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Substance 3D Community Digest, November 2024

Adobe Employee ,
Dec 03, 2024 Dec 03, 2024

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mortem 1b.png

A still from the short film 'Mortem,' by Florent Bizec and Frederic Colin.

 

Time ticks inexorably along, and we’ve already crept past the end of November. But let’s say that the start of the holiday season gives us a little leeway on this; here the awesome news and content from Substance world, for the month of November.

Featured Artist

 

November’s featured artist is Adam Capone. Adam began working as a texture artist in 2005; today he is a Lead Environment Artist at Ubisoft Halifax. 

 

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What’s the most important thing to keep in mind when creating a piece of artwork? Ultimately I believe it's asking yourself ‘Why?’ If you’re working on personal artwork for your portfolio, start by looking at what this new piece of artwork will bring that doesn't currently exist? For instance, this could initially be as simple as seeing that you only have mostly wood textures in your portfolio, and giving yourself the goal that the next asset will focus more on metals – and this might evolve into noticing that you’re only creating boxy props, and so deciding to creating a piece of artwork that focuses more on organic elements such as vegetation would not only add to your portfolio but also teach you new skills. As your portfolio grows, these goals can become more nuanced, such as creating an environment that centers around a specific mood or time of day that you haven’t tackled before. Recently I looked through my portfolio and noticed that I don't really have much environmental storytelling in my personal work, so I’m currently working on a piece in which that's the goal. If you can do that, whilst centering it around themes that excite you, you'll not only expand your skillsets more quickly but have a more rounded, interesting and sellable portfolio.

 

cathedral 4.png

 

Can you talk about one of your favorite projects, that you used the Substance tools to create? The main goal of my Cathedral project was to become more familiar with Unreal Engine; a sub-goal was to go through an online course in modular asset creation, and another was to become more familiar with building trimsheets in Substance Designer. I’d previously found myself in autopilot mode where I kept creating isolated material spheres in Substance Designer; I’d learned how to use the software but needed to get better at creating materials for use in engines. When creating a material sphere for the portfolio I tend to lean on unique details, higher contrasts, heavy ambient occlusion, defined highlights and shadows etc., but in a large environment I needed a flatter, more refined approach. With the trimsheets I eventually purchased and learned how to use Daniel Thiger's tool 'Dete Trim ToolKit' which is a node that you can bring into Substance Designer to help organize and manage your trimsheets. I would say the textures in general are about 90% Designer and 10% Painter, mainly because there were not that many unique elements or needs for baking. I personally find this faster for creating very modular environments with large surface areas.

 

cathedral 2.png

 

What advice would you give to someone aspiring to become a 3D artist? It can be overwhelming starting out but know you really don't have to master software. Pipelines are always changing, and techniques can soon die out. What never dies are the fundamentals such as color theory, shape language, composition, lighting, and so on – so try to track down that information and, more importantly, document your findings! Create your own single digital space or, as I like to think of it, your own greenhouse or gym. A place where you not only add content but regularly visit (at least once a week) to maintain/organize to avoid it getting messy/out of shape. This space is not just for your current project, it's for your entire career. This place is mainly for inspiration, knowledge and troubleshooting (perhaps you found a technical solution recently? Store it here in case it happens again!). For me right now this is done on a Miro board but has also been other formats in the past as technology changes. Finally, reaching out into related communities will only help you grow and strengthen your digital space. For example a Discord channel can expose you not only to new art but also artists, inspirations, references, resources, solutions and even feedback on your own work.

 

cathedral 1.png

 

Substance News 

 

Meet MAT 4: We have a fintastic winner!

 

mat 2.png

 

The art toy texturing contest has been in full swing, hosted by our friends over at The Rookies. The contest received hundreds of entries, and we were astonished by the creativity and texturing talent on display.

 

And we have a winner! The winner this year was Sebastian Medrano Casa, with his entry ‘Fishtume’ – most likely the most eerily accurate piscean-themed Halloween costume you’ll ever see. Congratulations to Sebastian, and huge thanks to everybody who took part – the collective creative brilliance here was a true joy to witness.

 

Read more about Sebastian’s entry, and about the contest runners up and various other great entries, over on The Rookies.

 

Substance Online

 

Mortem: a Creative Fusion of Differing Artistic Styles

 

The Motion Plus Design festival is an international celebration of the art of motion design. The 'Made With' artistic collaboration, this year in partnership with Adobe and Maxon, is a key component of the event. For this 2024 edition in Paris, the Motion Plus Design team asked 3D artists Frederic Colin and Florent Bizec to create a short film to showcase the creative possibilities in this field. The result was the truly outstanding Mortem.

 

mortem 3.png

mortem 2.png

 

Take a look at our post on Behance to watch the short film, and to get a view into Frederic and Florent’s behind-the-scenes approach.

 

 

3D Artist Portrait: Meet Hussain Almossawi

 

hussain 1.png

 

On the Adobe blog, you can catch up with a profile of 3D artist Hussain Almossawi, 'Inspiration is all Around Us,' highlighting his innovative approach to merging artistic styles across product, VFX, automotive, and footwear design. The short film explores Hussain’s detailed creative process, drawing inspiration from New York City’s vibrant surroundings.

 

 

... and also

 

For this month’s Featured Node, QA Support Artist Cyril Dellenbach has picked out the Shape Extrude node. Cyril explains:

 

Shape_Extrude_Gif.gif

The node takes a 2D input and turns it into a rotatable 3D shape. Essentially, this node mimics an ‘Extrude’ operation from 3D software, but for a 2D image. With Shape Extrude, you no longer need to switch to alternate 3D software to build alphas from 3D meshes.

 

Great stuff. Have fun creating – and extruding – and we’ll have more information in just a little while, towards the end of December.

 

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