The Gabmeister's Substance Journey

TheGabmeister

Hi guys. Seeing that a lot of artists are making their own threads about their WIP and finished work in Substance Designer, I decided to jump straight in and make my own. I've been wanting to learn Substance Designer for a long time, and I finally got the time to pour effort into it.

I'll try to post new artwork in this thread at least once a month and share with you some tips and tricks I learned along the way. I might also make detailed blog posts on my ArtStation. Very open to hear some critique and suggestions from you guys!

TheGabmeister

For my first material, I decided to do something stylized. I studied the methods of 3dEx in his Youtube channel about stylized materials in Substance Designer. His videos helped me become familiar on techniques on how to make things appear stylized.

Here is a material I created based on one of his tutorials, some metallic plates.

One quick way that I learned on how to make something look stylized is to add visible highlights around edges, and then blend those highlights with your base color. The node setup below is the one I used. You get those edge highlights by blending a Curvature Sobel and a Curvature Smooth node, both of which are generated from your Normal map:

A lot of artists recommended me to watch Daniel Thiger's tutorials, but his videos were still a little bit too advanced for me at the moment. Will definitely watch them when I'm ready.

TheGabmeister

My second material, a Sci-Fi Control Panel based on a concept by Jeremy Love

ArtStation Link

Detailed blog post available here on how I created the material:

Here is the Polycount Thread where I also posted details on how I created the material.