During the past week, I worked my way through two learning tutorials that explored the contents and execution of Substance Designer. We were asked to go through these tutorials prior to future classes so that we could get started as quickly as possible into other techniques and follow classes without wasting time on explanations.

The videos were published by Javier Perez and are available to Art station Pro subscribers for free. The first video was a simple introduction to the UI aspects of Substance Designer, while the second course was an overview of several nodes that would be useful for creating interesting materials.

I watched through the tutorials and took some notes as I went, including ideas for materials. The first idea I wanted to explore was a grid material for the front of a speaker. I had run into the issue that making a detailed grid in Maya would use too many faces and would affect the render in the end. I had two choices; one was to use a grid PNG on a 2D plane to fake the grids appearance. Option two is to try creating a metal grid material to use on the 2D plane instead. The first approach works but at this level I felt that it would be unprofessional, so I decided to attempt making it use the tutorial as a guide.

To create the grid shape, I used the tile sampler node to create lots of white tiles and then inverted the masking so that the affected area of the material would make a grid shape. I connected this inverted map to the height and normal channels and increased the tessellation which gave the material some height. Already, I felt that the material was looking great but then I had to change the albedo and the roughness of the material.

The next video covered the flood fill node, which Javier used to make the surface of the material elevated and bumpy. but when I tried to apply it to my current material it came out like this. I considered trying to reapply it but felt that the because the speaker isn't a focal point in the scene that the extra detail on it would drag too much attention away from the main parts of the environment.

After deleting the Flood fill nodes, I applied a metal material so that I could get a good surface appearance as well as accurate surface detail. The metal material was too bright for my liking, so I used a curving node to lower the colour values of the material to act as the base colour.

When I had applied the material, it turned the entire cube in the preview to the metal material and the grid disappeared. So, I blended the mask of the Tile sampler with the roughness of the metal so that the roughness could be exposed across the material. 

By the end I had this code setup and my material was looking great, the colour scheme matched my reference and the tessellation helped it appear bulkier rather than flat.

However, it was short lived. I changed the example model’s appearance to replicate the grid I was hoping to use for my model, but the tessellation stopped working and I couldn't fix it. I'm new to using Substance designer and I didn't know what issue to research to fix this. Instead of worrying too much about it I decided to practice more with a different material and fix this issue whenever I've grown more accustomed to substance Designer.

I wanted to make sure I understood the use of Substance Designer and the different aspects more, to avoid mistakes like my exploration of making the grid material. So, I worked alongside a couple of the videos to replicate a broken brick wall.

I tried to work alone for the most part, making my own design choices and get use to Designers shortcuts. I would only look to the video course for the names of nodes or connections.

This set of code combines the height influences of the brick alpha and the cells alpha and allows them to affect the materials normals together while also being able to change their offsets or layout individually. The random colour flood node acts like a clown ID for the cracks alpha which is what allows for its individual interaction. 

I could then use the same Colour node from earlier to add Grunge to the material and increase the surface detailing. This helps make the surface more interesting and less flat and procedural, it helps break up uniformity. 

To help increase the level of detail I added a dirt pass to add grit to the spaces between the bricks. It would make sense with its design; bricks don't float between each other. It's these types of small details that help build up the materials believability and makes them more realistic. 

As my first ever material that I’ve made from scratch, I’m very proud of the outcome. I know that there are plenty of improvements to be made, personally, I would experiment with the roughness values and see if there’s a way to make the bricks uneven across the surface. To help drive the point of wear and tear across, to help fit the theme of "post-apocalyptic" too.

From this experience I’ve learned that I will use substance designer more, I really enjoyed making my own unique material and the online course did a great job explaining the ins and outs of the software. I'll be sure to look through other tutorials and lessons in the future for this and other new software’s.

Entry 5 – Master Material

Master materials are a great way to make unique materials that can be used and edited anytime within Unreal Engine. I decided to investigate master materials because they would help a lot across my environment. Making and using Master materials was a brand-new experience for me so I watched a demonstration on YouTube by Ryan Manning and followed his workflow to create my own master material and learn how I can apply it to my scene.

To get started I exported some basic material layers from substance painter to work with on a material. I went for a wooden material; my thought process was that if I was able to learn this technique that I could apply this material to part of my project.

