Designer/Painter: matfx_HeightAdjust

Another Painter material filter, this time I've also included the Designer sbs file. I use this in all my substances materials made for Painter as the last node before the height output (just remember to expose the controls!). It gives me some control over how intense my height map is. It can also be used as a material effect in Painter (just import the included sbsar)


height intensity let you lower the intensity of the height.
height smoothness apply a blur to smooth thing out.

matfx_HeightAdjust

SBS or SBSAR?

Am I sharing sbs or sbsar files? that's the questions I've asked myself once I've decided to create this blog. Do i keep my "little tricks" secret or should i just take part of the community? Honestly, that's not an easy one to answer. I've decided to share as much as i can hoping that it'll come back to me. Whether is just gratitude or else.

Obviously, if i create something at work, for my project, it will stay at work. It's the property of my employer. But when i'm fiddling at home, that's a different story. I've understood long ago that it's not the trick that's important, it's the road you've taken to solve it. I can give you all (well, most) my secrets, if I was the one who solved it, I'm already ahead. Some people just apply recipes, some create them. It's that simple.

Years ago, I've studied Quake 3 textures. I couldn't wrap my mind around how they've created textures so awesome (to this day, I still think they are beyond amazing...). Once I got what seems to be the workflow/technique they were using, I kept it for myself for a while.  People at work liked what i was doing. Then, someone at work asked me to prepare some kind of expose for my fellow texture artists. I struggled. I feared I would be left behind. Eventually, I've decided to go forward and show them what the hell I was doing. Turns out they all find it very interesting, even got something from it to add to their workflow But I still had a better understanding of it all. Why? Because I've searched for it. Because, even if i cant really explain it, i "got it".

You can take my stuff, open it in Designer, change the author field, and brag about it at work. But I "got it". I'm already ahead. I hope you guys will take part of the conversation, because once we bounce ideas on each others, once we brainstorm together, we're all better in the end.

Let's share our ideas.

cheers

Designer: 2 by 2 Atlas Select

Another very simple yet useful little node: the 2 by 2 Atlas Select. Let you select between the 4 quadrant of an 2 by 2 atlas. Include a grayscale and a color version.




2x2AtlasSelect

Designer: sRGB color chart

Here's a little helper for those who use the X-Rite™ ColorChecker when taking picture references... I usually blend it on top of my Base Color while working. you can choose between the full chart or each colors separately. The full chart is resolution free as it was created in vector (i just hate aliasing...)

oh, and I'm really happy with the icon!

sRGB_ColorChart

cheers

Designer: Splatter Dual

Ever since I've been doing textures, I've used the good old trick of taking a custom brush, tapping a couple of times in the middle of my texture, offset, repeat. It works, but adjusting the final result is quite frankly very hard.

So I was naturally attracted to the splatter nodes; I would import my favourites Photoshop brushes and create noises that would have taken forever to create otherwise. I don't have to worry about the tilling and once I have a good recipe, playing with the seed give me an almost infinite amount of variation. 

Being one that likes to keep the amount of nodes in my graphs under control, I've modified the splatter node to have two inputs and added a balance to control which shape/input get drawn the most.

SplatterDual

Designer: AcidRain

This one is more of a curiosity, but i have used it before. It generate an array of shape (either custom or built-in) and modify the size/position/rotation of each instances based on gray value. It was my fist attempt at creating my own fxmap. Admittedly, I *may* have been overboard with the options but it was a lot of fun!

By default, a separate Perlin Scalable Zoom is plugged in each transformation, but you can enable a custom input for each, enabling you to control using your own maps.

note: when using the random size/rotation/position, the gray values of the inputs still are influencing the intensity of the effect...

AcidRain

New graph...

For more than 10 years, I've met the Allegorithmic guys at least once a year. They were doing their tour of the game companies and as a texture artist (and later on as a tech director / tech artist) I was invited to the presentations.

I always was interested and intrigued by designer but, part because i didn't felt it wasn't "there" yet, part because i didn't completely got it, never did the jump. Couple of years ago, after my yearly demo, I've decided to invest some time learning the software.

Boy, was I in for a treat! What started as a curiosity ended up like an addiction! The more I learned the more I was seeing the possibilities.

Version 4 came at the same time the PBR storm started on the (game) industry. Being able to play with the various values and seeing the changes in realtime was also a great learning experience.

Now, Substance Painter is about a month old, and the possibilities (once again) exploded.

This blog is basically my way to share my experiences and discovery...

cheers