Learning Substance Designer

Discover how to create 3D textures with Substance Designer 2020. Find out how to use the atomic nodes, graphs, and other features to generate texture maps for game engines.

1. Becoming Familiar with the Application

• Menus and preference settings
• Viewports and how they work
• Using the Explorer pane
• Navigating and understanding the library
• Accessing and changing properties
• Making good use of the Scene menu
• Using the Materials Menu wisely
• Camera and rendering options
• How to make environment and lighting changes

2. Substance Graphs and How to Use Them

• What are packages and graphs?
• How to use Atomic Nodes efficiently
• Adjusting and working with node connections
• Important Quick Access Toolbar functionality

3. Baking Maps to Improve Texture Creation

• Discussing mesh preparation prior to import
• Importing meshes and maps into designer
• Elements, Output, and Values sections of the bake dialogue
• Bakers render list and parameters

4. Texturing a Mesh with Atomic Nodes

• Color to mask
• Color
• Blend
• Grunge maps
• Gradient map
• Normal
• Base material
• Dirt generator
• Metal edgeware

5. Building Materials with Atomic Nodes

• Tile Generator: Start of new material
• Warp
• Crop Grayscale
• Shape Splatter
• Shape Splatter to mask
• Ambient Occlusion
• Curve
• Normal to height HQ
• Water level

6. Getting the Most Out of Published Substances

• How to expose useful parameters
• Organizing exposed parameters for ease of use
• Exporting and importing packages from Designer

Conclusion

• Next steps