CREATE BLUEBERRIES PROCEDURALLY IN SUBSTANCE DESIGNER

Learn how to replicate complex natural patterns and shapes to create realistic-looking blueberries

- Matthew Novak

Substance Designer can be overwhelming when it comes to creating fully procedural textures, and we can often be stuck questioning ourselves. Questions such as, how can this pattern be made efficiently, and how do we start? There’s no specific set of steps and no fixed rules to follow when you’re creating in Substance Designer. One thing that’s important is that everything is kept flexible and as simple as possible to reduce overhead and keep things logical.

Organic materials in the real world are naturally formed and can often share similar patterns. These patterns often contain some sort of symmetrical details, vein-like edges and cracks, tessellated and repetitive shapes, and corners or angles with splits at 90 or 120 degrees. Recognising these similar patterns will help us figure out how to recreate these patterns easily. Once we can confidently recreate these patterns, approaching any organic surface becomes much less of a challenge and a more fixed logical set of steps.

This walkthrough will be going over various methodologies and steps to follow that can help you to recognise and create complex shapes and patterns with ease. Not only will we be going over how to create these patterns, but how to easily break up and remap them for controlled variations in our textures.

01 RECOGNISE PATTERNS