TREVOR VANEK
3D Environment Artist
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My journey to learn Substance 3D Designer pt 4

General / 30 April 2023

Afternoon!

It's Mayterials Eve and I got a quick update on my progress. Created this real worn and grungy marble tile material. Used a second tutorial to add cracks. It really required me to understand my graph and think about what order I'm blending and adding stuff.


Marble Tile

Albedo

Clay

Albedo | Normal | AO | Metal | Rough | Height

Graph

I'm trying to figure out how I wanna display my stuff so let me know what you think.

Here's the tutorials I followed:

Here's some helpful resources and guides I found:

This is a real short no-nonsense post since I'm trying to prepare for Mayterials but also looking for work. Might try a quick metal or stylized tutorial.

But that's about all I got for now. We'll see how this works out. If you have any advice, tools, or tutorials that helped you a lot please comment them!

Take care!

My journey to learn Substance 3D Designer pt 3

General / 27 April 2023

Hello again!

It's been a hot minute. I started this week following the Substance Academy: Aged Wood Planks tutorial but ran into issues. It was really slow, it was made with an older version of Designer, and some of the practices are either really janky or don't work the same way in newer versions.
It's not as good as their their Dirt Ground tutorial that I did last week. So instead of slogging through it, I dropped the tutorial and looked for something different. Here is where I fell into a rabbit hole that has changed my objective completely.

First, I stumbled upon this video by KOLONTAI, "How I learn Substance Designer In A Month" (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB0wXHrWAmCzTXeyYT5Vy3ds711ZRHRYh)
I suggest giving it a watch if you'd like a quick study plan for how to learn substance.

Second, I found out that an event called Mayterials is about to kick off. The Club Discord channel is gonna give out 15 material/texture prompts through out May. Here's the details:https://twitter.com/TheClubDiscord/status/1650620085948612612

Eager to give Mayterials a shot I'm buckling down during these last few days of April to cram and complete as many tutorials that I possibly can. I wanna be ready to give this challenge my best. If I gotta follow a tutorial or two I don't care. But I'd like to try and do what I can on my own.

With this new drive I followed KOLONTAI's lead and completed this honey comb material:

Honey_Comb

Albedo | Normal | AO | Roughness

Graph

I'm trying to figure out how I wanna display my stuff so let me know what you think.

Here's the tutorials I followed:

Here's some helpful resources and guides I found:

That's about all I got for now. We'll see how this works out. If you have any advice, tools, or tutorials that helped you a lot please comment them!

Take care!

My journey to learn Substance 3D Designer pt 2

General / 24 April 2023

Finished the "Substance Academy Series: Getting Started with Substance Designer" and I got this neat dirt material to show for it.
It's a bit busier that I would like but that can be tweaked later as needed. Its got me excited to learn more! 


Graph

Time Lapse

Here's the tutorials I followed:

Here's some helpful resources and guides I found:

That's about all I got for now. We'll see how this works out. If you have any advice, tools, or tutorials that helped you a lot please comment them!

Take care!







My journey to learn Substance 3D Designer pt 1

General / 21 April 2023

Gonna try something new

While I'm looking for work I'm gonna try to track my progress as I learn Substance Designer.
Gonna try to make the most of the free 30 day trial and see where I end up. I "learned" designer in college but that was maybe 5 or 6 years ago and I haven't touched it since.

Maybe someone will find this in the future and if this bears fruit it could be a simple curriculum to follow. 

Here's a timelapse of my first few days:

Here's the tutorials I followed:

Maybe I should reflect on what I'm learning. So far I'm picking up on the reliable noise nodes (clouds, perlin, etc). I have experience with Substance Painter so I already knew that clouds are MVPs when it comes to texturing. Re-familiarizing myself with the atomic node bar too, it seems easier to understand now after I've had more experience with game art in general.  

What I didn't consider is just how much you could tweak and tune nodes. The complex nodes like shape splatter are really intimidating because I feel it's easy to get careless and lost if you just adjust every parameter. You run the risk of getting a result you might like but also don't know how to replicate. Or you might have stuff set that aren't doing much in the moment but cause issues later. This concern is echoed when I think of having a bunch of nodes and bouncing between things to make stuff look "just right". 

My hope is that as I become more familiar with the workflow and possibilities of designer, I'll begin to develop a type of sense or comprehension that will tell me where I should start looking to make the changes I want. Less guessing/fidgeting and more precision/intent. 

I also wanna include random guides and tips that I find: 

That's about all I got for now. We'll see how this works out. If you have any advice, tools, or tutorials that helped you a lot please comment them!

Take care!

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