Art
Substance – Base Gravel A
This was fun. I used Tile Random which I find to be a really good tile processor node. It’s preferable to the others since there seems to be more control over placement; your tiles won’t overlap unless you force it to. That’s super useful when you need something that looks more natural. The rock shape and distribution were pretty simple. The cracks took the longest and in hindsight they’re probably too complex for what is needed. No albedo or roughness generation for this one. I just wanted to have fun and focus on the height. I’ll get to the other […]
Substance – Base Marble A
This is the first marble I’ve ever tried. The initial fractal shape is easy to get down, but marble also has varying levels of depth where the minerals get more difficult to see. I essentially took a noise, selected segments of it, and blurred each segment a little more or less than the other to get that look. The white line pattern was achieved through making a custom voronoi pattern; make rectangles in a tile generator and plug it into a Distance node. Then, do an edge detect on that and you get the basis for the line pattern.
Substance – Base Wood B
Base Wood B is colored differently than Base Wood A. It’s base wood grain is more subtly colored. Wood distortion is more apparent. I also found it better to blend in a brighter/higher contrast version of the albedo with the dent mask rather than simply blend->add.
Substance Share – Blend-If
I’ve used Photoshop for texturing for years. Anyone who has used software for such a long time gets comfortable with its functionality, quirks, UI, etc. My favorite function, by far, in Photoshop was Blend-If. It was almost a “make awesome” slider. Blend-If will “knock out” pixels of a current layer based on the shadows/midtones/highlights of itself, or the layer beneath. This function was essential in creating believable masks or combining photo-sourced textures. I made a Substance node that emulates Blend-If. Here, two images are plugged into the Blend-If Color node. Blending by Base Map will make the Top […]
Substance – Base Wood A
Live Preview of Base Wood A
Substance Designer Workflows and Tips
This is a living document detailing all the cool workflow shortcuts and node observations I’ve found while working in Substance Designer. This post is sticky on my front page, so check back if there are more. Shoot me an email if you have a tip too. Effects The Distance Node will only expand pixels whose values are 128 or above. Anything below will just be discarded. Gradient map too flat? Blend a White Noise Fast to the pattern, set to Add/Sub, and a litttle bit of strength. Disconnect the outputs for a speed boost if you just need to work […]
Substance Designer for Pixel Art
I love Allegorithmic’s tools. Substance Designer is a godsend. The focus of the tool is to create high-end procedural materials for realtime rendering, but I wondered if I could use it to create some old school-style art? This is just a prototype of the filtering method I’m using in the node graph. The brick generator node is fed into the tree and out comes pixel art coolness. All of this is generated inside Unity (or Unreal if you prefer) in realtime, so you can see the potential here. Surfaces are no problem, but what about items? I thought a little […]
Working in Substance Designer
So this was fun. For those who have been working in Substance Designer, you’re well aware of the fact that anything can be done 1000 different ways. That’s a good thing in the long run, but a pain in the butt for those starting out. In this exercise, my goal was to just get a plain ol’ concrete. You’d think you might start out with a noise, adjust it, render a normal, then go back and start adding different effects. I’ve found that workflow can be painful and I believe it’s important to work modularly in Substance Designer. Initially I […]
Unity Blog: From Art Director to Asset Store Publisher
Unity was gracious in writing a wonderful blog post about my journey from AAA to self-employed. You can read it here: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/04/16/from-art-director-to-asset-store-publisher/
Incredible Substances!
Joshua Lynch, and environment artist on PolyCount, has been posting the best looking Substances I’ve ever seen. Take a look: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145615 So very, very inspring. It’s incredible to see what’s possible with this toolset. Here is a sample: Remember, this is all procedural.