The material started off as normal with the three maps connecting with the main material node. Ryan started by demonstrating the main aspect of creating a master material by creating a constant and converting it to a parameter that influenced the colour mappings appearance.

To demonstrate its effect, you can right click the material to create an instance version of the material. This is a version of the master material that anyone can easily edit without changing the source code of the material. The use of a scale allows you to scroll options and get a live preview of what the material will look like. Below is the file and the windows showing off the material instance and its use.

The next stage Ryan continued onto was to create a material function that could affect the material in different ways. I had never used unreal engine enough to explore this feature, so it was all new to me.

The first function that I made was a UV Tiling function that would create a tiling appearance to the material. It would be useful for making tile walls and floors.

After making the function I dragged and dropped it into the material blueprint. The parameter node at the start allows all the other texture maps to UV tile at the same scale and at the same time, as opposed to having to do each mapping manually.

If I went into the Instance material, I could change the rate at which the material tiled over. Increasing the value made the UV maps appear at a small scale more frequently across the object. In the instance material I was able to scroll the values for the UV tiling because of the parameter nodes.

The next step was to add an option to increase the influence of the normal mapping. For this I had to make a new material function to influence the Normal Mapping in particular.

The picture below is the layout for the Normal strengths function. It will allow for the connected "constant node" to influence the strength of the colours that affect the normal mapping. Like the UVTiling material function, I dragged this function into the material blueprint but this time I placed it after the normal texture map. This was so that it couldn't interfere or overlap the influence of the UV tiling command.

After saving the master material the instance material updates its UI and allows you to immediately change the strength of the normal mapping. Looking at the material preview you can already see a difference with slight grooves in the wooden surface.

Below is the master material and the instance material on the same object, I have the settings to a slight extreme to help demonstrate the use of the parameter editors available in the instance material. If applied to a suitable surface, you could easily edit it to your liking until you got an appearance to your liking. This will help with making the appearance of the environment consistent but will also help cut back on time for texturing.

The master material at this point covered the basics; Allowing to change the colour, creating a tiling affect to use for larger surface areas and creating a believable surface through the influence of normal mappings. This would cover a basic environments master material or one for modular pieces, however, Ryan continued to explain how to create a more detailed and high-level master material.

By adding additional parameter nodes alongside influential nodes that change the appearance of objects, you can create more variables to change about an object’s textures.

Below is the layout for the nodes that help change the colour of the wooden material. You can change the overall colour, the hue and the saturation of the final colour by creating these parameters. It was at this point that Ryan advised to start creating groups for these parameters so that the UI of the instance material didn't become messy or too confusing to understand.

Majority of the following maps followed the similar procedure of using the multiply nodes to get new values to change their respective maps, I followed the video closely to avoid making mistakes that would influence the materials final outcome or my understanding of the layout and how it works.

The real change of approach came from creating a "detailed Normal" surface. This is the addition of a second normal map to add to the surface’s appearance. For this master material I used the oak planks normal mapping from the Unreal starter content pack as it was readily available. I copied and pasted the nodes from the UV Tiling function earlier and used them to influence the scale of the UV's for the planks, Ryan made it a point here to rename any copied "constant Parameters" because if they shared the same name to one parameter in the instance material would change the values for the separate maps. The switch was added so that the detailed normal would only influence the material if the user ticked the box to allow the influence.

Here’s a quick demo that shows the difference across the material when the detailed normals is both on and off. I went with the wooden planks normal map because now this material can be used for both flooring and modular objects.

Back to the similar pattern using parameter nodes, it was time to set up a dirt mask. This was to help the surface appear more interesting and relevant to the theme of a "post-apocalyptic theatre". The process was the same as earlier, except I exported a dirt mask from substance painter to use this time.

Different materials have different roughness and colour values, for example; Wood and dry dirt. To make sure that the dirt surface could be differentiated from the others these switches were made that essentially check if the dirt overlay is on. If they are on, then it adds the dirt influencing parameters to the instance material and the dirt to the surface of the object. if the switch isn't activated then the program acts as normal, without taking the dirt material into consideration.

