Creating Wall & Floor Textures with Substance 3D Designer for a Disney IP Game

Introduction

Hello guys! My name is Tanguy Gringoire, and I am a 3D Artist at Gameloft Montreal, working on Disney Dreamlight Valley. Since childhood, I have always been fascinated by game development and 3D art. As I wanted to work in this industry, I took a Game Art course at HEAJ in Belgium, where I studied to become a 3D Environment Artist. I then joined Gameloft in 2020, where I worked on various game prototypes, such as LEGO Star Wars: Castaways and Disney Dreamlight Valley. I'm still working on this game as we produce new content and updates regularly.

About the Disney Dreamlight Valley Textures

I joined the Disney Dreamlight Valley team three years ago, before the game's release. The project required a lot of assets for Early Access, especially textures, and since I was proficient in Substance 3D Designer and could quickly come up with new interesting ideas, I was tasked with it. It was mostly textures that were part of the game's customization (for context, players can decorate their house's interior with various wallpaper and flooring textures). 

After the early access release, I started working more on 3D assets and level art. Now, I would say I work fifty-fifty between textures and 3D assets, depending on the need of each update.

Produced assets can indeed be different with each update, so I think it's great to be part of a project that allows you to work on various types of 3D models. On Disney Dreamlight Valley, 3D Artists have opportunities to work on props, furniture, hero assets, textures, and level art.  Here are examples of 3D assets I did on the project:

What I like most is being able to work on so many Disney and Pixar IPs inside one project; with each new IP added to the game, we have the opportunity to work on a new universe completely different from the previous one. I always love seeing the results of passionate players who customize and mix all these assets together.

Why Substance 3D Designer? 

I love working with  Substance 3D Designer because it can create textures quickly and powerfully. Working procedurally in a non-destructive manner is helpful for editing textures or creating instant variations.

Also, the more I create libraries of textures, the more I can reuse their graphs across the project and gain a lot of time. In our case, I think working in a more traditional way would have required more production time.

Inspiration & References

When I create a new texture, there are 4 possible cases of references.

1. I take references directly from Disney and Pixar movies. Example with the galactic federation Mothership interior from Disney's Lilo & Stitch. It's interesting to recreate a scene and see if the fans recognize it!

2. I got a texture set concept from a 2D Artist on the team. An example is a concept based on Star Command from Disney and Pixar's Toy Story.

3. I'm free to create a texture based on a movie universe, mood, color palette, et cetera. For example, some Sweets textures were inspired by the Sugar Rush game universe in Disney's Wreck-It Ralph. I would define this case as my favorite; It's always fun to create and try new ideas. These are often specific textures that I'm not used to doing.

4. References are not related to Disney movies but are based on modern interior design.

Main Challenge

I would say it takes one to two days to make a texture, depending on its complexity. For the more complex ones, one day to create the first version, then a second day to edit and polish it with the feedback that I receive from the art direction.

The main challenge would be the continuity of art style, as many Disney classics hold different art styles. Like the example below, the lovely 2D watercolor backgrounds of Lilo & Stitch are a long way from the 3D CGI of Frozen or the dark, claymation aesthetic of Disney Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. We need to adapt the art style of each Disney IP to Disney Dreamlight Valley's unified aesthetic while remaining faithful to the source material.

To do so, here are a few rules that I follow: exaggerating the proportions and balance, clean and easily readable secondary details (like large-scale wear and tear), no high level of details (same for grunge and noise), and finally, using harmonious saturated colors. In summary: simplify and exaggerate.

Texturing

My process is pretty common. I first create the Height Map of the material, and then I create the other maps from it. I'll explain the process with this tavern texture below:

I usually set up the Height Map using a lot of nodes, like Shape, Transform, Levels, and Bevel. So, here I'm creating the wood beam's structure:

When I'm happy with the result, I add some Warp nodes to break up the shapes a bit and add the wood details by blending noises. I then create the normal map from this.

