In this lesson, Kat introduces herself and talks about her background working at major AAA game studios. She explains her specialty in materials and how the professional workflows she uses are the same ones she’ll teach in this workshop. These skills help her create a wide range of materials efficiently and are a big part of what’s made her a successful environment artist in the games industry.

Duration: 45s

In this lesson, Kat gives us an overview of the workshop ahead, outlining the materials she plans to make, and the research and reference gathering that's required. By combining technical planning and online research with personal photography and physical exploration, she explains how to make work more authentic and distinctive.

Duration: 11m 43s

In this lesson, Kat breaks down complex materials into simple layers and target elements in order to make the creation process more approachable. By thinking through layer order, component hierarchy, potential variations, and exposable parameters before starting, she shows how artists can create flexible, reusable materials that save time.

Duration: 10m 19s

In this lesson, Kat runs through her process for making a base cobble stone material for the overall set of materials in this project. Beginning in Substance Designer, she demonstrates how thinking procedurally and staying relatively organized on your Substance Designer graph allows for easier adjustments and collaboration with development teams. By combining multiple techniques, the resulting cobblestone material achieves a realistic and hand-crafted appearance.

Duration: 17m 57s

In this lesson, Kat talks about metrics and scale within Substance Designer; a concept that will ultimately make sure all the tiling materials work properly together. While it may not be the most exciting aspect of material creation, metrics prevent common issues like mismatched resolutions, improper height blending, and unrealistic scale differences between assets. By adhering to a standardized height scale and texel density, artists can ensure that all materials can live together in a scene.

Duration: 25m 10s

In this lesson, Kat walks through the meticulous creation process for each different shape element of the path material, consisting of different plant, rock and debris features. In order to maintain organization and efficiency when making all of these features, Kat breaks each out into separate subgraphs before re-integrating them into the main material.

Duration: 56m 40s

In this lesson, Kat looks at the Shape Splatter node in Substance Designer, which is used throughout the rest of the material graph, and a powerful tool for creating complex materials by providing granular control over how elements interact with underlying surfaces. Acting very much like a multi-tool for placement, the parameters within this node allow Kat to achieve natural-looking results for different material types, from organically growing moss that hugs surfaces to rigid stones that rest on terrain.

Duration: 28m 57s

In this lesson, Kat shows how she controls color and gloss in her material by breaking them down into separate parts. She explains why it’s important to keep surface types and their physical properties consistent, so everything looks like it belongs in the same environment. To do this, she pulls information from different parts of her graph, and uses Shape Splatter nodes and their outputs to make the process much simpler and more efficient.

Duration: 38m 14s

In this lesson, Kat explains the basics of parameters in Substance Designer, their uses and what it means to expose them. Creating these controls enbles artists to transform static node graphs into dynamic systems that can generate numerous variations of a material efficiently. In this system, the balance between functionality and simplicity is essential; expose enough parameters to enable meaningful customization.

Duration: 25m 43s

In this final lesson, Kat reviews the key takeaways from the workshop, walking through each stage of the process from start to finish to show how a professional, game-ready material comes together. She also wraps up by demonstrating a few quick ways to present your finished material directly in Substance Designer using the built-in IRay renderer.

Duration: 9m 16s