Turning it on you can add the dirty appearance to the surface and change its colour and UV Tiling. It’s easier to find now that all the Parameters are grouped to their respected maps, so if someone wanted to suggest a change, they wouldn't have to change any of the source influences.

Following Ryan’s video was a great experience and he made it very comprehensible for someone that never made a master material before. I zoomed out and was surprised by the amount of programming needed for one material. However, if I wanted to make a new master material, I could replace the maps I used for wood and use new ones for marble or stone if I were applying them to different surfaces.

The product was the chair to the right. The chair to the left is the base Master material and the chair to the right is the instance material with variables applied. While both are basic and not correctly UVed, the chair to the right is more interesting with more surface detail that sets apart from a basic texture appliance. the changes to its colour, the addition of surface variation and use of detailed normal set it apart from basic flat textures shown in the model to the left.

Ryan’s video was very insightful and gave me good ideas on how to apply master materials as well as how to make them. I aim to use this technique throughout my environment, an idea would be the stage flooring or the theatres walls.

Entry 6 – Organic layout

After looking into the master material, I then had to explore different ideas of breaking up procedural concepts and create focal points in my environment that made it feel more organic and less man-made. This would help give it a natural element and help it seem more interesting. I looked back at my original blockouts composition and recreated the disorganized collection of chairs to suggest riot or some other human interaction. For now, I made simple layouts to help slowly build an idea of how they could look in the final product with a new idea of having some positioned around a pit as if they were watching something. The Roadie box I placed earlier acts like a barricade and makes you think why it was placed there, is it there to keep things in? or out? When creating the environment, we must consider each objects placement with these types of questions in mind because we're trying to provoke thought within the viewer.

Entry 3 – Working between Maya and Unreal

After creating the blockout in Maya, I wanted to make sure that the blockout was the right scale for Unreal Engine. So, I selected the environment blockout, except for the chairs, and exported it from Maya as an FBX. The reason I chose to use FBX over OBJ is that we were advised that FBX is the industrial standard, so we should practice it now to get use to the workflow of an industrial workplace. Another new industry technique I have put into practice is the naming of these objects. Previously I have just named them based on what they were, sword, screwdriver, etc. This type of naming convention is bad practice for working in a real development team. So we were taught the typical naming conventions for different aspects of Unreal engine. For what I’m working on now I exported the theatre blockout as; BO Theatre. With BO standing for “Block Out”. In the future, all props and models I make for the environment will be exported as “SM_....” with SM abbreviating “Static Mesh”.

To begin, I created three low poly models to include into my environment. I tried to make three of varying sizes so that when I imported them into unreal, I would be able to see if their scale was correct. I made a Roadie Box, a screwdriver and a theatre seat. I picked these objects because they would be great to show off the scale across the environment.

Each of the models are made up of simple geometry and basic Maya techniques. The basic shapes I used were cubes and cylinders, using extrude to make them bigger or to create protrusions for parts like handles or the locks.

For the moment, these meshes are very simplistic. I plan to add more interesting features to part of them during the texturing phase. To create variation across their surfaces. An idea I have for the roadie box is to add stickers from tours across it, some being worn down or damaged. The theatre chairs will be different too, as they are a staple part of the environment, I will also be making different variations of the chairs outside of different textures. This will help stop the environment from looking symmetrical and uninteresting.

I’m using Unreal engines 4.25.3 release to create the environment so that I can follow my tutor’s advice, or he can give me advice without considering the differences between the other versions available.

I used the First-Person Shooter template world to start of the creation process of the blockout and then organised some folder options for the project, to keep my files organised. The five main folders were; Blueprints, Maps, Materials, meshes and Textures. Some of these folders had their own sub-sections to them too, to further help the organisation of this project.

Blueprints

Materials

Meshes

Textures

After organising my folders, I worked on importing my FBX files. There are several ways of doing this, the traditional way is to use the “import” option and browse through your local files to import your files to specific folders. I used a simpler method that I learned from using Unreal before, I had the folder where my FBX models were and dragged and dropped them into the open folder in the Unreal editor. A window comes up and gives you importing options, this is for the likes of creating skeletal meshes or importing solid objects. I left the skeletal option blank as none of these objects will be moving, however, I did go into the material tab and selected the option to “not create material” for when the object is added to the project. This helps keep the Meshes folder clean and doesn’t require me to delete these materials later when I add my own.

