Posts by Steppenwolf

  • EU Referendum

    Quote from Skybex

    30 minutes ago, Skybex said: This, sadly, is one of the more unfortunate things about the whole campaign. Immigration was the key issue, especially with the recent so called immigration crisis. But it was hardly ever talked about because both sides of the argument had to avoid the topic as the moment immigration is mentioned, the left just shout "racists" or "bigots" repeatedly to drown out any discussion. So no true discussion on the topic was had and most people were left with information they read in outside sources (often either fear mongering or unrealistic idealism) or what they might see locally.

    Same thing is happening here in Germany. We have no open discussion about the EU itself even tho there would be so much that many people from all sides could agree on, particularely with TTIP and such nonsense on the horizon. Instead the conversation has been distilled down to pro or con immigration.

    This leads to some truly amazing and grotesque real life satire. For instance when important people in the left party start parroting what industry lobbyist say about the importance of economic growth, lack of skilled workers etc. when traditionally they should be the ones trying to keep the neoliberal agenda in check.

  • EU Referendum

    The EU in its current form just reminds me a lot of the Fifa and IOC, down to this faux facade of humanitarianism and progressiveness. But what people need to understand is that everything in such an institution is designed to line someones pockets. People on the left get blinded by the immigration issue just as much as people on the right. I mention this because it was THE big topic for Brexit apparently. Merkel or Juncker don't give a shit about human rights or those refugees. They want two things: 1) a divided and thereby easily controllable and manipulable population 2) cheap labour.

    The real tragedy of happenings such as this Brexit is that it highlights how little people are able to identify the elephant in the room. There is no strive for finding a consensus or common ground anymore. Everyone only looks for what the others do and opposes it, no matter what.

  • EU Referendum

    I'm glad this happend to be honest. It will cause some unpleasant effects and inconveniences for sure but what's important to me is that the EU politicians got finaly shown limits to what they are doing. They can't continue as they did before or the whole thing will collapse eventualy. Now is the right time to reform this monstrosity and tune it down a notch or two.

    I'm all for an EU that serves as an instrument of growth, peace and stability as was the original plan but what i strongly oppose is moves towards a unified Europe as one country, lead by undemocratic institutions and the whims of oligarchs, which it was heading towards. The EU needs to respect the integrity and right to self determination of each of its member countries as well as the democratic will of their people.

    What i found fascinating in the lead up to the Brexit poll is how much this was turned into a left vs. right issue. Quite ingenious by the EU oligarchs to convice the left that both are on the same side. Shows in what an Orwellian world we already live in, where certain terms mean nothing anymore and the vast majority of people appears brainwashed in one direction or another. Does anyone actualy believe that Britons will be isolated from the rest of Europe just because they arn't part of the EU anymore? Look at those poor Swiss and Norwegians in their ghettos.

  • A Game of Thrones

    Mmh yea, the show feels like it's past its prime. Everything seems to lead nowhere eventualy. Kinda like in a soap opera. And perhaps that's the issue. I'm not sure they even have a vision for how to end the show.

  • Announcing my new game - Solus - Survival/Exploration - Unreal Engine 4

    What i notice is, you just released the full version on steam but there is no discount, not even 10%. In my book this is super important tho. The collective mind of steam users is always looking for a deal, even if it's minuscle or just an illusion. And with every deal you have a chance to be on the front page. With every front page you have a chance to appear in the top sellers. Everytime you're in top sellers thers a ripple effect because of others hopping on the bandwagon. From that follows more reviews, word of mouth, youtubers.

  • totally random texture thread

    Quote from Pampers

    12 hours ago, Pampers said: That said, I think there is a problem where a lot of substance materials still have that procedural look to them. Good reference is a must as always :)

    Notice this aswell, but imo that isn't an issue with the software but with who's using it. It's used by a lot of early adopters who arn't really artists per se. The biggest beginner mistakes that i see people do is to apply noises and filters uniformly. My personal mantra is masking, masking and more masking, and then masking of masks. When working with SD you need to hop onto every opportunity to break up repeating patterns and uniformity, both for shape and colors.

    Ther's also an incredible amount of untapped potential in the software that nobody did a tutorial for yet or scripted some nodes for. That said the future looks really bright for Substance Designer in my opinion. The software is already super powerful and will only get better from here and more proper talented artists will hop onto it now that the Uncharted 4 and Rainbow 6 environment teams made a strong case for it. It will also play super well with when Quixel finaly releases their megascans. In SD you can mix and reshuffle them, extract details or albedo gradients for your Substances etc.

  • totally random texture thread

    Quote from Puddy

    1 hour ago, Puddy said: Can someone ELI5 to me what this means? :D

    It means the material is entirely scripted via a set of node based, parameter driven noises, filters and shapes instead of using traditional methods like using photo sources, hipoly sculpts etc. The advantage of this over the traditional methods is that i can make wild variations very easily later on by just playing with some sliders instead of having to go back to square A, rearranging stuff in zbrush, rebaking maps and so on.

    This is what the graph looks like:

    [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/qXpUFW8.jpg]

    Looks complicated, right? But it actualy isn't because you start very simple and add layer upon layer of detail, not too different from what you would do in zbrush and photoshop.

    In this case i started with a simple square shape down in the left corner, tweaked the side dimensions, added some beveling and then fed it into a tile generator with some randomized values for depth and position of each plank. In the next step i added some edge trimming like one would do in zbrush. Then i used some shapes and filters to create wood patterns, mixed, blended, copy pasted, tweaked etc. to make it look more convincing and natural. Then i added some smaller details like dirt and little holes.

    After that i create some masks from some of the layers, details, aswell as cavity and curvature nodes. Those are used to feed into gradients and mixed and blended like in Photoshop to get a color texture. Last step then to create a roughness map. Again very similar to what oine would do in Photoshop.

  • totally random texture thread

    Yea it's becoming an industry standard and prerequisite for env artists quickly and if there was any doubt left about its usefulness then Uncharted 4 has evaporated that.

    What surprised me most is how much you can still apply your "oldschool" art knowledge to it. I thought it would be much harder to get results out of it that don't look super procedural but when you know how to use colors and large, medium, small scale details, break up repetition etc. in tradionational workflows then you can just do the same in SD.

  • totally random texture thread

    Quote from Minos

    55 minutes ago, Minos said: Looks great man! Dumb question from someone who never used substance: Did you create the height map in substance too or was that imported from a bake or something?

    Everything created in Substance! You can bring in external height maps tho. It's super flexible. But then you limit yourself with the options you have for tweaking. The cool thing about SD is that once you have made the Substance you can get virtualy unlimited variations out of it by just playing with some parameters. Making these roof tiles took me maybe 6-8 hours but now i can make a way different roof tile material in just a couple seconds or minutes.