Backyard Project - Substance Designer Tiling Textures

Substance Designer was quite a tricky one to learn, especially because besides the artistic and visual judgements I had to make, it is a more technical workflow than artistic, so I had to get used to that.

I started with the cobblestone texture, which I made following this tutorial and analysing it to better understand how I can use these tools further down the road, for this project, as well for future ones: https://youtu.be/dpWKcIdOLGU

I started by making a base using a Polygon2 node then a Histogram Scan and a Flood Fill and Flood Fill to Gradient to generate the shape of the cobblestone, the rocky hard surface. I repeated the step a few times to vary the shapes. I blended them together as I went using Blend nodes. I added some edge imperfections by using Perlin Noise and Warp.

I then made the grass and flowers by using Waveform and Gradient Linear and blending them together to make the shape of the petal/grass. For the grass I left them like this and plugged the node straight into the Tile Sampler, while for the flower I used Splatter Circular to arrange them in a circular shape, then put it into the Tile Sampler too. I added noise by using some Clouds.

I then blended the cobblestones and grass together, added Gradient Maps, tweaked a few things here and there and it was done. 

This is the final graph:

And the texture:

I'm quite proud of how it turned out. I changed a few things to better fit my project, one of them being the colour of the flowers and grass. Since I have a lot of blue accents in my composition, I thought blue flowers would fit better. Plus, blue always makes me think of magic, and since I am making a Sorcerer's backyard, I thought it fitting. 

Next was the plaster, which was trickier. 

I tried following a tutorial for making plaster with wood, like the medieval kind of walls, but I encountered problems. (This was the tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pz2R610A_c)

The error showed up as a really dark line around the piece of wood. This is how it looked on the normal map:

My theory is that something from the Bevel step caused it, but I couldn't find any solution to fix it, just make it less obvious, which didn't quite work, so I was advised to start again. 

The second time, I made a simple plaster node by myself, recognising that I might get errors again if I didn't properly understand a tutorial as I am following it. 

I used a tutorial just for making the cracks, and made sure I understood fully how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62vCvWMzVt8

I used a Polygon3 node to generate a slightly curved shape, then used splatter to multiply it. I used a Bevel to further model the shape towards what it needed to be, then a blur set to a really low intensity to make the edges less harsh, then a Curvature and Histogram Scan to obtain the black lines that are gonna be the cracks. It was easy after that, I just had to use an Invert Grayscale. I then used Fractal Sum and Levels to add some gradient to the cracks and Directional Warp to vary the shapes. 

I then added some dents in the plaster, using a technique I learnt from making the stone wall tiling texture that I'm gonna write about next. I added noise and blended everything together, then added a Gradient Map and it was done. 

Next, I made the stone wall that will be at the bottom of the plaster one. For the base, I followed this tutorial: https://youtu.be/zu9tq1P_Q9M

I used Cells 3 and Edge Detect to make the shape of the rocks, then a Directional Warp with Perlin Noise to make the edges more uneven. I used once again Perlin Noise together with Slope Blur to add more of that imperfect shape to the stones. I used Flood Fill and Flood Fill to Gradient Multiple times to model the shape of the rocks, similarly to what I did for the cobblestones and used levels to lighten it back and bring back the contrast. 

I used the Shape node set to Paraboloid pattern and added more variation to the shape using Perlin Noise, then plugged it into a Tile Sampler and masked some of the pattern out so I would only get the few dents in the stone I was looking for. I later reused the shape with another tile sampler to add even more variation to the shape of the stones, then again for the base of the moss. 

I made the moss by blending the pattern I had already made for the stone shape with a couple of noises - Moisture, Perlin, Clouds 3 - , and tweaking it using Levels, Blur and Histogram Scan to reach the look I wanted. 

I then added the Gradient Maps and it was done.