This is where my first issues arose. I first imported the theatre blockout, but when I did it imported as all the separate parts rather than a single object. To make matters worse, the scale wasn’t correct either. I tried to manually scale it up in unreal engine, but I couldn’t get it to a good size and later down the line it would affect the texturing of the environment. Another issue with trying to scale it was that if I deselected part of the theatre it was difficult to find the parts I would need to reselect and rescale.

Some topology errors appeared as well with some objects not rendering correctly like the stage, the flooring and one of the balconies. Taking this into account, I then guessed that the three props I made were of the wrong scale also. To fix this issue I went back to Maya and check my settings.

Upon opening the projects my suspicions were correct. I went into the windows tab, then settings and preferences to see what scale I was working in. I had made my objects using a metre scale when Unreal engine uses Centimetres as their scale. I simply fixed each of the models by opening their project files in Maya and changing their scaling to centimetres instead. Another thing I did was combining all the separate parts of the objects into one so that when I imported them into unreal engine, they would be single static meshes. I then exported them over the previous exports.

I then repeated the importing process from earlier into my unreal project and sure enough they imported correctly this time as single static meshes and at the correct scale.

This is the beginning of modelling out the assets of my environment and my learning of environmental design. To finish up this week’s progress I added these meshes around the blockout of the environment to start giving me ideas if the initial layout was good, or if I must change some features after fleshing it out. So far it looks good, however, I may change the scale of the chairs ever so slightly as they seem tight to the size of the steps. But so far, it’s starting to look good and I can slowly see it coming together.

Entry 4 – Textures and texture types

I haven’t been able to apply textures at these early stages, but I will be exploring different techniques to texturing like tileable walls and flooring. There are also individual prop textures to be done. Another useful technique is the use of trims and trim sheets. I’ll be giving these techniques a deeper exploration later within my project, but for now I can give a brief explanation.

Tileable walls and floors make it easier to have a consistent texture across an environment while also saving time on texturing. Trims and trim sheets provide a similar benefit of saving time on textures. They allow you to create unique and interesting textures for modular pieces like walls or pillars. Both these approaches help create interesting and unique designs that still help keep a sense of consistency throughout an environment.

Example of a Trim sheet made by Kurt Williams on ArtStation
- https://www.artstation.com/artwork/69w2W

3D modelling Blog space

Entry 1 - Introduction

I’m a game art student of the south west college and I’ll be finishing up my degree course this year.
Over the next year of the course I aim to improve my skills as a game artist and over the course of the next year I’ll be creating an environment.
This type of experience is perfect for me because I’ve really enjoyed doing environment art and modelling.
Previously, in the second year of my HND course, I had made an environment based in a bedroom. Looking back, it was okay for the level I was working at, but this year there’s a higher standard to work towards.
In order to reach this higher standard of work I’ve practiced over the summer, however, sticking to my typical workflow won’t help me improve.
While making this environment I will be exploring new game art techniques that I can then implement into my environment’s development. This will help me grow as an environment artist and also as a game design modeller.

The environment I have to make is a theatre, set after an apocalyptic event. We were given free reign to the decision on what that event may have been. We could make it into a zombie survival camp, a theatre affected by a nuclear blast, etc.
At the time that we were given this task my favourite band was about to release a new album so I wanted to incorporate some aspect from them.
With this in mind I decided that my environment will belong to a satanic cult group that revolves around rock and metal. Their alter will be the remains of a rock concert from decades before.

This environment will be a new experience for me, filled with opportunities to develop my skills as a 3D artist and experiment with new skills that I will learn over the course of the next year. I will be updating this blog on a weekly basis to log the progress of my environment. I welcome all feedback given and hope you take interest in what I am creating.

Entry 2 – Planning phase

In order to get things done in a timely manner I need to plan out the coming weeks of this project. It can be a simple plan, but good enough to lay out my plans and allow me to keep track of my project.

I used Trello to create a time plan and help track my progress. We’re moving through the preplanning stages of this project earlier and quicker than planned so this will allow me to move onto the next stage earlier too.

This list will help me keep myself in line and discipline my time management for this project and other projects I will be going through within the next year.