For the base color, I directly plug the Height Map into a simple Gradient node, add color variations, and then add slight highlights and shadows, using masks created from the Light node and Curvature Smooth node.

I do the same process for the other parts of the materials. For the stone base, I used a Cells 4 node plugged into an Edge Detect node.

You can see that I also added some shadows at the end. Since the textures in our current project are placed on a flat surface, I used the Ambient Occlusion node and the Shadows node in the Diffuse Map to simulate the volume a bit more for some textures.

Example with the oozing for one of the Sweets textures:

Lastly, I work on the Roughness, Metal, and Emissive, if needed. After importing the maps and setting up the materials, I test the materials directly in-game and see how they look with post-process and dynamic lighting. I then tweak each map until I am happy with the result. If needed, we can quickly create color variations of the main texture at this stage.

Tricks

I sometimes use traditional 3D workflow and baking as base textures in Substance 3D Designer. In some cases, this is faster, and it gives better results for the Normal Map and Height Map than creating everything from scratch in Substance 3D Designer. As an example, here is the puzzle foam flooring material I did, inspired by the one in the Daycare in Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 3.

I actually modeled the puzzle pieces, assembled them on a plane, and baked the result. That part would have been less easy to do fully in Designer.

After importing the baked maps as base, I then added the colors, symbols, foam textures, and other details in Substance 3D Designer. For colors, I used nodes like Flood Fill, Flood Fill to Random Grayscale, and Gradient. For the symbols, a Tile Sampler with custom pattern inputs to generate randomness for the puzzle pieces.

Another example is this texture that has thorns below:

These thorns are part of the lore of Disney Dreamlight Valley and are vastly used in the game. Therefore, I reused and baked the 3D assets of the thorns on a plane, after making sure it was tiling, in order to have a set of base maps. It quickly gives a nice Height Map and Normal Map that stay consistent with the rest of the thorns in the game.

Another tip: For the colors, I also use the Slope Blur node a lot to give a brush/painterly effect. Here is the effect with a basic Cloud Noise:

For the slope, I quickly make a custom one by creating a brush from a noise, then use it as a pattern input in a Tile Sampler node. I play around with all the parameters to have multiple amounts and randomness. It looks like this in a graph:

I frequently use the Slope Blur node on noise that I put on top of flat colors, which gives smooth variations. I do the same in the Roughness of the same area, as it generates more interesting surfaces quickly. Here is a great example on this texture that has really simple shapes and colors.

How is working on Disney Dreamlight Valley different from your previous experiences?

Working on stylized PBR textures was a bit new for me, as I was more used to creating realistic materials when I started learning Substance 3D Designer. I was not using Substance 3D Designer for game prototypes or other projects, as their workflow was completely different. So, when I joined the project, I had to test and learn new approaches to fit the aesthetic of Disney Dreamlight Valley.

Advice for Beginner 3D Artists

When we are looking for new artists to join Disney Dreamlight Valley, we are interested in artists who love to produce similar stylized assets and who have a good understanding of color, composition, and lighting. Being proficient in 3D modeling, sculpting, and texturing is important. Taking the opportunity to say that if you are interested in Gameloft projects, such as Disney Dreamlight Valley and D&D, we are currently recruiting artists!

For Substance 3D Designer, using nodes and working procedurally can be difficult at first, as it's a different approach than traditional texturing. I recommend experimenting with all the nodes, checking out tutorials and graphs made by other artists, and trying the Nodevember challenge.

Some advice for beginning artists: be patient, experiment, stay curious, and have fun! Learning many software, tools, and techniques will take time, but practice is the key to improving your skills. The good news is that there are now plenty of great tutorials, resources, and communities to help you.

Thank you to 80 Level for the opportunity to share my work on our great project, Disney Dreamlight Valley! You can view more of my work on my Artstation page.

Tanguy Gringoire, 3D Artist at Gameloft Montreal

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine