Creating a Fully Procedural Game Console with Substance 3D Designer

Introduction

Hi, thank you so much for this interview. I am Cem Tezcan, a CG Artist who specializes in technical material design, environment design, and industrial product design with CAD software. I focus mainly on realism in my creations and I also love creating retro game consoles and retro environments.

I started my career as a hobbyist in 2004, and after 1 year of self-taught period, I started working on a telecommunication infrastructure company as a Junior Designer in the product development team. I left that company in 2015 as the Head of the Project Department to move on as a freelancer, which was extremely necessary for improving my skills. Since then, I have worked as a professional freelancer in both per-project and contract systems. 

It's been 5 years since our last interview, and there have been many drastic changes in our industry: an increase in remote working due to the pandemic, NFTs, game industry layoffs, controversial "AI Art" services, and so on.

Anyway, I haven't stopped working on what I like to create and do my best to explore new skill sets and boundaries of what I can get better on. I created some environment and product design projects like Space Age Office Design from 70s, AI Art Dispenser, Fully Procedural ATM, and "Exile" in Space.

For the last two years, I've worked as an Environment Designer on a full-time contracted job on an FPS game called Alpha Response. The game is in early access right now, and the in-house team is continuing development.

Besides the CG projects, I got into the "Maker" sphere through 3D printing, woodworking, electronics, soldering, painting, etc. As an amateur on those, I managed to make some "mini" and "bartop" arcade machines with CRT screens, which I daily play games on with my kids.

Inspiration & References

Nearly 25 percent of my commercial freelancing projects are plastic case designs for electronic devices where I use CAD software like Solidworks, Rhinoceros, and/or Plasticity. One of the key constraints on plastic case design is that it should be "manufacturable" by "Plastic injection molding." This production approach is described as two parts of molds directionally contact, and injection is made inside these two molds to form the desired plastic object. After the cooling process, the two molds are separated along the direction they've connected, which is called "drawing direction." Molds shouldn't interfere with the injected plastic when being separated along drawing direction, otherwise the plastic is stuck.

Example:

This drawing direction constraint is very similar to the Height Map displacement limitations on the texture design. I made an image to better describe the limitation and the trade-off.

Firs, I tried to push the limits on creating complex models by one-direction Height Maps.

Height Map Modeling – Fully Procedural ATM Substance:

Speaking of pushing the limits, this time, I tried to create a shape that was thick and had different deformations on both sides, like a plastic case that was injection-molded. This meant I needed to create two Height Maps for one surface each time.

Modeling

The main principle of creating the shape is using two planes on the same coordinates but have opposite normals. So, one plane forms the outer surface, and the other forms the inner surface. If those two surfaces become watertight, you end up with a thick solid object.

This image describes my approach much better:

Also, this capture from Marmoset Toolbag shows the result of combining to planes with Height Map displacement applied:

The hardest part of making the shell model with two planar planes is the Opacity Map because you need to match the outline of the inner and outer surfaces' boundaries. Considering these planes are deformed by Height Map as well, it gets harder to match the seam between the generated inside and outside surfaces.

The smokey plastic effect is easy to achieve. It's generated by the combination of Absorption and Scatter parameters in Octane Render, which is a "Medium" effect used on volumetric scattering. It's easier to get the same effect in Marmoset Toolbag, which is called the Depth distance of Refraction shader. Once you define a darker color than the transmission color, thicker parts facing perpendicular to the camera view get darker. You can adjust the depth value to create a contrast between the thinner and thicker surface transparencies.

The PCB material

PCB material started as an idea during a freelance job that needed a PCB surface. These kinds of surfaces are hard to get my 3D modeling since they need randomization and non-repetition, and along with those, they require consistency. Modeling such a surface would be a waste of time since it would be hard to randomize it back. So, I decided to give it a shot on Substance 3D Designer.

I mostly used Tile Sampler nodes with masks for the components. Traces were the most crucial part since it's impossible to traceroute any random component with random connections without a programmed logic, which may be troublesome and hard to achieve. Instead of node-to-node logic programming, I decided to use an easier approach: make the traces fake but consistent looking. So, I distributed the components and added parameters for individuals densities, then I generated distance nodes on the hollow areas. Quantize node is great for converting gradient transitions to flat segments. So after quantizing, I masked each trace, and by skipping one between each, I blended them together to get parallel traces.

After making it more customizable and user-friendly, I released the PCB material on my ArtStation Store, and I also published an introduction video on my YouTube channel to show how it works. When the material is ready to be used on a specific design like this handheld console, I define masks and parameters to transform the PCB material into a console PCB.

Lighting & Rendering

I made a basic scene for this piece because I wanted to show the 3D geometry created by 2D textures. I set up my scene in Modo, the software that we got sad news about a few months ago that it won't be developed anymore. I feel bad about the software I've used for 20 years being discontinued somehow, but the industry is evolving, so maybe it's necessary.

Anyway, I put a ground plane, five area lights, and a Studio HDR environment to set the scene. I used two pieces of one polygon plane for each component of the console. The front case part, the back case part, and the circuit part mean six pieces of planes for the whole device. I hide some of the components to show the look of the case parts alone as well.

I rendered this piece with Octane Render, which is the ultimate realistic render engine I can use so far. Also, it clicks with Modo so well.

Conclusion

This project took about 11 days with "light" attendance in my daily life. On the first day of working on it, I remember that I wasn't so sure the idea of creating a geometry with thickness would work. After testing and having success in creating a solid thickness with two deformed planes, I worked on the project with much more excitement. I was so hyped that the idea of smokey plastic to show the geometry with thickness worked so well.

After creating this console, I instantly came up with the idea of recording a video tutorial about using the same approach to create a "water pistol," which has two parts of case design that have translucent parts with thickness as well. 

So, the first tutorial I can recommend about this technique is my tutorial since there is no similar approach around the internet so far:

To learn more industry-friendly know-how about Substance 3D Designer, I recommend Wes McDermott's tutorials. He makes his tutorials easy to understand and beginner-friendly, but at the end of his videos, you find yourself doing advanced things.

I also want to recommend the Sharpstance YouTube channel, where I owe my texture design career. This channel hasn't been updated for seven years, but the content is evergreen, and it is a great source of Substance 3D Designer basics. Even the software has had so many updates for years. I remember watching this channel eight years ago while playing Lego with my one-year-old daughter. I witnessed that Substance 3D Designer will be quite a game changer in the industry.

As a piece of advice to beginner material/texture artists, don't freak out about the term "technical." You don't need to be a coder, engineer, or an artist with a super talented drawing style to be a texture artist. Both Substance 3D Designer and Unreal Engine blueprints allow you to do Visual Coding/Scripting in a non-destructive way where you can tweak your creations with parameters and check design elements to find the best "touch." This is the reason I love about the non-destructive workflows. Otherwise, we would need to make the perfect "brush strokes" every time in a long streak, which is inhuman for many of us. So, stick to and support any visual scripting software and flow system for non-destructive creativity. Cheers!

Cem Tezcan, Technical Designer