Following the introduction of atlases on Substance Source last week (with a massive release), the team dug deeper to deliver 50 more materials. We call them “biomes”, and they’re a custom assembly of scans, atlases and filters.

The point, with atlases and scans, was to enable you to mix, blend and overlay resources to create ever more detailed textures. Only… We couldn’t resist making these mixes ourselves!

Our goal: design content for those of you who want ready-to-play scanned materials – but parametric.

50 materials = 150 preset biomes ready to use – and their countless variations!

The biomes are .sbsar files with unique parameters that let you customize the color, roughness, distribution, and the amount of elements scattered on the surface.

These biomes are special. You can control many different elements of the material, including – if you feel like playing God – the climate, thanks to procedural filters. Here’s a quick overview of what’s possible when you open the material in Substance Alchemist:

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A large gradient of variations is possible: make it rain, make it snow, create a sandstorm, and even grow moss or lichen.

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And this is just the beginning, as we’ll be completing our palette of effects for materials in the future.

Follow us in the experimentation lab through a selection of the biomes we created.

Want to have greater control over your creation? Maybe you’d like to build a material with your personal scans? Substance Alchemist is the ideal playground.

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Just pick from amongst the 650+ atlases available on Substance Source and start combining scan-based and procedural materials. And don’t forget to share the result with us: #madewithsubstance