LogInDave Miragliotta explained the process for creating a realistic leather-type material with a worn look in Substance 3D Designer and shared how Spline nodes were utilized to create intricate folds, place gold bead shapes, and add details like buttons.
Introduction
Hi! My name is Dave Miragliotta. I’ve been in the game industry for 10+ years. I’ve worked at Respawn Entertainment as a Senior Environment Artist for the past six years. I’ve had the pleasure of working on two Star Wars titles, Jedi Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor.
I got into using the Substance 3D Designer about seven or eight years ago. I really wanted to get into using Substance because it seemed like it would be the next big thing in creating materials and textures. I really started out by just watching as many tutorials as possible. It was a big help to start understanding the nodes and what each node did. Daniel Thiger's tutorials were where I learned the most. It really was the foundation that I needed to progress with 3D Designer.
About the Gold Trim Fabric Project
I was looking to make a leather-type material with a lot of folds in the fabric. I wanted to utilize the new spline nodes for almost everything in this material.
The first step was to create the initial cuts in the fabric. I used the Quadratic Spline node to add in the spline points and the Spline Renders node to render a shape on the spline.
Next, I started making the gold bead-type shape to be put in where the initial cuts were made. After making the shape, I used a Quadratic Spline node and a Scatter on Spline Greyscale node to place the bead shape in the cuts of the fabric.
The next step was starting to add in the different folds for the fabric. I started off by doing the initial folds. I used the Creased node with a Blend node set to subtract the outline of the cut shapes to start.
I then went further with some additional folds using a shape I made and plugged it into a Tile Sampler Greyscale node, and then that shape I plugged into a Scatter on Spline Greyscale node. With Quadratic Spline nodes, I place the shapes along the initial cuts in the fabric to add more fold detail.
Next, I wanted to add some extra detail, so I decided to add some buttons. I cut out the holes for the buttons. I then added more folds using a waveform shape plugged into Splatter Circular Greyscale nodes.
For the albedo/color, I just went with a green color and added some gold trim. For the gold trim, I used Quadratic Spline and Spline Render nodes to make a mask for where the gold trim would be located on the fabric.
I didn't want the fabric to look pristine, so I added in some distress marks and some dirty-looking roughness to make the fabric look a little worn in.
There aren't many parameters to adjust with this material. You can easily adjust the size and position of the folds, but that’s about it.
Summary
I had a good time making this material. It took me about three or four hours to complete. The main challenges were the folds for sure. Whether it was getting the right amount of blur on them to make them look soft enough or adjusting the position and size, it was definitely the most time-consuming part of this project. All in all, I think I had a good result. I hope this was useful or at least inspiring. Thank you for reading.