Convincing rust in Substance

guitarguy00

Hey guys,

I have been working on a fire hydrant in Substance lately and am really struggling to achieve a convincing rust look. Not in terms of the actual material as I am using the built in Rust materials in Painter, but in terms of where rust tends to collect and spread and getting a smooth gradation to the non-rusted areas. How would you approach this? Are there any good videos/websites/tutorials showing where rust tends to form? What generators are commonly used as a good base? 

Thanks heaps in advance.

rollin

I would say, search for reference images of rusted objects similar to the one you are working on.

Generally speaking rust happens evenly on unprotected iron surfaces exposed to moisture. 
So the rust pattern depends on
- how does any protective layer on the metal looks like (e.g. scratches on paint, chipping paint, ...)
- how evenly is moisture applied (leaking spots, gravity, ...)

The generators you want to use should be able to create masks for these properties. 
But you might need to paint some masks by hand if the requirements are just too specific (e.g. specific leaking spots)

gnoop

You could spend hours and hours tweaking  procedural masks or making  super complicated and slow working   node graph in Substance Designer . People manage to reach amazing  results with that out of pure sport like approach.      Still each new  seed/generation  would be slightly off of what you really want.

So in my experience you shouldn't focus on having everything 100% procedural and just photograph/ scan few isolated  rusty spots   and scatter them around randomly  where you need it in addition to something procedural slope blur based

 

3dcoat for example has  brushes that could scatter/paint  random  details from a group you selected   (to all channels in sync)  I use it to finishing initially 100% procedural textures.

IMO it's kind of much lesser pain in your a.. then all those Designer or Painter  cool things.

guitarguy00

gnoop said:

You could spend hours and hours tweaking  procedural masks or making  super complicated and slow working   node graph in Substance Designer . People manage to reach amazing  results with that out of pure sport like approach.      Still each new  seed/generation  would be slightly off of what you really want.

So in my experience you shouldn't focus on having everything 100% procedural and just photograph/ scan few isolated  rusty spots   and scatter them around randomly  where you need it in addition to something procedural slope blur based

 

3dcoat for example has  brushes that could scatter/paint  random  details from a group you selected   (to all channels in sync)  I use it to finishing initially 100% procedural textures.

IMO it's kind of much lesser pain in your a.. then all those Designer or Painter  cool things.

I'm struggling with it at the moment, I was meant to finish the model this weekend but have put it off as if I get the rust wrong, it would bring down the whole model. That's the problem with curvature/AO/thickness maps etc in Painter, it is always either too little or too much. You have to put in alot more work to make it look convincing and real.. I will look into 3D Coat for this as Painter alone isn't cutting it at the moment.

guitarguy00

rollin said:

I would say, search for reference images of rusted objects similar to the one you are working on.

Generally speaking rust happens evenly on unprotected iron surfaces exposed to moisture. 
So the rust pattern depends on
- how does any protective layer on the metal looks like (e.g. scratches on paint, chipping paint, ...)
- how evenly is moisture applied (leaking spots, gravity, ...)

The generators you want to use should be able to create masks for these properties. 
But you might need to paint some masks by hand if the requirements are just too specific (e.g. specific leaking spots)

Thanks for that. What height value does rust usually have? As in, does it collect on top of an unprotected surface or does it eat into the surface itself?

rollin

This totally depends on the scale, amount and state.
The internet will tell you a lot about rust.
But I would guess the form we use it most often is "slightly on top"