Matthias Schmidt
Freelance/Contract Material Artist
Home page
Resume
Store
Prints

Scifi Cooling Panel Substance

My goal was to create a height map for a fairly complex looking scifi material from only a small amount of nodes because i still read comments that SD is too complicated and time consuming. This can be the case when you deliberately create shapes and every small detail by hand. But there is another way.
You can derive something complex by mixing, mirroring and tweaking one rather simple shape with itself, while also keeping it highly procedural (meaning that tweaking sliders and seeds will not break your material).

Early WIP screenshot from inside Substance Designer. The heightmap was already almost there, with only a small number of nodes considering the visual complexity.

Early WIP screenshot from inside Substance Designer. The heightmap was already almost there, with only a small number of nodes considering the visual complexity.

Close up of the first couple nodes. Changing number of sides on the Polygon1 and tweaking the modes on the symmetry node yields different results, as seen on the gif below:

Close up of the first couple nodes. Changing number of sides on the Polygon1 and tweaking the modes on the symmetry node yields different results, as seen on the gif below:

For the final height map i blended two of these versions together to break up the pattern repetition.

For the final height map i blended two of these versions together to break up the pattern repetition.

Report