Substance Designer - Learning The Next Generation of Texture Methodology

I have started to pick up Substance Designer recently, discovering its awesome power of procedural texture generation. The idea is that it can create textures from scratch without any need for external texture files, and it can make pretty complex patterns if you know how. I'm still learning, and have a way to go yet, but I'm building a clear picture of how it works it seems.

This is a tiled floor texture, complete with Albedo, Normal, Roughness, and Metalness maps. The texture is entirely procedural generated, with no external image files being used of any kind.

Here is it's creation graph:

The brilliant advantage of this is the ability to create textures that have infinite iteration possibilities, all at the push of a slider or two; or indeed however many you set up. For example, you could make a pristine metal wall, and use a set of sliders that dynamically age it with weathering and rust as required. From here, you could make an entire texture set that shows an environment ageing over time, without any real extra effort taken to paint the texture up.

I will soon incorporate this method into the Gas Station scene, probably only to the extent of texturing something like the floor, but I'll see how it goes.

Gas Station Update

This is just a quick update on the Gas Station project. I may add a roof and some more items, but otherwise, the main part of it is done. I have fully modelled the high-res meshes and the low-res meshed now, and xNormal has created normal maps from each of them. The results can be seen below.

On closer inspection however, you can see that the normal maps are far from finished, and this is the main part of conducting this project; to learn how to correctly bake normal maps on hard-surface models.

You can clearly see in this surface that there is a black line striking through the normal map where it should look smooth like the high-res version.

This error is all over the model in different areas, though not everywhere in what appears to be the same situation, so I am looking into this.

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Update:

http://polycount.com/discussion/81154/understanding-averaged-normals-and-ray-projection-who-put-waviness-in-my-normal-map/p1

This covers everything I needed to know. :)

Gas Station Random Project

Recently I have been working on a Gas Station. Didn't really plan to do this, but it's already pretty far on in development. Here are some screen shots:

The model is built in high-res with the aim of its surface data being baked down to a low-res game mesh for the final scene. With the gas pump and some items around it being finished, I have already started to construct the low res geometry, which the last image shows.

Also, just a random update on the helicopter model from my previous post; this model is still being made, and has progressed a bit from where it is shown there, but not by enough for me to bother posting any news on it yet I don't think. I also have an urge to make a kitchen scene for some nice interior design renders, but I probably shouldn't start a 3rd project on the side....

Soma Yakihira - Low Resolution Model

While I'm still finishing Lord Beritra, I have decided to start what I want to be another fast project. This time, I will create a low resolution model of 'Soma Yakihira' from the popular anime and manga, 'Food-Wars'. 

This project has a few goals that I wish to address:

• Low poly

• No normal maps or specular maps, all just hand-painted colour on a single texture

• Easily animatable (such low-res that it skins easily and moves well)

• Possibly paint directly to texture map in ZBrush, instead of Polypainting?

This is the progress so far. The hands are not yet sewn onto the arms and the shoes have not yet been fully modelled. The arms also need some work while I try to get them in the right position. His face has no detail; all the facial features will be drawn on in the texture, with the idea that it could be animated using a sequence of 2D frames. Also of course parts of his model are not made at all here either, which is the next step of progress.