The Bi-Weekly Substance Challenge (2018 Challenges)
interpolator
Hello everyone, welcome to the Bi-Weekly Substance Challenge 2018.
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 past, 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
- 80.lv Substance Designer Articles
Previous Challenges
- Challenge 1 & 2 (Brick & Marble)
- Challenge 3 & 4 (Rock & Sewer Drain)
- Challenge 5 & 6 (Roof Shingles & Sea Foam)
- Challenge 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12 (Mud, Copper, Windows, Ornate Door, Moorish Mosaics, Round Ornaments)
- Challenge 13, 14, 15 & Materialize (Sci-Fi Wall, Mars Surface, Lava, Allegorithmic Contest)
Challenge 16 - Rail Road || 4th Jan - 18th Jan
Click the images for higher resolutions.
Challenge 17 - Substance Food || 20th of Jan - 3rd Feb
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Here are some tasty substances from other artists to give you that appetite of inspiration.
Alice Gionchetta - Pizza
Stephen Honegger - Fried Egg
Curt Smith - Waffles
Jeff Kleinzweig - Pizza
Thomas Meurisse - Grill and Meat
Challenge 18 - Circuit board || 12th Feb - 26th Feb
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Challenge 19 - Concrete Damaged Floor || 1st March - 15th March
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Challenge 20 - Cassette Tape || 17th March - 31st March
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Challenge 21 - Old Shield || 5th April - 19th April.
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Challenge 22 - Grass || 1st May - 15th May.
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Challenge 23 - Metal Zinc Plates || 27th May - 10th June
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Replies
@rosen_kazlachev Thanks for sharing your breakdown with us! As someone who is quite new to SD and all this procedural stuff, I always love seeing how versatile it is and all the crazy different functions we can create.
this kind of stuff
So, I'm doing it the slow and hard way (creating multiple versions that I hope to piece together into a tiling mural) but I bet there is some clever person out there who figures out a way of setting up a generator for this
@capone - Looking at the texture it looks like you could just use multiple instances of lines / sloped down points and then make that edgy direction with the directional warp node - try inputting something very contrasty into the line like a cube.
In work : lines => directional warp + shapes (blur hq)
hope that speeds up your process - on a sidenote, seems your Portfolio Website is up for sale / out of date.
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Here's my Submission so far
I think I will probably bail on the ,,circuits,, of my reference itself. They vary even more then the Pins and im too exhausted for this work atm to make 60+ instances and handplace them again
Your circuit board looks great!
So yeah I did it all manually last night, took a while and that's just the circuit mural
Anyway yeah ideally with circuit boards you'd have all the circuits be very specific and line up with all the pins/plugs/features of the board but I don't think anyone will even attempt that? So might will just serve as a background mural. I may try and mask sections out where I place features to avoid circuit lines getting too close to them, to make it feel more functional.
I really need to improve my really bad SD skills, so i thought i'd try this challenge. I did read instructions, but if i'm still doing something wrong with this, please do let me know!
Anyhow, here's my first WIP image:
Right now, i have one bigger problem. AS it is now, i'm basically for each shape, like the bars, the large black square, etc....i'm making separate network of nodes, before i combine them all. Meaning, make square, duplicate/transform, blend, repeat, etc. This is so that i can still have masks for colors, cause if i combine them into one shape, and THEN duplicate...i'm not sure how to separate various elements.
But this doesn't seems to be good idea either, since network is of course, getting rather complicated for something rather simple. So...anyone having any ideas, how to approach this? Basically, how do i duplicate all these elements and transform them around, without having too many nodes that are basically the same, and still have control over various elements, via mask?
Anyhow, tnx and cheers!
Create an array node, I did mine with an FX map.
I'm not done with mine yet, still finding things out. Anybody know the vocabulary of the parts of the chip? I assume this is a RAM chip.
Ok, i did work a little with FX maps, but i'm not entirely sure what you mean with array node...could you maybe explain a bit what you mean with that? And tnx!
As in, create an FX map that iterates the input "x" many times with an offset of (x,y).
- No idea what it is (vocabluary) but it seems you're missing additional fonts on top of the Chip ( 84HT ).
- MT / TG Letters are both a bit offset in the ref.
Just my five Cents
The Placing is a bit random because I wanted to nail the objects and subgraphs fist to get the look and feel.
I use SD 5.6.2, there is no Textnode so maybe I am a bit behind
For me the SD challanges are for testing new techniques and learn a lot about procedural calculation methodes. Not to push the most beatiful art because I wont get paid for the Stuff I build and good art needs a lot of time Hopefully i get the things done I planned.
But creating my onw textnode sounds like a nice challange to me.
I thought about creating a tool that combines the textinformations and Atlas informations into the colorvalues of at Bitmap and then read the stuff per pixel in a FX map or another PixelProcessor. but then I am not flexible anymore.
I think I need to buy a new SD version.
But it was an interesting approach to create such a Tool. maybe I can use it anywere else.
