Interior Courtyard
Seamless Materials
The first part of the material studies was kind of a warm up to the rest of the project since they it didn't involve making two different versions of a material. The focus here was to do get used to Substance Designer and test out making some simple and complex tile able textures. While I knew what kind of materials I needed for the interior courtyard scene it was hard to find good photos of courtyards from back home in Puerto Rico, especially the ones from old San Juan which retain the Spanish colonial aesthetic.
Manufactured Materials
This was the first of the material studies that had two different versions. The goal was to create noticeable alteration of the states of the materials. In the case of the courtyard it was age and deterioration which is why I created textures in Designer for rusting lanterns, stained cement and broken tiles. I had a bit of a rough time with the material of the candle. I couldn't seem to get the waxy nature and subsurface to read accurately in Unreal like in Substance Painter.
Organic Materials
Out of the three studies, the organic materials was the hardest one. When I first decided to combine all my studies into one scene, I was really excited for all the plants. Then when it came to working on these I started kicking myself. It wasn't particularly achieving the subsurface that I needed that I struggled with. What was really making things difficult was the level of complexity that my graphs needed to create the veining and other organic parts of all these plants (because of course I decided to only do plants and threw in a lime for fun). I wanted to create the leaves themselves in Substance Designer so that the mesh itself could be planes.
So... while I'm happy with the deteriorated version of my organic materials, I think my normal base versions could use some more time to get them to read more realistically!