Creating substance textures

You can use the Substance node to quickly create photorealistic procedural textures using a library of organic, fabric, and material presets.

In addition, you can use substances as noise or smart filters. Each one can be customized to generate infinite variations.

Two 2D noise textures are available: Clouds_2_Animated and Plasma_Animated. These textures can be used in a wide range of applications such as blending masks between textures or materials, or as dynamic property maps for dynamics like fluid effects or nCloth.

Three filter substances are available: Windscreen_Glass_01, Water_Drips and Make_It_Tile. A filter lets you plug an input image (file node) in to the substance node; for example the Make_It_Tile substance lets users create a seamless tiling material from a simple image or photograph.

Creating a shading network using substance textures

1. Select Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager and ensure that the Substance plug-in is loaded.
2. Select Renderer > Viewport 2.0 in the panel menus for best results.
3. Select Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade to open the Hypershade window.
   TipYou can also visualize the substance shading network in the Node Editor (Window > Node Editor).
4. Select Maya > 2D Textures > Substance.
   
   Note

   Do not use the Substance Output node, which is an intermediate node that is created automatically by the Substance node.

5. In the Substance Attribute Editor, Substance file attribute, navigate to your <Maya Directory>\substances folder (or the folder in which your substance texture is installed) and select a substance texture.
   NoteBy default, the substance texture files are installed to your <Maya Directory >\substances folder. However, it is recommended that you copy the textures that you need to your <MayaProject>\sourceimages folder instead. This ensures that your substance files are loaded properly on all operating systems. Copy only those textures that you will use, as the substance library includes a large number of files.
6. Click Create shader network.

   This creates a shading network with a Phong E material that, by default, connects the Diffuse, Specular, and Normal substance outputs.

   Note

   The Diffuse, Specular, and Normal substance outputs are marked with green connect icons to indicate that these output nodes exist and are connected to the material shader.

   You can now apply this Phong E material to the objects in your scene.

   
7. Select the resolution for your substance output nodes.
8. Expand the Normal Format section and select the format for your normal map (if a Normal substance output is available for the substance you have selected).
9. Under the Substance Parameters section in the substance Attribute Editor, tweak the attributes provided to customize the appearance of your shader.

   Procedural controls are built into each substance so you can easily create unique effects. Experiment with these sliders and view the changes in real time in the Maya scene view.

   Tweak attributes such as Hue Shift to shift the global color range of the texture, Luminosity to control the brightness level, Saturation to control the level of color purity, or Depth to adjust the attenuation of depth of the texture.

   TipThere are also other interesting effects such as Age. For example, with Painted_Wood, increasing the age slider peels away the paint to reveal a more aged wood look, and with Modern_Concrete, increasing the Age slider reveals the rebar in the concrete. With Volcano_Rock, you can tweak the Temperature, Lava and Lava Hue attributes to customize the look of your volcano lava. See Substance Parameters for more information.
10. (Optional) To connect additional substance outputs to your shading network, such as a Bump or Displacement map, click the Connect icon beside the list of available substance outputs.

    If the input of the material attribute is already occupied by another substance output, for example Normal, a warning message appears, and the output is created but not connected. The substance output connect icon appears orange. You can then delete the connected output and re-attach a new output.

    
    Tip

    A grey connect icon (initial state) denotes that no Substance Output node has been created for this output map. An orange connect icon denotes that an output node is created but not connected to another node. A green connect icon denotes that the Substance Output node has been created and is connected to another node.

    Note

    The Maya software renderer is not recommended for use with normal maps. To render unbaked substance textures using the Maya software renderer, use bump maps instead of normal maps. Alternatively, you can use mental ray rendering with baked normal maps.

You can now use the shading network in the Maya default and high quality viewport or Viewport 2.0, and render it using the Maya hardware renderer or software renderer.

If you want to export the shading network to a game engine, you must export the images to disk. To render with mental ray for Maya, you can also export images to disk, or bake textures to disk using the workflow below.

To render using mental ray for Maya, IPR or other 3rd party renderers

You can automatically bake a texture to disk to render it with mental ray for Maya, IPR or other 3rd party renderers. Use the Automatic Baking options in the substance Attribute Editor as follows:

1. Follow steps 1-6 in the workflow above (Creating a shading network using substance textures) to create a substance node and map it to a substance texture.
2. Expand the Automatic Baking section in the substance Attribute Editor and enable the Automatic connections option. Select an image format from the Format drop down box. By selecting these options, Maya creates file textures in your selected format and bakes each of your diffuse, specular and normal output to a file.
3. Click Create shader network to create a shading network with a Phong E material.
4. Apply substance_Material to your object.

   You can now render using mental ray for Maya.

   

Tiling your file texture using the Make_It_Tile substance

1. Select Maya > 2D Textures > Substance.
   
2. In the Substance Attribute Editor, Substance file attribute, navigate to your <Maya Directory>\substances folder (or the folder in which your substance texture is installed) and select the Make_It_Tile.sbsar substance.
3. Under the Substance Parameters section in the substance Attribute Editor, click the map button beside the Source attribute and select 2D Textures > File from the Create Render Node window.
4. In the file node Attribute Editor, navigate to your file texture.
5. In the substance node Attribute Editor, click Create shader network.
6. Assign the substance_Material node to your object.
7. In the substance node Attribute Editor, increase the Image Tiling attribute to tile your file texture.
   
8. Tweak the substance node settings to optimize your results.

   For example, increase the Absolute width to 2048 for better resolution. Tweak Random Seed and Mask Warping to warp the edges of the texture. Tweak Mask Size to change the blending of the edges and Mask Blurring to adjust the softness of the edges.

Exporting images to disk

1. Click Export images to disk in the Substance Attribute Editor.

   Using this feature, all Substance Output nodes connected to the Substance node (including both outputs denoted by green and orange icons) are baked onto disk.

   The Substance Bake to Texture window appears.

2. Select your map resolution and image format.
   Note

   mental ray for Maya does not support LZW compressed .tif files. To work around this, add IMF_TIFF_COMPRESSION=none to your Maya.env file. For more information on how to set environment variables using Maya.env, see Setting environment variables using Maya.env.

3. Select the Create shader network option to create a shading network with connections to the texture files baked from the substance output maps.
   
4. Click Export to write your file textures to disk.