The Bi-Weekly Substance Challenge (Challenge 3 & 4)
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
Previous Challenges
Challenge 3 - Rock on! (Rock) || Time Limit 2nd Mar - 16th Mar.
Click the pictures for bigger resolutions.
Challenge 4 - Sewer Drain || Time Limit 17th Mar - 31st Mar.
Click pictures for bigger resolutions.
Replies
Some basic shapes today, slowly getting to know what particular nodes do (started to note what are they doing :x).
I think I'll try to break it down to make it have shapes of varied sizes a little bit more. Probably will drop something during the weekend.
Having another look at it today I agree with everything you guys have said... I do feel like my height transition may be a bit too harsh so I'll make sure to have a revisit on making the edges of my initial shape be a little more beveled so get that smoother transition. Sadly I actually toned back the surface noise on some areas so it's somewhat smooth on some parts of the rock surfaces but I guess I did a terrible job at showing that in presentation... either way I'll dial it back much more since what @ThePowFin said is very true... I should let the bigger forms play it's part and put some confidence into that instead
Also, I used a bit of a salad bowl of references that I took bits from.
I kind of went with the height of the first reference, the micro detail of the second and the flat rigid segmentation of the surfaces from the third. Hopefully that makes sense, haha.
I'll have an update with the adjustments soon... likely sometime next week since my weekend is booked up atm... Either way, excited to see the rest of the entries!
@Moist - Nice.
First pass at this. Wanted to do something productive while I'm sick at home. I'm doing the non-blocky version (going off the 3rd image). It has a lot of large planar surfaces combined with hard smaller scale shapes that look really interesting. Still a while off to get those the way I want. Crits welcome of course.
@Moist Looking nice! So much potential for modeling.. Can You share how to create such shapes?
@Darkmirth Very nice! Looking forward for progress
Love to see all of you guys one here an pushing yourself!
@Brygelsmack this is looking sweet so far!
@plord Love the look of it so far, looks great for tileable rocks!
Here we go for my start, still working on the base shapes and refining them. Going from a more layered rock.
It's really hard to get the good shapes going, but ill keep pushing!
Cheers guys!
@Luxap nice start, you could try randomizing the shapes more so they look less uniform.
@plord Great start!
@Brygelsmack Nice! The large chips in the surface of the rock are a little too random and maybe too deep?
Made a start on #3, going to try and make some sandstone rock
ref:
C&C welcome!
Also had an issue with steps on height caused by 'low' setting on auto-levels, didn't know that it make so much difference. <- maybe it will help someone
@Luxap thanks for kind words! You have really nice shapes there, can You roughly share how to achieve something like this?
@Darkmirth It looking cool, maybe some lower tiling on those shapes? I have feeling, that because of it (or maybe the accumulation of details), it looks more like a micro surface of the rock. But man, still nice shapes!
edit: managed to switch some noises for small detail
Messing around with a few ideas using this as reference
I am going to add some smaller cracks, and add some smaller detail on top of the shapes I have now and get rid of the larger gaps between the rocks.
@plord I will share some stuff at the end when I am happy with it, because at the moment I am going back on forth destroying large parts of my graph to get new results hahah
@Soph=) Thanks! I tried to get some random shapes in there, and it works a lot better, but still not good enough!
@KevMcG Try to keep the smaller details more subtle then you have now, I think that could really help you push this one, but good job so far!
Keep it up guys! Love seeing all of your progress
I will make another attempt later on at some sharper rocks.
My Substance for this moment with render in Unity !
Appreciate your crits! I was actually going for that. I'm using this as reference and it has some large cuts here and there that I like.
Here's a second iteration. Not so happy with cracks yet. Will try to get the small scale shard/rocky detail in next. Colors also need tweaks.
@Soph=) Whoa, these are awesome shapes! Looking forward for more
@Daniel_Swing I think it looks nice, think it just need some work on colors
EDIT: I lied, I just went back and adjusted some things. Will upload tomorrow when I've worked on them a bit more.
