Pietro Chiovaro replies HOW Can I Create a simple polished marble material using substance Designer?

Today I will show you a really basic node for creating a realistic polished marble material in Substance Designer. For this type of material, I selected the Physically Based (Metallic/roughness) Graph Template and deleted the Metallic output since it is not necessary for this type of material.

At this point we can start to add the components of the marble, so from the Substance Designer library we need: the Grunge Map 015 noise and the BNW Spots 1 (these are the main components of the material), the Height to Normal World Units filter, three Levels filters, a Blend filter and a Gradient Map filter.

Now to link these components together. First of all, we need to link the Grunge Map 015 noise with the BNW Spots 1 using the Blend filter. Then we have to link the Blend to the first Levels filter and consequently to the Gradient Map that will be connected to the Basecolor output. Concerning the first Blend filter we have to connect the BNW Spots 1 noise to the Background and Opacity inputs and the Grunge Map 015 to the Foreground.

Next we have to link the first Levels filter (the one linked with the Gradient Map) to the second and third Levels filter. The second will be connected to the Roughness output while the third will be connected to the Height output. The last connection that we need to do concerns the first Levels filter and the Height to Normal World Units, this one will be connected to the Normal output.

At this point we have to set the parameters of the marble. In the Height to Normal World Units filter I set a value of 1,000cm for the Surface Size and 0.2cm for the Height Depth. This parameter is the most important of the material since the Height Depth value defines the polished finish of the marble, and increasing that value the marble will look rough. Another important filter that needs to be fixed is the Gradient Map that will define the colour of the material, for this scene I created a shade of red.

At the end the last important component that we need to fix is the second Levels (the one linked with the Roughness output). This filter needs to be fixed in order to obtain a glossy finish, so for this reason I suggest you decrease the global luminosity/brightness of the filter to a low level.

sometimes the creation of materials requires a lot of nodes and parameters, however as you can see in this render sometimes you can achieve a realistic result without creating enormous connections