation itself was a bit more subtle, and adding your own very subtle color variation in the brick color itself. Basically moving it from one spot to another and not make it so tied to the bricks. Either that or go full-on patterned brick that has been consciously laid out in a certain way by the builders.
@troubleonsaturn @Kid.in.the.Dark @flaviat and @Darkmirth Loving it! Great work and great presentation.
And finally, here's my effort. Calling it done for now, I learned loads again.
Feedback is welcome
The new challenge will start on the 2nd, so you'll have tomorrow to finish up with the marble.
@PJPayne Looks nice and clean. Maybe the marble veins could be broken up a bit more with a small warp.
@JoachimC would be nice to see your reference image. I don't think I've seen marble just like that. Looks cool, though.
@Zombiecrackers That's fair, you have to experiment! That's what learning is all about.
@3DKyle Get well soon! Thanks for organizing, I should be present again for the next one.
@ThePowFin Thanks. I must admit though I didn't follow just one piece of ref to recreate, just looked at a bunch of marble that I liked, experimented with it and ran with it. I may have taken it a bit too far from actual realism... Here' some of the images I looked at the most.
@Romannn Looks cool! I especially like the roughness.
@Darkmirth Sweet stuff!
This challenge has been awesome! You all have help motivate me to push the marbles I'm doing for my current portfolio project and mix them with this.
Here is a mix of the marbles I made during these 2 weeks.
@BlackFenix_URS This is good, find some resources on hiding the tiling and keep going!
@Darkmirth This is amazing, this is one substance or different studies?
@Zombiecrackers The marble alone looks great! Nice colors! Pattern and moss alone also cool (no idea how to make them yet
@JoachimC whoa! didn't notice these crossroads, too much focus on building graphs
@Romannn Something like that was my first idea haha
And thank you for the kind words @plord means a lot!
Here are also my renders. Mostly used my generator and then gave them some additional touches.
@plord Looks good. I like how thin the veins are. Could maybe use a bit of a warp to break it up a bit. Not sure if your reference shows so smooth lines, though.
@Zombiecrackers Looks nice. Might look cool to make some of the veins thinner. Maybe you could also add a subtle secondary pattern to the lighter part, just like in the first reference image of the pinned post?
@rgbeard Thx, i like also your material,how you achive this nice green color?
@JoachimC I saw so many referenences, without this roughness it looks so shiny, very hard to get it right.
If someone interested can have this material for free
https://gum.co/CmWgi
Here's my attempt at it, I'd rework the base marble if I had extra time but I think this is okay!
I wasn't too satisfied with my last pattern, so I tried again:
@Gruckel - Absolutely love the metal veins you've got going on! But I feel like your scene doesn't quite do it justice. It's maybe too busy with cracks for the eye to read the shapes easily and quickly. The metal veins - my favorite part! - get a little lost in the render of the scene, too. I wish there were sections that weren't as cracked/worn so that part of the material would really show!
@Darkmirth - Awesome variety you've got going there, super impressed by the colors and shapes. For some reason the Marmoset renders don't seem to do it justice compared to the earlier image you posted.
@JoachimC - Loved seeing this develop. The tilted tiles and shapes for some reason read very "space marble" to me, which is a cool look. What nodes did you use/start out with to create some of those lighter shapes? I'm really digging the overall look!
For those finishing up the marble and brick, make sure to keep them in this thread.
Thanks very much! I realize I may have gone a bit far with it but I still like how it turned out.
I like yours as well, nice colors in the green and white stones! The grouting could read a bit better I would say as I'm currently not sure if it's grout or gold. If you'd like to take this further you could play with tile placement (height, rotation, offset etc.). This one looks very clean and new but the roughness you've got going works well already though.
Below is some of my thinking on how I did the marble shapes. The zoomed in images of the graph are of the first step because that's too hard to read in the first image. The Cells, Creased and Edge Detect nodes are what helped me a lot on this. I hope it makes some sense?
This is the reference I used.
I'm really new to Substance, and this was a really fun challenge. I welcome any comments/critique!