@Darkmirth : I really liked your un-colored substance. But with the brown colors it looses some sharpness - Do you use AO? I found that it made my rocks pop immensely more than when I didn't. Otherwise, I think a higher variety in color (and perhaps a lighter tone as well) would do it really good.
So I adjusted the stuff that I had in my graph and ended up with this.
Im definitly getting somewhere now, getting more into the finer details now!
(but first sleeptime, Sleeptight!)
@Daniel_Swing Very cool. If I could say one thing is personally I would cluster the moss together a bit more.
@Luxap Good start! Clear what type of ref / cliff you are looking at and where it's going.
@plord Cool stuff! Maybe the moss is a little bit too noisy in contrast with the rock?
@Brygelsmack Hot damn. That looked like a photo to me. How are you doing those nice short horizontal cuts?
@flaviat Original choice for a rock material, looks good.
And here's my first go at it, still very rough and early WIP. I'm finding this quite a bit harder than the last two challenges to be honest, but I'm slowly moving towards something that I kind of like. CC very welcome.
@Daniel_Swing Starting to look nice. I might personally try to go for thinner cracks that are not quite that strong, but I wouldn't say that's wrong.
@Luxap Definitely some interesting forms there. You might want to step back a little and define the bigger shapes first, though, and then start cutting and adding mid level detail and fine detail.
@plord The rock is shaping out quite nicely. Keep pushing the moss if you want, but I'd maybe concentrate on the rock a bit further. Some finer, smaller cutout holes and such might add another layer of detail to it. Also, the small sharper slope blurs might feel a little distracting compared to more rounded edges of other things.
@brygelsmack Looks nice. Maybe a tad too artificial; you could try adding a few warps to break the procedural/handcut feeling. Slope blur can also do the trick with bigger shapes.
@KevMcG You might want to add another addsubbed or subtracted shape to the bigger shapes. The detail looks nice already though.
@Soph=) Looks very nice. Me diggs. Looking at the reference, I think say you could add a bit stronger idea of layeredness to your work, if you want.
Here's my first attempt. Still messing around with the bigger shapes here mostly. Going to also add some crack and and another layer of rock to go by the shapes.
I'm following mostly the image 7 of the first reference picture posted.
I took a closer look on the photo ref I was using and realized the colors were all messed up. Everything has a strong yellow tint. So I did a color adjustment to what it probably looks like in real life. Here it is.
That being said here is my latest version. No heightmap changes since last time. And colors will still be tweaked... not quite there yet.
@JoachimC Thanks man! It defenitly is harder than the first couple of challenges, its good to have the challenge!
Maybe a bit to soon to say something about your rocks, but I like where the layering is going
@Brygelsmack Love the shapes you got going on there, and also had a look at your layered rocks on Artstation, love all the details you got on there!
Did some more work! Getting in sort of a good place now, now the detail stuff can begin!
My Ref
For a simple base get two tiler nodes of your choice plug in some shapes make them a bit different then blend them with max mode then just experiment
First Substance challenge. Trying for a sandstone cliff material. Just a height map with AO so far. Any feedback is very welcome. May start another graph after the lessons learned on this one.
This is where I'm now. Still needs sharp cracks and some variations to smaller cliffing before going for the colors.
My normal is currently at 10 which I thought was quite high already. What's a sort of acceptable range to have your normal in?
Next iteration. Still not quite satisfied with the results. Added some colors and found out 'divide' blending mode can be rather useful for fuller color splatters.
@Kazperstan looking really good already some nice realistic shapes in there.
I finished mine tonight here it is, any comments would be appreciated
These challenges are really getting me into this program!
I've done a revamp on my previous Substance... I went back and as I was adjusting the old one I got really sick of how it looked... so I recreated this one by changing a few major shapes and recolouring it.
C&C Welcome, still working on it