Substance Designer: Creating Your First Substance Material

This tutorial series is the perfect introduction to creating Substance Materials with Designer.  No previous experience is required.   It’s divided into 4 chapters for a total of 25 bite sized chunks.  Happy creating!

Creating Your First Substance Material Introduction

n this course you will learn how to create your first Substance Material using a practical, real world example. You do not need any previous experience with Substance Designer.  The course is divided into four chapters:

• Ch1: Discusses workflow, Substance Designer and node architecture
  • 01-01: What is Substance Designer?
  • 01-02: What is a node?
  • 01-03: Understanding the material workflow
• Ch2: Creating the height data
  • 02-01: Creating a Substance package and project setup
  • 02-02: Setting up the base material node
  • 02-03: Working on large form shapes
  • 02-04: Working on small shapes part one
  • 02-05: Creating small shapes part two
  • 02-06: Creating spatter shapes
  • 02-07 Using the Shape Splatter node to create medium dirt mounds
  • 02-08 Using the Shape Splatter node to create small dirt mounds
  • 02-09 Creating rocks/pebbles
  • 02-10: Creating twig shapes as a subgraph utility
  • 02-11 Exposing parameters on the twig subgraph
  • 02-12: Scattering the twig shapes using Shape Splatter
• Ch3: Creating maps such as roughness, base color
  • 03-01: Creating the roughness map
  • 03-02: Creating the base color for the ground
  • 03-03 Creating the base color for the rocks
  • 03-04 Updating the twig shape with more details
  • 03-05 Creating the base color for the twigs
  • 03-06: Understanding color depth
• Ch4: Material layering, exporting textures and publishing sbsar files
  • 04-01: Using material layering to create a dirt layer
  • 04-02: Exporting textures
  • 04-03: Publishing an sbsar file

Use the links above to jump to the tutorial you want to view.

Substance Designer .sbs project file available for download on the Substance Academy course page: https://academy.substance3d.com/courses/Creating-your-first-Substance-material/youtube-y8q6-tgQjZc

Ch1: Discusses workflow, Substance Designer and node architecture

01-01: What is Substance Designer?

In this video we take an introductory look at what Substance Designer is and what it is used for.

01-02: What is a node?

In this video we take a look at what a node in Substance Designer represents.

01-03: Understanding the material workflow

In this video, we take a look at the workflow used to create the material in this course. We will also briefly walkthrough the material to get a high-level overview.

Ch2: Creating the height data

02-01: Creating a Substance package and project setup

In this video we will go through the overall project settings when creating a Substance package.

02-02: Setting up the base material node

In this video we setup the base material node, which we will pipe all of our data through.

02-03: Working on large form shapes

In this video we start the process of creating the main large form shapes.

02-04: Working on small shapes part one

In this video we start building out the small shapes.

02-05: Creating small shapes part two

In this video we finish up creating the small shapes.

02-06: Creating spatter shapes

In this video we will create shapes we can use with the Shape spatter node.

02-07 Using the Shape Splatter node to create medium dirt mounds

In this video we will use the Shape Splatter node to create medium level shapes (dirt mounds).

02-08 Using the Shape Splatter node to create small dirt mounds

In this video we will use the Shape Splatter node to create small level shapes (dirt mounds).

02-09 Creating rocks/pebbles

In this video we are going to create some pebble shapes and scatter them across the ground using Shape Spatter node.

02-10: Creating twig shapes as a subgraph utility

In this video we will create a subgraph in our package for creating twig shapes. This graph will work like a utility node for generating twig shapes.

02-11 Exposing parameters on the twig subgraph

In this video you will learn how to expose parameters.

02-12: Scattering the twig shapes using Shape Splatter

In this video we will scatter the twig shapes across the ground using the Shape Spatter node.

Ch3: Creating maps such as roughness, base color

03-01: Creating the roughness map

In this video we will create the roughness map as well as a parameter for controlling the overall roughness amount.

03-02: Creating the base color for the ground

In this video we will begin work on the albedo map by first colorizing the ground.

03-03 Creating the base color for the rocks

In this video we will create the base color for the rocks/pebbles shapes.

03-04 Updating the twig shape with more details

In this video we go back to the twig subgraph and add some cracks to the twig shape

03-05 Creating the base color for the twigs

In this video we will create the base color for the twigs.

03-06: Understanding color depth

In this video we take a look at how to control the color depth per node in order to optimize the RGB compute of the graph.

Ch4: Material layering, exporting textures and publishing sbsar files

04-01: Using material layering to create a dirt layer

In this video we will add a dirt pass across the surface as an overall integration layer for all of the shapes in the material.

04-02: Exporting textures

In this video we will discuss how to export textures out Substance Designer.

04-03: Publishing an sbsar file

In this video we take a look at publishing an sbsar file. We also show the result using the Substance in UE4 plugin.

Please take a look at our integrations page for more information on the various plugins we support: https://www.substance3d.com/integrations/overview