Hey Robin, I personally just use the text node for the chips, but I mean, you could just photoshop and import as a bitmap - tough im not sure if thats an option for this challenge due the guidelines - Maybe Kyle allows some exceptions for the Letter Part . Personally I would advise not to buy a License and rather getting a Subscription, due the Updates and Stuff. Might be worth waiting tough depending on your Situation, I bought my annual on Cyber Weekend when it was 40%? off - but I bet that they will have other discounts available this Year.
1) In tile generators is is possible to adjust a limit distance for how close shapes can be drawn together? In order to avoid distances like 1+2 and make them appear more further away like 1+3? I know how to do this with more nodes and masks (tile sampler mask input and threshold) , just seems strange for such a parameter not to exist in the tile generators?
2) You know your exposed parameter setup menu? Is there a way to 'clean' this? As in delete those that are no longer links anymore? I often end up with 'exposed' parameters based from old nodes that no longer exist. I wish there was a way to clean it, even if it just highlighted the broken links that would be useful.
1) There's several ways you can go about distancing tiles equally. One way would be to tile everything equally(as in a standard grid, maybe with some offset, but try to avoid overlapped tiles). Use an input image as your pattern and scale down the shape within it then transform it to a corner or anywhere other than the center of the image. Lastly, add some random fixed rotation.
Another way would be to use the Random Tile node. play with its "interstice" settings. I believe it even allows you to rotate within a tile and avoid overlap.
You might also consider the splatter node as well. Tile Sample is super powerful, but i've found theres a few functions existing in other nodes that i wish were in the tile sampler and vice versa. wouldn't be surprised if we ultimately end up with one singular tile generator at some point.
Edit: You could also create a noise. Something like a cellular noise, then mask out specific value ranges, and use that result as a mask to drive your tile sampler.
2) You should be able to delete empty exposed parameters with the lil "x" to the far right of each of them. Also, if the nodes they originated from still exist, be sure to click the expose dropdown list and hit "clear."
As for the exposed parameters I think you missed my point. Sure, I can delete them if they are not being used but can you identify which ones are linked and which are not? Otherwise I just have to use my current process which is;
- Press X to delete
- Does anything change in the final material?
- If no then it's probably not linked and ok to delete. Go down to the next parameter and repeat.
- If something changes then UNDO and move down to the next parameter.
It's not a big deal but a bit of a pain, especially for a material like this where I can see myself having dozens of exposed parameters.
Just trying to get a nice layout/size setup for the height map at the moment. Currently 7 individual 'parts'. When I'm happy with what I have I'll need to create a SVG mask to hide a few of the circuit murals. There are too many 'obvious' overlaps, especially with the large circle and pill shaped parts. They are a bit of an awkward size, as I can't mask them between the circuits. Unfortunately at this stage I'm pretty sure I won't be able to fully avoid that issue, starting to think I shot myself in the foot making this type of board.
Before this challenge I thought all circuit boards were generally the same, how wrong I was!
Was pretty tricky getting the circuits I wanted. Tried to make logically placed circuits at the start, but quickly found how hard that would be to accurately pull off(doesn't help im no electrician) So instead, I went for something greebly. Anyway, I ultimately settled on creating a small bank of circuit patterns, then used a tile sampler to place them. They pick their shape and orientation based off rotation/distribution maps derived from where the chips are placed. Its pretty fun to plug a new random seed in and see the different patterns that come up.
ArtStation Link
You guys are doing a stellar job on this recent challenge.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nRAdE
EDIT: I just did some messing around and figured it out. I feel like a bit of an idiot. I went about making my lines backwards I focused on the line instead of just creating shapes and edge detection *facepalm* I'm going to have to redo what I did.
Also, super nice work on the circuit boards, guys! Care to share how you generated your patterns?
You can DL my circuit board if you're interested in dissecting that mess. Good luck! (I'm working on optimizing it for sale in the meantime.)
Link is in the description
(I'd just post the direct DL link, but not sure what polycount's rules are on DL links)
Better res: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kJmW2
Tried creating albedo and roughness for my height map but it didn't go too well. As usual I get lumpy, undefined results.
Update:
Edit:
Here's how I restrict smaller cracks to places where larger cracks join. Its just a mask derived from the previous cell noise. Its nice, using the Cell 1 node since it produces a voronoi noise with a nice falloff. You can get similar noise from tiling over-sized parabolas, gaussians, or even your own gradated shapes! The only catch here, is sometimes the edge detect node wont play well with a noise that's TOO dense. From what I understand, the node is looking for a difference in adjacent pixel values exceeding a certain threshold to detect edges. So when you have a noise that is too dense(i.e. pixel values begin to blend or equalize with their neighboring pixels), the edge detect node won't pick that up. Also note, how the edge detect node result will vary dependent on texture size since that will affect density as well. A cellular noise that is only represented in blocked values like Cells 3 node, will give cleaner results but require further manipulation to get the same effect as in the method described here.
This is only one way to do it of course. Experiment!