Meet the Substance Team in Shanghai!

Substance Day is back in China! The Substance team and industry veterans present a full day of talks and presentations at the Shanghai International Convention Center.

Your ticket includes a seat for the full day, a goody bag with a T-shirt and a 6-month Indie license – giving you access to the whole new Project Substance Alchemist.

For early birds, limited seats start today at $62! Regular tickets will be $89.

This year we’re taking over the Shanghai International Convention Center located at 2727 Riverside Avenue, Pudong, Shanghai, China.

Here’s the full program for the day:

9:15 – 10:00 AM: REGISTRATION

10:00 AM: KEYNOTE

Duration: 90min

Speakers: Alexis Khouri, Head of Sales and Business Strategy at Adobe for 3D & Immersive; Wes McDermott, Integration Product Manager, Substance by Adobe.

Topic: Alexis Khouri will kick off Substance Day by sharing some of the latest news in the Substance world. Then Wes McDermott will highlight some great upcoming features for Substance Painter and Substance Designer, and will also present some exciting news about Project Substance Alchemist.

About the speakers:

Alexis Khouri joined the Substance team in 2007 and has been deeply involved in the product design and strategy of Substance, the industry standard for 3D texturing. He is now Head of Sales and Business Strategy at Adobe for 3D & Immersive. He was formerly General Manager at Playsoft (Mobile Game Development) and Senior Consultant at Simon-Kucher & Partners, while also writing on a regular basis for Les Echos (French Business newspaper) on video games. Alexis graduated from ESSEC Business School and also has a strong technical background in programming and production pipelines.

Wes McDermott is a technical artist and strives to improve his work by finding a key balance between his technical knowledge and artistic skill set. He works for Substance as an Integrations Product Manager, but most know him as an expert Substance teacher, and the voice behind many Substance tutorials. Wes is also the author of The PBR Guide: A Handbook for Physically-Based Rendering, Real Word MODO and Creating 3D Game Art for the iPhone with Unity.

11:35 AM: NIKOLA DAMJANOV – DEEP DIVE INTO MATERIAL CREATION WITH THE SUBSTANCE TOOLS

Duration: 120min

Speaker: Nikola Damjanov is Lead Game Artist at Nordeus in Belgrade, Serbia.

Topic: Deep dive into material creation with Substance Designer and Project Substance Alchemist

Part 1: This first part of this talk will focus on the versatility of Substance Designer, including various use cases, both personal and commercial. Via examples including procedural jerseys, patterns and textures for real-time VFX, a fantasy map generator, and the Stone pond project, Nikola will share some tips and tricks on procedural material creation with Substance Designer.

Part 2: He will then jump into his material marathon project with Project Substance Alchemist. After joining the Project Substance Alchemist beta earlier this year, Nikola decided to embark on a personal journey creating 100 materials in this new tool in 100 days! He’ll give a breakdown of this creative marathon and explain how he managed to find inspiration, what he learned from the material creation, and the importance of self-improvement and the community in his journey. From the first material to the last, see how he created this amazing collection of 100 materials.

About the speaker:

Nikola is a Generalist 3D Artist with over ten years of diverse experience. Working for the past seven years at Nordeus, the independent gaming studio best known for Top Eleven, Nikola has been actively improving his artistic skills, exploring new tools and adopting them as early as possible.

He has advanced through the company and is currently channeling his passion as a lead artist on Heroic: Magic Duel by day, and as a procedural tinkerer at night. Nikola cherishes the big picture and looks to help shape it in every way he can, getting involved in hiring, interviewing, mentoring and overall maintenance of the company culture.

