Seeking Friendly Advice on Learning and Getting Started with Substance Designer

luan05367

Hello wonderful Polycount community,

I'm thrilled to embark on my journey of learning Substance Designer, and I would love to hear your friendly advice and insights. As a newcomer, I'm seeking guidance on the most effective ways to learn and get started with Substance Designer. I warmly welcome any suggestions or tips on the following:

1. Beginner-friendly resources: Could you kindly recommend any beginner-friendly tutorials, courses, or learning materials that can help me grasp the fundamentals of Substance Designer? I'm eager to gain a solid understanding of the software and its features.

2. Approachable learning curve: Substance Designer can seem overwhelming at first, but I believe there are strategies to make the learning process more approachable. What are some techniques or approaches that have worked well for you or others when starting out with Substance Designer? I'm looking for ways to simplify complex concepts and ease into the software.

3. Practical exercises and projects: Learning by doing is crucial for me. Are there any suggested practical exercises or mini-projects that I can tackle to reinforce my knowledge and improve my skills with Substance Designer? I would love to have hands-on experience and see my progress firsthand.

4. Welcoming community and engagement: I value the support and camaraderie of fellow artists. Are there any friendly and inclusive communities, forums, or groups where I can engage with Substance Designer enthusiasts? I'm eager to ask questions, share my work, and learn from the experiences and perspectives of others.

I genuinely appreciate your time and any advice you can offer to help me on my Substance Designer learning journey. Thank you so much for being an amazing community!

Warm regards,

Sunny.

BigMike813

you could start with these tutorials 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_q_JaCg7hk&list=PLB0wXHrWAmCwWfVVurGIQO_tMVWCFhnqE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAMAEFDG400&list=PLB0wXHrWAmCzVtYuOzDfSgE1UmefzjXMG

there is a lot more content in their chanel

gnoop

Substance Designer is all wrapped around  basically  two  things:    randomly or  otherwise orderly  placing   distance  blobs  or  just small pictures  and  doing per pixel  UV shift  aka  2d displace  in Photoshop.   Sometimes that shift comes in a  repeating loop  like  "slope blur".

    Before  they used  FX-map node that control small pictures  UV placing  operating  with pictures as  instanced objects , same way 3d  scatters work in 3d soft.   Pretty easy to understand.      Now they do all things  per pixel  in pixel processors .  

They did a huge update  couple weeks ago.  Biggest since their first version.  It will revolutionize approaches . I' would wait a bit till more modern tutorials will emerge.    But nothing prevent you from  learning just basics .  They are all  in  Help>Tutorials.

The first thing I would start from  is a scale relations  in-between nodes .  The meaning of "primary input"  and "parent"    https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-designer/substance-compositing-graphs/inheritance-in-substance-compositing-graphs.html