2018 was a special year for the Substance Designer community, as some of our users started to make some cool, crazy content that pushed the limits of the software way beyond anything we’d imagined. To celebrate this, we created the Insanity Awards: an internal vote amongst the Substance team to nominate the most insanely good Substance Designer work created during the year. Like this, the Insanity Awards were born.
The good news is that the Substance Designer community has been even more productive in 2019, and it was even harder compiling our shortlist of finalists. But, at last, we’re here: we now have our Top 10 list for the Insanity Awards 2019, and we are going to reveal one per day until we reach the final podium. Get ready to be amazed!
1st – City by Jan Trubač
Ostrava, Czech Republic
“It all started when a friend challenged me to make a city in Substance Designer. I thought it was a brilliant (and crazy) idea to improve my skills and try something different. So I accepted the challenge and spent a month figuring out the layout, building designs (that were inspired by real structures) and on top of all that added some landmarks to bring some diversity to the city.
What I love about Substance Designer is the creative freedom which enables us to make even the craziest ideas a reality.”
2nd – Leaf Generator by Maximilien Vert
Paris, France
“Creating generators is for me the most interesting thing in designer. The idea of being able to generate infinite variation of leaves even some that doesn’t exist in the real life was enough to challenge myself creating this project.
This generator allows me to create a lot of varieties of leaves, with different types of venation. An age parameter controls the amount of damage and the color changes throughout the life of a leaf. Textures are fully made in Substance Designer and then applied on a simple deformed plane.”
3rd – PBR Money Stack Material by Vardan Aleksanyan
“I love CG art and programming, so for me Substance Designer is the place where imagination and logic meet one another.”
4th – Procedural Landscape Illustration by Andrei Zelenco
Bucharest, Romania
5th – Procedural Ironman by Ryo Bo
Tokyo, Japan
“I challenged myself to create realistic characters not through modeling, but by going fully procedural using Substance Designer. No geometry, with an expression slider.”
6th – 60s Fender Stratocaster by James Ray
Cape Town, South Africa
“Ever since I first picked up Substance Designer I was hooked. Every new node I found and combined meant I could create things in a way I hadn’t done before. Opening it and starting a new project always feels like a new puzzle to solve where the solutions are endlessly exponential.
I was watching a GDC talk given by Jonathan Benainous about how he managed to pull off his insane Baroque Ceiling. I wanted to try creating something that would push my knowledge of the software, and when I came across Clark Coots’s Curve to Shape Quick Tips I knew exactly what that project would be.
Music, and particularly the guitar, has played a huge role in my life. I wanted to make the guitar whose sounds had inspired me, one that I could only wish to own in real life! I started working on the material and it quickly became something I couldn’t get my mind off, for weeks. The guitar’s iconic shape and headstock were probably the biggest challenge, especially trying to get the contours right. I really enjoy working on these odd materials, and I’m always looking for a reason to make more.
Thanks to Clark Coots for sharing his Curve to Shape generator, and to Adobe and Allegorithmic for having this amazing competition dedicated to the art of Substance Designer. There are some truly mind-blowing materials here, and I’m honored to be a part of these awards this year!”
7th – Akira by Marcus Johnston
Lincoln, United Kingdom
“This Substance material came out of a desire to put out a tutorial where I go through a material creation from start to finish, showcasing the whole process. I was kind of stumped for a short while on what I wanted to do; I wanted something complicated with a lot of new challenges I knew I’d face – something outlandish and experimental in an inky style.
Of course, it only made sense that I’d go for an Akira manga panel! It was a lot of fun creating it, and an interesting experience talking through the whole thing. No other software has spoken to me in the way Substance Designer does – I just love the workflow and the level of customization you can achieve. “
8th – Painter Material by Emrecan Cubukcu
Ankara, Turkey
“I’m very interested in oil painting techniques, so I tried to imitate this technique in this SubstanceDesigner material. With Painter Material, you can turn your photos into paintings! You can imitate painting styles like impressionism, expressionism, fauvism, and contemporary painting styles with the parameters.
Of course, we have tons of parameters in this material! You can add black contour lines for the details and painting knife retouches for highlights, brushstroke flows and orientation (from random hatches to Van Gogh’s turbulence). And you can set color correction, oil paint thickness and surface properties (cracks, spots, brush scratches), brush types (flat, rounded, grunge), frame types and color and presets.
SD is surprisingly easy, and it’s the best software for quick development and prototyping for this sort of work. “
9th – Octopus Tentacles by Eric Wiley
Irvine, California, United States of America
“This was a fun experiment to try to make twisting tentacles 100% in Substance Designer. I hope you like it! If you’re interested you can check out the tutorial here: https://gum.co/levelup_octopus “
10th – Picasso’s The Weeping Woman by Ishan Verma
Mumbai, India
“I tried to recreate procedurally the famous painting The Weeping Woman (1937) by Pablo Picasso inside Substance Designer. So here there’s 0% modeling and 100% procedural artwork! All other assets are just rendered on a plane. “
