Substance Designer UI
Graph View
- Selected 2 links and Press X to switch node connections.
- Select multiple nodes and Press H/V to align the nodes Horizontally/Vertically
- Graph items: Frames, Helps organise node group layout. Pins, Quick travel through node map, press F2 to cycle though pins
These tools will help me stay organised and if needed reorganise the work flow. I believe frames an pins will help massively in keeping track of my work and not get lost in the nodes.
2D View:
- Double click on an item to have it appear
- Space bar to toggle tiling view
- Image information (colour picker)
- Press F to Fit into view
- Press Z to match pixel size to display resolution
These tools in the 2D view although simple will be good to have while working on my materials. being able to freely toggle the tileable view will be handy to use to make sure that my material looks good while being tiled. as well as the Image information, if i ever need the specific colour of the material, its there ready for me to use.
3D View:
- Press F to focus the view
- To change object in view, go to scene and select an object (Link custom mesh in package, then double click)
- To view the current output on a mesh, Right click graph or node > View outputs in 3D View
These tools in the 3D view will definitely be needed in my work flow, being able to refocus the view is a necessity for me to be able to look close up to the mesh then be able to refocus to see the whole mesh. Being able to import an custom mesh and apply the material I’m working on, possibly to for that same mesh.
Overall the controls are very similar to other programs I’ve used and makes it easier to switch back and forth from the each program.
Maps
Colour: A colour map is exactly what its name implies, Its the map that gives colour to the material and is one of the basic maps for texturing objects. Without a colour map the material simply becomes black and white, which removes a great level of detail.
Normal: A normal map or Bump map is whats used to create the allusion of depth and lighting on a material. This is used to save on space in games, by have the model itself be less detailed, with less polygons but normals make up for a less detailed model with its allusion. This is a more cost effective way for games, since a normal takes a lot less space then a highly detailed model.
Opacity: An opacity map or transparency map, basically allow for the material to be see through, hence transparent. the level of transparency can be ranged from 0 to 1 on a grey scale. 0 being Black, not visible and 1 being white, visible. there are values in between, this allows for materials such as glass to be made.
Roughness: A roughness map or gloss map. Roughness and gloss are interchangeable terms since they are inverts of each other. Just like the opacity map, it works using grey scale for its values. white being glossy and black non-glossy/rough.
Metallic: A metallic map is used to create a metal material just as its name implies. This too works using a grey scale. White being metallic and black non-metallic
Ambient Occlusion: AO maps are used to create even more detail with the normal map, the AO creates shadows to the material. since the material is just a flat texture, the AO helps to amplify the effects of the normal with its ability to create shadows on this flat texture.
Height: A height map has a similar function as a normal map, however when used it actually creates the depth unlike a normal. this function depends on the engine. This map seems like an extremely useful map for high detailed objects without wasting space from modelling this detail.
Emissive: An emissive map is one that give the material an emission/glow effect, it isnt and actual light source but gives the allusion of light.
Spectacular: A spectacular map or reflection maps as its also known as, does exactly that, it creates a reflective surface in a determined area of the material. However this is mainly used in a non-PBR workflow. when using a PBR workflow it is the roughness map that is used instead
Artist Research
By using height maps, simple meshes can be turned into highly detailed objects.
Starting substance designer
Simple material:
- Creating a rusty metal floor as a simple material
Complex Material:
- Creating both the metal floor and rust separately ready to be used as separate instances
- Adding custom materials into the Library
- Creating a Graph template
Finished Material:
This is the finished material of a metal floor with rust and dirt parameters exposed, this means when taking this material into a program like substance painter, I can control the level amount of both the rust and the dirt.
Checked wallpaper
In creating this material I roughly used this Video as a guide on how I should proceed.
Creating this material was rather simple the checker pattern did a lot of the work and main form, as it was used for the base colours and the normal map (which would later be used again for height)
Although there was a checker pattern already in substance, I still had to make the “paper” part of this wallpaper material. thankfully this isn’t a hard thing to do and I found easy to do.
I simply created a noise node, connected it to a transformation node so I could edit the noise in a way that I was happy with it and connected that to a blur node so the paper didn’t look too rough.
Originally I had problems getting the height map to work for some reason or another, I did the same process of using a normal to height and changing the scale, as well as view output. So I was going to just leave it be flat but I tried it one more time and this time it worked, which is strange but I seen happen before in other programs so its not that much of a surprise.
Finished Checker wallpaper
Splatoon Cover
While browsing a discord art group, someone uploaded and illustration which gave me this idea on creating this model and material.
As I started I realised I needed to get permission to use BinaryShred’s (https://twitter.com/BinaryShred) art and after talking with them they agreed and even sent me high resolution images and the different components that made up their piece.
Vinyl:
Splatoon Vinyl Case:
Riveted metal
Since one of the games I frequently play is World of Warships I thought I would be a good idea to create a texture relevant to the matter of ships, that being riveted metal.
I already had an idea of how I would start making my material.
Taking what I had learnt from the substance academy tutorials and my experience in trying out substance designer, I was able to create the pattern that I wanted, This of course took some trial and error. but simple for me to make, I started with a shape (Pattern: disc), used 2D transform to scale it down, then blur to soften the edges. This gave me the rivet shape that I needed for my material. Then I created four 2D transformation nodes to create the rows of rivets, horizontal and vertical, top, bottom, left and right. Creating a box of rivets.
Later I revised part of the design of my riveted metal, I wanted it to look like the sheets of metal were stacked in a way, so i tried adding a gradient to the pattern, and with some trial and error this is what I got.
Complex version:
Testing:
I tested the material in substance painter on one of my old models to see if it would work, unsurprisingly in did work, but the models UV just needs work.
Complete:
https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/5181
https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/5175
Unreal Engine
After finishing my textures, I decided to test them out in unreal engine 4. I already knew how to get my textures into unreal but I didn’t know how to scale the texture, so I found this video
Following the video I was able to scale my materials in anyway that I need to fit the object in the test environment.
With my textures ready as materials I applied them to objects in unreal, this is the result.
Evaluation
Overall I’m happy with with the result of the projects. I have found that I quite like substance designer, I definitely will be using designer again, since I found it relatively easy to understand how to create materials from scratch. I believe in the future I can create more complex materials to a professional standard.
In this project I found most of the process easy to understand and do, I enjoyed the software and I see the power this program has for the games industry. It is crustal to have this knowledge for the future.
Throughout the project I did run into some problems that halted my progress, however they were only temporary, I soon over came them. Now most the problems I ran into where and easy fix, more often or not it was a matter of switching connections around. but there were some that weren’t just that. For example, while creating the vinyl material an error had formed in one of my nodes.
This node was just a grey scale conversion, but somehow these shapes appeared on the left side in the node, this meant that I couldn’t get the result I wanted at the time. But I did think of a fix, since this was just a grey scale all I had to do was hide these black shapes behind a white mask.
This meant I could just continue with the work and make my vinyl for the Splatoon album.
DeathRoe Games 