Damaged Brick Wall Tutorial — VOL 11

Brick is the most used and most varied material in the real world and in computer graphics alike, which makes it the one worth learning properly rather than downloading. Volume 11 spends 155 minutes on a damaged brick wall in Substance Designer and then — the part that lifts it above a single material — rebuilds it twice as alternatives, so what you leave with is an understanding of the parameters rather than one finished graph.

What you get

• ✓155 minutes of video at 1080 resolution
• ✓The project file, including the clean SBS graph
• ✓Three chapters: height, then colour and roughness, then two alternative walls

Chapter 01 — structure and damage

The brick structure is laid out first, then the surface and additive detail that make it look weathered — chipped edges, cracks and the erosion collecting along the mortar lines. Several maps are built separately and blended to reach the final height.

Chapter 02 — colour and roughness

Colour is sampled through a gradient map and blended with grunge maps for the brick-to-brick variation that stops a wall reading as a repeat, and roughness is handled simply and effectively for this kind of surface.

Chapter 03 — alternatives

The last chapter takes the finished material and produces two more from it: a wall with bricks fallen out of it, and a wall with a plaster cover partly broken away over the brickwork. This is where the initial parameters earn their keep — once the graph is understood, changing its inputs gets you the wall the scene actually needs.

The level is intermediate and basic Substance Designer knowledge is assumed; the included SBS requires version 11.3 or above. There is no voice-over on any of the three videos and no subtitle track.