Introduction to Substance for Environment Art [CGMA, Ben Keeling]
- Publisher
- CGMA
- Product Type
- Video Course
- Product URL
- https://www.cgmasteracademy.com/courses/55-introduction-to-substance-for-environment-art
- Author
- Ben Keeling
- Language
- English
- Duration
- 20:15
- Release date
- Jan 1, 2024
- Skill level
- Project Files
- Not Provided
- Product Price
- $599
Course Description
Introduction to Substance for Environment Art is a 6-week intermediate course designed to introduce students to the Substance suite and its role in creating professional environment art for games.Throughout the course, students will learn how to use Substance Designer and Substance Painter to create textures, materials, and game-ready assets. The course begins with the fundamentals of the Substance interface, basic geometric patterns, viewport setup, and baking workflows. Students will then move into creating tiling materials, building texture maps, developing asset texturing pipelines, and rendering final work in Marmoset.
The course focuses on both technical understanding and practical production workflows. Students will learn how to create pattern-based and organic materials, build height and normal maps, generate roughness, metallic, and albedo textures, and texture props using Designer and Painter.
By the end of the course, students will have created tiling materials, textured game-ready assets, and produced final presentation renders suitable for an environment art portfolio.
What You’ll Learn
- How to navigate Substance Designer and Substance Painter
- How to set up efficient viewports and workflows
- How to bake high-poly details onto low-poly models
- How to create simple black-and-white geometric patterns
- How to build tiling materials from reference
- How to break down references for material creation
- How to create height and normal maps
- How to generate roughness, metallic, and albedo textures
- How to create scalable base materials in Substance Designer
- How to build master graphs and use mesh maps
- How to layer materials to create edge wear, dirt, and surface variation
- How to texture props in Substance Painter
- How to use smart materials, anchor points, masks, material IDs, groups, and layers
- How to add hand-painted details to refine assets
- How to render materials and assets in Marmoset
- How to combine materials and props into a small final scene
Course Curriculum
Week 1 - UI, Baking, and Basic Patterns
Students begin by learning the basic interface of Substance Designer and Substance Painter. This week covers viewport organisation, working across multiple assets, basic tools in both programs, and setting up models for baking. The assignment focuses on creating simple black-and-white base patterns to become familiar with Designer nodes.Week 2 - Designer Tiling Material Part 1
Students choose a tiling material to create from reference. This week focuses on gathering and sourcing references, breaking down material structure, and beginning the creation of height and normal maps. Students also learn how to set up the viewport to view materials clearly.Week 3 - Designer Tiling Material Part 2
Students continue the tiling material from Week 2 by creating the remaining texture maps. Using the height and normal maps already created, they generate roughness, metallic, and albedo textures. The assignment is to finalise the material.Week 4 - Asset Texturing in Designer
Using provided game-ready assets, students begin creating scalable base materials and master graphs. They learn how to texture assets using mesh maps and layer different materials to create effects such as edge wear, dirt, and surface breakup. This week also introduces Marmoset for rendering.Week 5 - Asset Texturing in Painter
Students import models and mesh maps into Substance Painter to texture a prop. This week covers reference board creation, smart materials, anchor points, material IDs, masking, groups, layers, material blending, hand-painted details, and final asset refinement.Week 6 - Complete the Final Project
The final week focuses on rendering and presentation. Students combine the tiling materials and textured assets created throughout the course into a small scene. They learn the basics of lighting, including three-point lighting setups, and create final material and scene renders for portfolio presentation.Requirements
This is an intermediate-level course, so students should already have some basic experience with 3D software and asset creation.Recommended prerequisite knowledge:
- Basic knowledge of Maya
- Basic knowledge of ZBrush
- Understanding of 3D models, UVs, and texturing basics
Software used in the course:
- Substance Designer
- Substance Painter
- Marmoset
- Maya
Who This Course Is For
This course is ideal for students and artists who want to learn how to use the Substance suite for environment art and game production.It is especially useful for:
- Environment artists
- Game artists
- 3D artists
- Prop artists
- Texture artists
- Students who want to learn Substance Designer and Substance Painter
- Artists who want to build a stronger material creation and asset texturing workflow
About the Instructor
The course is taught by Ben Keeling, a Senior Environment Artist at Rocksteady Studios in London.Ben has worked on numerous environments across AAA productions and has more than six years of professional experience in environment art. His credits include work on EA’s Need for Speed franchise, Sony’s VR Worlds for PlayStation VR, and Halo Wars 2.
His work has also been featured on the Algorithmic homepage, Polycount, and CryEngine forums. Through this course, Ben shares practical production techniques for creating materials, textures, and environment assets using the Substance suite.
Final Result
By the end of the course, students will have created a collection of Substance materials, textured game-ready assets, and final presentation renders.The final project will include tiling materials, textured props, a small scene setup, and polished renders created with Substance Designer, Substance Painter, and Marmoset. This gives students a solid foundation for creating professional environment art materials and textures for games.
Last edited by a moderator:
Guys, grab another course. Have a great weekend!!! 