Independent Research #1: Learning Substance Designer

Welcome to my first blog post! My name is Rachel Molnar, and I am currently a senior at Clark University studying Interactive Media Design with a focus on 3D art for games. My goal for the Fall 2025 semester is to practice independently researching skills and topics in 3D art that I don’t yet know much about, while also refining my current skills through research.

Some of these goals include learning to create seamless tiled materials in Substance Designer, navigating and modeling in Maya (I’m currently a Blender user), and introducing myself to character modeling/sculpting in ZBrush, among other topics I have little experience with. These are broad and ambitious goals, and while I hope to tackle all of them this semester, I’ll be documenting my learning journey here!

That being said, for the past two weeks I’ve committed myself to learning Substance Designer (SD). SD is an incredibly powerful tool for generating seamless, tileable textures, but when you’re just starting out it can feel overwhelming and intimidating. With so many different features and methods to approach the program, it isn’t exactly intuitive without some research. That’s exactly how I felt a year ago when I was first introduced to it... but this time, I was determined to overcome those challenges and really learn the program once and for all.

To start, I watched the entirety of Substance Designer's 22-part beginner tutorial on their YouTube channel, led by technical artist Louise Melin.  I took my time going through each video, learning the different nodes in the program, and following along with creating a cloth texture that incorporated sequins, ornaments, and lace patterns.

Some key takeaways I learned from the course include:

1. How to create custom shapes using splines

2. Applying and layering colors using greyscale

3. Understanding the use of “dot” nodes and how to work with them

4. Using tile generators and samplers, as well as the differences between absolute, horizontal, and vertical tiling

   
   

One skill I found especially useful was combining the “Blur HQ Greyscale” node with a “Levels” node. Together, these nodes help soften harsh edges and improve overall quality without altering the original shape.

By following along with the Substance Designer tutorial, I was able to successfully create a seamless cloth material, experimenting with a few original variations. I achieved different height depths using sequins and ornaments, as well as added roughness and color variation for extra detail.

My original goal for the past two weeks was to work through a few additional tutorials, but the process of following along, pausing, rewinding, and experimenting with each lesson ended up taking much more time than I had anticipated.

The other tutorial I followed along with was 3DEx's YouTube video creating a Sci-Fi floor texture. I followed along with this lesson as best I could (it was pretty fast-paced), but after setting up the base shapes provided, I decided to apply my new knowledge to create my own variations in color and form, resulting in a unique design. This time, out of personal interest, I aimed for a more stylized look—using less roughness and metallic variation. That choice was also partly practical, since parameters beyond height and color still feel a bit confusing to me.

While I originally planned to spend only a couple of weeks with Substance Designer, this independent study has turned out to be a lot of fun. It’s fascinating how much seamless variation you can generate, from realistic to stylized. There are countless textures I’d love to try making. Below are some textures from artists I discovered on ArtStation that I found especially inspiring…

Vincent Dérozier On ArtStation

Raphael Jean On ArtStation

Raphael’s ability to generate such realistic variation, creating not only a convincing honeycomb but also designing bees entirely within Substance Designer, is truly remarkable. It inspires me to push myself further and experiment with creating my own organic and complex textures.

Ultimately I learned a lot this week, and look forward to sharing what I'll be doing next!