With the theme of rock in mind I had to brainstorm design ideas for the environment. To do this I had to create a reference board to look over for design ideas, lighting and colouring ideas too. Most games with a rock theme consist of rhythm games like Guitar Hero. But while there are some great stages from across the game you don’t get good view of them while playing songs because the games focus was on the music and matching the rhythm as you played. It was during this research stage that I remembered an old game I would play on the xbox, Brutal Legend. This game was a combination of rock and fighting and had a certain “open-world” theme to it. While looking through images and videos of the game I saw how rock and roll affected the design choices behind the world. The setting of the game also fitted the environment theme we were given, being set on a dystopian world where rock and roll had a direct impact on the world from the architecture to the wildlife and the land itself.

While creating this mood board we all had a meeting with our tutors to discuss our ideas and how we were doing for the preplanning of this project. My tutor was very excited with my idea and plan. He was looking forward to the type of environment I would make but gave me a piece of advice. He advised that I should try and avoid making the environment too fantasy-like. The environment we were making was in a realistic style and that the art style of Brutal Legend wouldn’t work with the art techniques we would be learning this year either. I was told that my idea was great, but to try and make it with realism in mind and avoid the art style of Brutal Legend. This was great advice and helped me with some extra design choices, for example, making the guitar more of a ceremonial piece as opposed to it being a magical item used by the cult, this way I wouldn’t have to go over the top with its design and make something that doesn’t fit with the rest of the environments design.

The next stage of planning was the prop list. To begin I made a list of the most obvious props such as the stage, walls, etc. Afterwards, I made a note of other props and items you would typically find around a stage like speakers, equipment cases, etc. With that, the majority of the list was done, and I could go into planning the layout and design of the environment. I was content with the list at this point because I had roughly 30 objects listed which was a typical number within the industry to aim towards, for an environment. I also new that later down the line certain objects could be removed and more could be added to the list.

Next was the environments design and layout. I already had a layout in mind for this stage, I was going to base it of Enniskillen’s local theatre the Ardhowan. I had been in it a number of times to see my sisters perform on the stage so I could remember certain aspects I wanted to take from it. The first step I took was drawing out quick sketches of the layout I wanted.

The aspects I took from the local theatre were the use of balconies and the orchestral pit in front of the stage. I imagined that the cult would make use of them for ceremonies, sacrifices or punishment areas. The next stage was to create a blockout based on the sketches I made. Making this blockout would help me with the scaling of objects within the environment and also give me ideas of object placement around the environment. Were given two options for how we could go about creating this blockout, the first was using primitives and unique assets from the unreal marketplace within the unreal engine. This would have been useful because the environment we have to create would be imported into unreal in the end and making the blockout in unreal would provide the correct scale from the start.
The other option was to create it in Maya first, using a human model for the scale of the environment. I went with this approach, as opposed to the unreal engine approach, because I’m more comfortable with using Maya. It would also allow me to turn some blockout objects into low poly and/or high poly afterwards and wouldn’t require me to export from unreal just to import it back again later.
Another reason for me was that I’m more familiar to Maya as I’ve used it a lot over the past 4 years.

Over the next year I’ll be using other programs that specialise in different aspects of modelling, they include but aren’t limited to;

• Maya 2020
• PureRef
• Trello
• Rizom UV
• Substance Painter
• Substance Designer
• Marvelous Designer
• Zbrush
• Unreal Engine
• Marmoset Toolbag

To get started, I created the blockout directly based of my sketches and in very low detail. After creating it I asked for feedback from our discord server. I was advised on how there was very little elevation between the seats and that everything was in a very symmetrical manner. I thanked them for the feedback and took note that I should follow the rule of variation to avoid the symmetry across the environment.
I worked on this and more across the environment considering why I was moving objects or adding them. I had to contemplate why the object was there, like what caused it to be there and how it resulted in its position in the environment.

Some design choices I went with included things like; getting rid of several rows of chairs so that followers of the cult had a place to stand to watch ceremonies and the such. Another choice was to add more props of the rock concert from decades before around the guitar’s altar. I wanted to help flesh out the environment more while keeping it in the blockout stage to help demonstrate what I have in mind for the end result of the environment.