Strange Magic In Odd Places - A Work In Progress

This idea has been bouncing around in my head since my last project, an old washroom in the basement of a once swanky, now abandoned 1920’s style hotel. In between the tiles on the floor, from the drain in the sinks and the toilets, sprouts a number of thick, viney plants, their tendrils climbing the walls, with glowing buds and fruits sprouting at random.

It might even have some mushrooms in there, because mushrooms are cool. This is also the same reason why the hotel has to be abandoned. Pristine environments aren’t nearly as fun to do.

I started this project with the intentions of doing all my main textures procedurally. I started going through a number of Blender specific tutorials before it finally dawned on me that I had spent a ton of money on Substance Designer here a couple years back, but haven’t used it but once.

So this thread will be just as much about me fumbling my way through Designer as it will be about Blender.

And what do I have so far to justify me starting up a new thread? A FLOOR!

…this is a really early work in progress.

I wanted something more concrete or stone than tile. Something kinda grungy and damp, like it’s in a hot, humid, underground environment.

This is what I got out of Designer:

And this is what it looks like in a test environment in Blender:

It is a good floor. I like this floor.

Next up: WALL TILES! Also, some stucco.

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Indeed ! A nice and very supportive floor !

I get the feeling that following this topic is going to be very interesting ! Keep up the good work !

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Small update today! I finished what’s going to be the base wall tile texture, and tweaked my floor to be both more tiley, and to match the walls.

I’ll make the floor more shiny again tomorrow.

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You’d think that plaster would’ve been the easiest thing to do. It’s not. It’s actually the most difficult texture in the world to get to look right.

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I guess this thread is like my musings diary, so I’ll go ahead and post why it’s so hard to make good plaster.

…well, here’s the reason:

If you make it too generic, and it’s boring. Make it too specific, and it very obviously tiles. The only way I figure I can make a good looking plaster texture is to make 2 or 3 of them, then blend them in various spots with an alpha mask.

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I know you want to use Substance Designer but really, these types of textures are ideal for making them purely procedural.

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hahaha seems the case with a lot of materials isn’t it ?

Yeah in general mixing two textures with a noise can be enough, there is also payed node-group addons that allows to get rid of repetition, you might have heard of them, one is made by Johnathan Lampbell ( CG cookie) …

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Are you going to publish these as Sbar files?
They are looking very very nice!

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Yeah, I bought that addon awhile back. It’s good stuff.

My idea right now is to have three different texture sets. The normal, unbroken plaster, a cracked up variation, and a 3rd that’s just deep gouges, and RGB map them together. I’ll test it out as soon as it’s done to see how well it all comes together, then later, once I start adding in all my architectural bits and bobs, I’ll use Fluent Materializer to eek out all the edge wearing and randomizing.

Now that I’ve got something of a plan ahead of me, I went ahead and made the plaster a little more generic. I’ll paint in some grunge on top of it in Blender later.

Yeah, I could do that. I’ll wait until I’m done with the scene before doing so though, cuz I have a feeling I’ll probably be tweaking them until the very end.

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Using it in Blender with the Substance Addon will allow users to Tweak all the values that you add so …They could tweak forever… :wink:

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But I don’t know how to do all that yet. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Yeah there’s your weekend project!
Have fun watching their Tutorials…:wink:

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This plaster looks really good !
Well done ! I’ll go and do the same on my walls at home, it’s so appealing !

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I haven’t had much time to work on things today, but I did make my first attempt at multi-leveled plaster texturing.

The results are…eeehhh.

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I haven’t had as much time to work on this as I’d like (I rarely ever do), but I have been able to slowly eek ahead.

I decided to take Lumpengnom’s advice, and use some procedural texturing inside of Blender to break up some of the repetition. I’m also thinking about using some decals for cracks and gouges, maybe even going so far as to purchase Decal Machine at some point in the not too distant future. Also, I decided to redo the floor texture, because the other one just wasn’t fitting in.

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Decal machine is very cool- however, there’s also this free decal add-on that works well:

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If there’s any one thing I’ve learned over the last 3-4 hours, it’s that sinks are surprisingly difficult to do.

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Hey, brah. You got sinks?

Hell yeah, dawg! I’ve got sinks! I’ve got sinks for DAYS!

Thinking I might need to redo the floor again too…

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Rejoice, one and all, for soon!

…ye shall verily poop.

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I take it back. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would want to use this toilet.

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