The materials can be used in 3D environments with different 3D software. Actually, it has quite an easy workflow. Just drag the textures on a suitable shader with tessellation onto a plane and let it come alive. It gives the best result when used in distant landscapes with just one plane. I believe they can be used in a scenario that is suitable for where the player will not get too close. At the end of the day, they are just materials. But, if you look very closely, the spell will be broken and the resolution problems will begin. It’s really comfortable for the artist to use the substance material in Unity and Unreal. The workflow already allows it.

Since it is not easy to find long-distance terrain textures for games of animation, these materials are perfect for prototyping these. They can be used in top-down flight games, arcade-type flight games, aircraft cinematics and animations that are not close to the ground.

Learning SD

SD is one of the favorite tools in my 20 years of 3D life. With high-resolution support, advanced export options and embedded erosion nodes, it can be a powerful alternative to terrain tools with its powerful fractal and Voronoi nodes. I definitely think that water and thermal erosion nodes are very important for creating natural terrain. If there were erosion nodes included, all my terrain would look very different. There are a limited amount of tutorials on SD and terrain. Vincent Gault‘s tutorial was the starting point for me. If I have time, I would have prepared terrain tutorials. As a piece of advice, SD should be studied and learned as a whole, and if you already understand SD nodes well, there is no difference between making a real rock and terrain.

As I always say, my learning algorithm is like that:

Open the software, do reconnaissance. Try to create something, fail. Read the user manual and take notes (because I’m an engineer, the theoretical background is important!) Search for a written tutorial on Google. (I couldn’t find one, because written tutorials are species in danger of extinction, go to the next step.) Watch a tutorial on YouTube, fast forward, skip, skip, skip… Don’t understand anything; watch again for missed and critical parts of the tutorial. Analyze well-implemented examples, have an epiphany! Go to step one, until you are ok.

Emrecan Çubukçu, Art Director & Software Developer