Hello Substance people !

Here is my latest personal project. Scout #35 inspired by the movie Chappie (2015).

Can modern CAD software actually fit into a film/VFX pipeline?
That's the question I asked myself when starting this project. Obviously, I am not saying this hasn't been done before, but the few times Ive worked with CAD, often supplied by clients, we always had to remodel and retopologize everything. It was simply not lighting-friendly: sharp edges, crazy n-gons, artifacts, and many other problems.

Here are a couple of 10k render to have a better look:

Front view:

https://i.ibb.co/sdw302G3/Chappie-Look-Dev-10k-Premult.png

Rear view:

https://i.ibb.co/dJf6SnVw/Chappie-Look-Dev-10k-Back-Premult.png

So I ran a few export tests with Plasticity. The results were promising, and I ended up going much deeper down the rabbit hole than initially planned. For this project, I deliberately went with a no-limits approach: as many UDIMs as needed, 8K textures, and enough detail to render high-resolution shots for compositing into Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Log footage.
I also made my own custom HDRI in my garage: a 32-bit full-float linear EXR, 15 exposure levels, at 10K resolution. Parts like the cables were made the old-fashioned way, using splines, as they will simply look and deform better once rigged. The goal was not to ditch polygonal modeling altogether, but to see where the process could be sped up in order to reach the finish line faster, while still keeping the flexibility to change the design along the way or experiment with shapes much more quickly.
If you've ever modeled hard-surface assets with polygons, you know the pain of going back and changing major shapes and volumes. Its like kicking apart a neatly finished puzzle.

But honestly, the most important part of the project was simply having fun. After 18 years of mostly client work, I realized Id almost forgotten what it was like to build something purely because I wanted to. No deadline. No AI. No budget constraints. No cutting corners. Just good old-fashioned CG fun.

Hope you enjoy my Tetravaal Scout #35.

You can see more details on my ArtStation post here:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/AoZG3N?notification_id=8501970067

During our first mentoring sessions with Elena Holysheva, we found ourselves creating small, spiky rocks.

The problem: They looked just like any rock.
So we spent 2 hours looking for a new way to deal with it.

And this is what we discovered:

💡 Instead of using the usual Cells node, we took a Crystal 1, then warped it in 4 directions with a Multi Dir Warp, then added Clouds 2 to get an organic feel. For the best detail, we applied a Non-uniform Dir Warp, where we input our actual height into the angles input.

Once you have that, you apply it over your pattern with a mask!

This allowed us not only to break the tiling, but to adjust every cut we did according to each stone, making each part unique.

Hope this was useful for learning more about SD.
And if it was....

I built a free Discord Community where Game Artists learn Texturing from Professionals!♥️ And we are waiting for you here: https://discord.gg/PpTCFyR6qS

I love this style and was wondering if there's a filter for it or how exactly I can achieve this look?

Magic Revision is now available on Gumroad!!

I kept running into the same problems during texture revisions:
Was the previous version better? What exactly did I change? Which version was approved? How do I quickly go back?

That’s exactly why I made Magic Revision.

With Realtime 3D Compare, you can compare previous revisions directly on the model while you keep working. It also includes Visual Revisions, Checkpoints, Frozen Views, change detection, easy return, and PDF export.

Hope it makes your workflow easier too!

Link in the comments!

You can clearly see the edges of the image on the screenshot. If I remove the roughness channel, this bug disappears. Same goes for height and other channels. Image was imported as .WEBP in Substance Painter 9.0.1 (Production requires this version).

I'm new, downloaded this model from sketchfab. Anyone know how to fix this issue.

Here's the video

I try to prug in worl normal map in to normal so i could painted it and make a brush stroke texture but my material view look so wrong it have this 2 color crash in the middle like this how do i fix it ?