Step inside a world of browns and greens. Nature takes hold of Substance Source with a massive release of 658 hybrid atlases and 85 procedural scans.

Art by Maximilien Vert

For this release, the Substance team brings expertise in capture, optimization, and customization. The result ensures the exceptional quality of the materials, plus infinite possibilities thanks to the atlas’ parameters – but more on that later.

As always, the team likes to go above and beyond. What you see today is the result of the team and partners spending months picking up stuff found in the streets and in the fields: an ongoing collection of sticks, stones, leaves, and cigarette butts. There’s content for everyone!

Environment artists: create complex grounds on demand. Architecture visualization experts: stage your outdoor scenes according to the seasons. Evil masterminds: plan realistically your best post-apocalyptic sceneries.

To make the most of these materials; import them into Substance Alchemist: you’ll be able to make your creations travel in any kind of environment. And this is just the beginning!

Without further ado, let’s take a look at today’s great collection:

Every single atlas you see here is part of a batch of 50 free atlases!

The team has made sure these atlases were perfectly adapted – with dedicated features – to work in Substance Alchemist. See them in action in these three different materials:

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The atlases, once splattered across textures, help bring extra details and realism, or simply bring random variations to a material.

The best of both worlds: the accuracy of scanning + parametric creative freedom

The creation of an atlas is a technical process. Experts in photometry capture elements, clean them up, and generate a board.

Our hybrid scans go beyond simple captured elements. As usual with the Source team, we have gone one step further and added modifiable parameters, designed to make sure you will be able to use one single material across projects. And so, one atlas is not just one atlas – rather, it encompasses dozens of possible variations!

This means that 658 atlases, once you take into account the 1700+ presets we added, in fact represent an infinity of possibilities. See them in action in Substance Alchemist.

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Know the exact possibilities of your download

When you download the atlases on Substance Source, you get access to .sbsar files, in 4K max resolution. You can use several views in order to know the exact possibilities of the atlas. The grid view lets you see the elements on a grid for better readability.

Thanks to an automatic crop and scale parameter, you can view each element of the board separately, allowing you to get a better look at each part of the atlas.

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The splatter mode will distribute the elements across the texture space. Don’t hesitate to play with the parameters! You can control quantity, density, rotation and many more parameters to distribute your selection of elements across the material surface. This provides a great opportunity to practise your talents in ‘still-life paintings’ or to simply recall your days of kindergarten sandpit exploration.

Create your own recipe, with 85 scan-based materials

And what would these atlases be without amazing ground surfaces to splatter them on?

Art by Romain Rouffet

Again, we followed the Substance process for hybrid scans: it’s a touch of high-end scanning (here made by internal experts) with a delicate touch of optimization, and then a sprinkle of parameters added on top. In this instance, you can tweak the color and roughness of the materials.

Today’s scans are gathered into three main categories to help you create the ultimate environment: Forest, Mountain/Volcano, and Urban ground.

An endless game of creative combinations

The power of Substance truly comes to life inside Substance Alchemist: mix materials together, splatter atlases across these results and overlay procedural filters. The combinations and variations possible have no boundaries.

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In all, the powerful association of these qualitative and quantitative scans with Substance Alchemist gives you the ability to create real magic: phenomenal environments.

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We wanted to meet every need you might have, and so you can pick and choose how you want to work with the materials: if you want to have total control down to every single element of your material, go right ahead! Download everything you need from Substance Source, and then open this up in Substance Alchemist. Cook your very own style.

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But what if you’re running late on a project? You might not have the time to mix scans and atlases yourself. The Source team is here to support you! Preset materials combining elements are en route, and will arrive shortly inside Substance Source. We call them Biomes, and you’ll see them very soon. Keep your eyes open!

The Substance team is live on YouTube!



Today, Wednesday 11 December at 11 am (PST), Seb and the team will provide our latest announcements, and reveal our schedule for update releases. And we’ll be giving away a bunch of free stuff, too!