Peter Sekula Substances Thread
polycounter lvl 6
Like many of you, I too love Substance Designer. Often times I find myself spending far too much effort on getting that one little detail just right, or tweaking that normal or roughness value. I'm focused just about full time on replacing Photoshop with Substance Designer and thought I'd start a sketchbook thread of my own. So here goes.
There are some really incredible Substances out there, and a million and one ways of achieving a particular effect. However, I'm finding it difficult to find how certain effects are achieved, or *why* a particular effect happens in SD. So, I started a blog that not only talks and shows Substances (rendered in Marmoset Viewer) I've done, but also some workflows and tips that may help your project. Link
I'll start the thread with a base wood substance I made recently.
Lastly, check out these talented artists to see what Substance Designer is really capable of:
Hugo Beyer
Tristan Meere
Bradford Smith
Rogelio Olguin
Thanks!
There are some really incredible Substances out there, and a million and one ways of achieving a particular effect. However, I'm finding it difficult to find how certain effects are achieved, or *why* a particular effect happens in SD. So, I started a blog that not only talks and shows Substances (rendered in Marmoset Viewer) I've done, but also some workflows and tips that may help your project. Link
I'll start the thread with a base wood substance I made recently.
Lastly, check out these talented artists to see what Substance Designer is really capable of:
Hugo Beyer
Tristan Meere
Bradford Smith
Rogelio Olguin
Thanks!
Replies
Base Wood C Marmoset Link
View at http://qt-ent.com/Blog/substance-base-concrete-c/
http://qt-ent.com/Blog/substance-base-concrete-a/
http://qt-ent.com/Blog/substance-mosaic-tile-a/
Marmoset Preview: http://qt-ent.com/Blog/substance-marble-floor-a/
Marmoset Preview: http://qt-ent.com/Blog/substace-wicker-a/
Here is a Roman mosaic that was constructed in Substance Designer. The face and the swirly, organic bits were done in 3DSMax using step build and some spline distribution, but everything else is SD.
Are the mosaic placed with a vector map? Any takeaways from this one?
Could be cool to have a damage parameter to have random tiles fall off.
In researching Roman mosaics, it was obvious I needed a way to distribute tiles along a curve. Substance Designer doesn't have a good solution for bending, though I did try several methods. I looked into flow mapping (smears the tiles), gradient map warping (can't do 90 degree turns, smearing), and using the distribution map in the tile sampler node. The tile sampler node looked promising, but the accuracy of placement coupled with the lack of good control for rotation lead me to do it all in 3dsmax.
In Max, it was stupid easy. I used two methods:
For the bottom swirly pattern: I just made a simple plane, then used the Clone modifier (buy it.. trust me) to specify how many tiles I needed along the proceeding Path Deform (WSM) modifier. I drew a spine that roughly matched the curvature of the swirly helix pattern, bound the set of planes to the spline path, then adjusted the spacing in the Clone modifier so it would fit.
For the face:
It was a combination of the spline method and Step Build. Step Build is great for this sort of thing. Just plop down 4 vertices, connect, move on. It was tedious work, but having it in max gave me great control.
When the tiles were set, I would just make sure they seamlessly tiled. Using the Measure utility (utilities panel), I'd make sure the swirly set of tiles fit into a nice neat square and cut off what I didn't need. The Clone modifier came in handy here too.
At this point, the tiles in Max are all white. To get height and color variety, those tiles should have some greyscale variance. That was easily obtained by applying vertex colors per element using this awesome random vertex color script. I also needed to be able to specify color according to how the tiles were arranged, so I just colored the planes red, green, blue, and white to create a simple RGBA mask. Render both the greyscale and RGBA maps out and you're done.
Bring in the textures to SD, disable vertical tiling, then tile the texture 4-6 times. A tiling band will result, which you can then move into position to the top of the texture. Then it's just a matter of copying, rotating, and blending the patterns together so they form a seamless square trim.
There's a lot more after this step of course, but that's the basis. I really love SD and use it all the time to create some nice things. As I'm self-employed, I wonder if interested artists would contribute to a Patreon of all Substance Designer (and maybe Painter) related topics; I would make and distribute my own Substances, atomic nodes, pbr textures, lengthy tutorials, and even live streams. What do you guys think?
I added a more helpful breakdown of the Mosaic Floor on Art Station. Take a look!
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QNQmZ