1:35 PM – 2:30 PM: LUNCH BREAK (lunch not provided)

2:30 – 2:35 PM: PRIZE DRAW

2:35 – 3:35 PM: JP LEE – SUBSTANCE TOOLS AND GAME WORKFLOW OPTIMIZATION

Duration: 60min

Speaker: JP Lee, Technical Art Division Leader at Giant

Topic: In this talk, JP Lee will explain how artists can leverage the Substance suite, and how technical artists and art teams can standardize their processes for game development. He will start his talk with some procedural texturing techniques and some tips for mobile game development. He will then onepresent shader in Substance Painter for mobile. Lee will also demonstrate how to optimize Substance Source files in Substance Designer, and then import them to Substance Painter with higher computer speed performance. He will also give some special tips to help character artists establish an efficient workflow.

About the speaker:

JP Lee (LeeJungPyo), is currently Interactive Technical Art Director at Giant. Over the last twenty years he has taken part in the development of numerous online games. He has also worked with the Substance team as a lead technical artist.

3:40 PM – 4:40 PM: XINQI DAI (FISHER) – AUTOMOTIVE VISUALIZATION WITH THE SUBSTANCE SUITE AND UNREAL ENGINE

Duration: 60min

Speaker: Xinqi Dai (Fisher), Senior Executive Visual Designer at Volkswagen

Topic: How to improve the quality and efficiency of automotive design and marketing with Substance

This talk will cover the overall process of automotive design, and demonstrate the new trends in digital technology for automotive design and marketing. Fisher will go over the overall design process, starting with the initial concept sketch, and progressing through digital modeling and visualization. He will also discuss the similarities and differences between a concept car and a massive production car, and detail the advantages and disadvantages of traditional industrial applications for automotive design.

Fisher will then discuss the pros and cons of using game industry hardware, and how Substance is used for automotive design today. He will also focus on the combination of Substance and Unreal Engine 4 as the main production tools for efficient automotive visualization. He will then present the innovations these tools are bringing to automotive design, and how they meet the major needs in a field that is searching talent.

About the speaker:

Xinqi Dai (Fisher): Dai has spent 10 years in CGI production for the automotive industry. A former Technical Director at BITONE, he has also worked at Macke Vision China as Real-Time Leader, and won the Unreal Open Day Best Enterprise Award in 2018. He was invited to present his personal work around a Porsche 911 revolution at an Epic Games Event during China Joy. Fisher published China’s first automotive visualization textbook, The Art of Light and Silicon. He is currently Visualization Leader at Volkswagen Group China Future Center Asia.

4:45 PM – 6:00 PM: ZHELONG XU, DIGITAL ARTISAN – THE BEAUTY OF SUBSTANCE PAINTER CRAFTSMANSHIP

Duration: 75min

Speaker: Zhelong Xu, Digital Artisan

Topic: This year‘s presentation at Substance Days will focus on Substance Painter.

With this 75-minute presentation, Master Zhelong Xu will share some of his best tips and tricks in Substance Painter. He will discuss how artists can improve their artistry and painting style in Substance Painter, as well as demonstrating ways to reach an always-elusive equilibrium between perceptual painting and rational techniques.

Attendants will learn also how to better use features and content inside Substance Painter, such as materials, as well as features dedicated to painting techniques, and the seamless integration of smart masks. Finally, Zhelong Xu will demonstrate how artists can create multiple color versions in the virtual world.

About the speaker:

Zhelong Xu comes from Jingdezhen, China. This city has been known as the ‘porcelain city’ for the past thousand years, a fact that Xu is very proud of! Xu has been working in the CG industry since 1998, and has been creating art every day since then. His latest project is a studio for CG education and garage kit development in Shanghai. Last year, he published with the Substance team Yechawood: The Art of Zhelong Xu, a book containing a comprehensive collection of his work to date – not merely his 3D work, but his artwork in a range of media, including simple pen or pencil sketches, digital painting, and real-world sculpture.

Don’t miss the prize draw at the end of his presentation to win one of Zhelong’s books!

18:00 – 18:10 PM: PRIZE DRAW

Prize draw instructions: please bring your business card or go to our website to complete the information to participate in the prize draw. Prizes include Substance software one-year Indie licenses, and books. 🙂

The event will be hosted by Meizi Yan, Country Manager China.