Method for automatically creating decorative tile pattern

[ShadowGlow]

I'm trying to figure out a method to create this tile pattern 

I understand that a lot of people manually create the shapes that make up the tile but is there a way that I can upload a file of the shapes and substance designer automatically recognize them/give the option to color the shapes?

I was thinking that I could image trace 1 part of this pattern in adobe illustrator and upload it to substance designer as a vector but I'm not sure how to do that. From there, I'm assuming I could just use the transform node for the other 3 parts since they're just reflections of each other.

The ulimate goal is to be able to expose the proper parameters and replace the input image according to whatever tile pattern I'm trying to recreate.

I hope that makes sense. Any help is appreciated, thank you.

[Cyril Dellenbach]

Hello @ShadowGlow,

This is an interesting question.

You don't have to make a pattern from scratch. A lot of people do it, because you'll gain a lot of control on your material, which is usually harder to obtain with bitmaps, but Substance 3D Designer has many tools to get a result.

E.g. you could simply import in Designer the image shared here (as long as you have the permissions) and use a Color to Mask or an Histogram Select to extract the pattern from the image.

Don't hesitate to blend multiple results of Histogram Selects together.

Probably that you could ease Designer's workflow by sending the image first to Photoshop/Illustrator, but I'm pretty sure you can also have a clean result through Designer.

With that being said, a 100% automatic .SBSAR that takes this kind of input images and turns it into a clean pattern, will probably be harder to build.

Best regards,

[ShadowGlow]

@Cyril Dellenbach Would you say that I could achieve the same result using color to mask? It seems to be more precise when it comes to masking based on a specific color value. It's perfectly fine if I can't automate this with an input image. The main goal is just to be able to create the texture. I tried to use sampler first but since the pattern consists of 4 tiles, I didn't see a way to add the input images and also have the grout lines where they should be.

That brings me to my next question. Is there a visual example of how to use pattern distrubtion maps in the tile sampler node? Using "pattern number" isn't giving me the result I need but I haven't found any examples of how I'm supposed to create the pattern distribution map. I saw the black and white example image on the adobe help page but that doesn't tell me anything other than the fact that it should be a black and white image. I'm using the tile sampler color node, not the grayscale.

[Cyril Dellenbach]

Hi @ShadowGlow,

The Color to Mask node could be a solution, but as always with Substance 3D Designer, there are a lot of various way to obtain the desired result.  It's on you to find what suits the most for this specific project.

What exactly is your goal when mentioning the pattern distibution? You can learn more on the Tile Sampler node in our documentation.

[ShadowGlow]

What exactly is your goal when mentioning the pattern distibution? You can learn more on the Tile Sampler node in our documentation.

By @Cyril Dellenbach

My goal is to create a distribution that accurately reflects the tile pattern like in my original image. You can see that 4 tiles make up the pattern. The problem is that creating 4 image inputs for the tile sampler and selecting the pattern distribution as 'pattern number' does not give the desired result. As mentioned in my previous post, I read the documentation on the tile sampler node but I am a visual person so I need an actual example to know how to create a distribution map. I understand it has to be grayscale but when it comes to substance designer knowing where each image should be on the pattern, what do I need to do to give it the information it needs? How do I create the map?

[ShadowGlow]

@Cyril Dellenbach 

[Cyril Dellenbach]

First of all, why not using the entire image as your Tile Sampler input? If you need the input to be a single tile, I wouldn't advise you to use a Distribution map.

You could simply plug two inputs (one tile and its mirror) in a Tile Sampler, set the distribution to Pattern Number, and make sure the tiling is always an odd number.

Regarding the Distribution Map, it uses a greyscale input to spread the patterns in the values of this greyscale.

E.g. if the Tile Sampler has two pattern inputs, everything from 0 to 0.5 in the greyscale map will be pattern number 1 and everything from 0.51 to 0.99 will be pattern number 2.

Best regards,

[olemid]

I've done this before, shown in this post: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/4XelvY

The important takeaway is that some patterns make sense to do procedurally, and others do not. In my case, I drew the patterns in Procreate or Photoshop, and then brought them in. SVGs also work, so like you say you can import something from Illustrator via the SVG node.