how to make glass in substance designer

cturbo · Feb 9 2025

Hi there! I'm looking to create glass blocks in Substance Designer. Does anyone have tips on how to achieve a glass effect? I've already designed ceramic wall tiles and thought I could modify them to make glass blocks for a diner. I've been struggling to find clear tutorials, so any guidance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/ra/dsy2pqfjnad6.jpg

sacboi · Feb 9 2025

Authored by a material artist and should be concise enough for your needs:

https://80.lv/articles/designing-a-glass-material-in-substance-designer-marmoset/

cturbo · Feb 9 2025

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this. I'm not sure how to make the tiles transparent, and I can't see the entire graph, which makes it hard to understand how everything is connected. Do you happen to have a graph you could share with me? It would really help me see all the nodes involved.

poopipe · Feb 9 2025

he's not rendering it in designer - looks like marmoset

the adobe standard material in designer supports transparency iirc , you might need to muck around with some parameters but you really need to set it up in whichever game engine you're targeting

sacboi · Feb 9 2025

@cturbo

I'm not a substance suite user, had just assumed this tutorial was a comprehensive end-to-end workflow so in addition too poopipe's advice I'd suggest searching through documentation which may provide further info?

https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-designer/home.html

cturbo · Feb 15 2025

Hey everyone, I appreciate your help! I experimented a bit, but I'm curious about how to achieve the refractions in the glass. I attempted to apply the texture to a flat solid mesh, but it appears too flat. I'm aiming to create the look of glass blocks. What would be the best way to model this? Should I go for a solid glass cube with a thick frame for the grout that I've attached, or is there a more efficient method using a thinner glass with less geometry?

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/81/dpvyj7yuzbtc.jpg

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/jr/ll7heuqisvss.jpg

poopipe · Feb 25 2025

the problem is not the model - its the material. it will not automatically refract light - you need to tell it how to fake the effect
there'll be a wide variety of ways to set it up documented on the internet (all of which will make me cross )

cturbo · Feb 25 2025

yah i thought so. I saw substrate beta glass sounds very interesting and i am going to try that.

poopipe · Feb 25 2025

the fancy new stuff isn't likely to be game-viable for years. I'd stick to the established (i.e normal) materials

gnoop · Apr 12 2025

For something static it's easy . Just render a picture of whats behind , a cube map projection maybe, and distort /displace it by a normal map with vector warp node .

if you want time of day changing and something moving behind the glass you need a special render target in the engine. A dynamic cube map maybe or have this distortion working as post effect in screen space. It's more on a shader side of things. You can use Designer just as an example to show your shader guy how you want it to work .

if you want a sun light coming inside through this blocks it's a different story but could be faked pretty well with a special light mask texture too probably .

how to make glass in substance designer

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