HOW CAN I CREATE A PARQUET FLOOR MATERIAL USING SUBSTANCE DESIGNER?

Judith Smith, Toronto

I will show you an easy and powerful way to create a parquet material using Substance Designer. This material is only composed of a few elements, but the end result can be incredible. For this type of substance, I selected the Physically Based (Metallic/ Roughness) Graph Template and deleted the Metallic output since it is not necessary for this material.

Now we can start to add the nodes necessary for this material, so from the Substance Designer library we need: the Directional Noise, and the Brick Generator pattern (these two are the main elements of the texture), the Height to Normal World Units filter (required for the creation of the normal map – alternatively you can use the Normal filter), two Levels filters, and a Gradient Map filter that will give colour to the substance. A Blend filter is the key element that will help us to mix the two noise generators.

Next we have to link all of these elements together. First of all, we need to mix the Directional Noise with the Brick Generator using the Blend filter. In particular we have to link the Brick Generator to the Foreground input of the Blend filter, and the Levels filter of the Directional Noise to the Background and Opacity input of the Blend filter. Now we can link the Blend filter to the Gradient Map, and consequentially we can link this filter to Base Color output.

Then we can link the Blend filter to the Height to Normal values (or just the Normal filter) and link it to the Normal output, and last but not least we have to repeat this process linking the Blend filter with the second Levels filter. Now we can link this Levels filter to the Roughness and Height output of the material.

Now we can focus on the parameters, so starting with the Brick Generator, I set these values for the Brick size: X 2 and Y 8. Then I set the Bevel to X 0.08 and Y 0.2, and the Slope to X -0.15, Y 0.09. I also set Variation to 0.08 since in real life nothing is perfect, and lastly I set the Offset to 0.72. Regarding the Levels filter linked to the Directional Noise, I decreased the contrast of the noise and made it brighter. For the Levels filter linked to the Roughness and Height output, I slightly increased the contrast.

The last step is to set the Gradient Map colour – for this project I created a shade of brown a bit brighter at the beginning of the gradient.

The Directional Noise let me add the imperfections in the shape of the parquet, and add the wood vein