Everything I learnt about Environment Art - Part 2- Materials & Shaders
This is the second part of an all-encompassing tutorial for beginners and intermediate-level users. It covers different topics in Environment Art and is intended to share some of my lessons and advice I have learnt along the way. It is split into a chapter-based format. Version 2 includes chapters 3 and 4, available to purchase separately or as part of a reduced bundle.
Chapter 3 - Tiling Materials - Breakdown below - Total run time: 5h 17 mins
- What is a tiling material - 5 mins
- How to create tiling materials - 22 mins
- How to approach tiling materials and variations - 4 mins
Practical examples
- Reference gathering - 13 mins
- Breaking down the reference - 13 mins
- Soil height, base colour and roughness in Substance Designer - 2h 36 mins
- Sculpted workflows (Sculpting leaf atlas, sculpting rock atlas, sculpting tiling rock base material - 1h 16 mins
- Finishing the variation on the soil - 27 mins
Chapter 4 - Shaders - Breakdown below - Total run time: 4h
- What is a Shader - 4 mins
- How to create Shaders - 16 mins
- Shader examples in an environment - 13 mins
Practical examples
- Unreal Intro - 15 mins
- Material Functions and Master/Uber Shader - 50 mins
- Vertex Blend Shader - 40 mins
- Material Layering - 38 mins
- Landscape basics - 10 mins
- Decal & Foliage Shaders - 27 mins
- Adding Grunge and Extra Shader features - 24 mins
The tutorial chapters follow the same format. I start with an explanation and theory on a specific topic. The chapter covers the topic, terminology, why you approach things in a certain way, and the tools and workflows you would use. Each chapter concludes with live demonstrations of applying that theory in practice.
It will be framed around personal art, mainly using examples from my work and professional experience where relevant.
Software used will include, but not be limited to
Blender
Zbrush
Substance Painter/Designer
Unreal 5
You will also gain access to Pure Ref files, which include further tutorial breakdowns, links, and documentation to valuable resources and files. I plan to expand on this as I create more chapters for the tutorial.