[Small Tutorial] (Splatter Nodes) 100% Substance Designer GameBoy

Paskuihernandez · Sep 2019

Hi everybody!! I made this material a while ago but i want to share it with all of you to may help if anyone is struggling as i was when doing it. Hope you like it!!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/o4/kg2jqx2p66e8.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/r1/67fx47cpcno1.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/kz/zvzdf97seihz.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/95/v3cgslc56qvp.png

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So... First of all, what you have to make sure before starting losing your mind with lots and lots of nodes inside Designer is to visualize the material you want, pick up tons of reference and really think about where would be better to start to make the proccess as simple as possible. In my case, i decided to start building the main shape of the GameBoy and then start adding and substracting every detail i want. This is mainly an alpha work, so if you know how to use shapes and blend this shouldn't be too difficult for you

One tricky part was to make sunk-in LCD screen, and by searching a lot i found the awesome Käy Vriend artwork https://www.artstation.com/artwork/e0aV9Z so i decided to ask him and he gently answer me ^^. The key is use a heightmap with an AO map to fake the depth but with no normal information used. So smart!!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/oi/i0brhfn5s8y2.jpg

Once you have a nice height map you can use the alphas you made before as masks to add color in a very simple way! I also used bitmaps to add some of the logos to it to save time.

For roughness i used dirt maps with some levels adjustment and the curvature map to have more variation on edges.

At the end of this proccess you will have something like this:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/yr/n47h582j9dxa.jpg

Looks crazier than it really is xD

Let's jump to the hard part... This tooks me almost a week by searching and playing with different nodes to realized the proper way to do it... SPLATTER!
I tried use a Tile Sampler Node to mix all the different gameboys but i couldn't really keep al the color information without drive me f***ing crazy. So i asked at Substance Forum and there we go! I got it!

First step is to duplicate my main graph and change the color of the gameboy. Once i had it, i created a new graph and started noodling.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/wl/cyrv261ta5mi.jpg

Don't be scared!!

At the begining is a bit hard to understand. First step: use one input to mix the different height layers and try to not collapse with each other. By using Shape Splatter node you can set the number of gameboys per layer you want, randomized the position and rotation and change the b&w intensity to make all the different layers. Then i used histogram scan for masking and blend every layer i had.

Almost finished!!

As you already have mixed all your gameboys add color, roughness, normal, etc is really easy. From the Shape Splatter node pick the two Splatter Data outputs and connect it to Shape Splatter Blend Node and from your Main Input you added before pick the chanel you want to splatter. All the mask are already created for height so you can re-use it for color, rough...

Last one... for color instead of Shape Splatter Blend you'll need a Shape Splatter Blend Color and use the other inputs with different colors you created before:

The Shape Splatter Blend Color allows you to have different inputs and randomize them, and thats is how you can get color variation in each layer.

Hope this can be useful to other artists struggling with materials like that. I know i'm not the best teacher with the best english level but i tried to make as clear as possible.
If you have any question feel free to ask me anything!!
Hope you like it!!

You can check more renders on my Artstation post

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YaQVQY