3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [342]
Loading Substance textures
The available Substance textures are limited to the included set that ships with Max, but within the Substance Package Browser rollout is a button to Get Substance From Marketplace. This button opens a web browser to the Allegorithmic website where you can browse and purchase additional texture sets. Allegorithmic is the company that created the Substance textures.
3ds Max includes more than 80 preinstalled Substance textures. To choose from the installed texture sets, simply click the Load Substance button in the Substance Package Browser rollout of the Material Editor. This opens to the Maps/Substance folder where Max is installed. The available textures are divided into two folders: Noises and Textures.
FIGURE 31.2
Substance materials have lots of detail despite their small file size.
Linking Substance maps
Because Substance textures are available only as map nodes in the Material Editor, you need to link them to a base material in order to apply them to objects. To do this, simply create a Substance node by selecting and double-clicking it in the Material/Map Browser. A base material node, such as Standard, also must be added to the Slate Material Editor view pane.
After a Substance node is in the Material Editor's view window, select it and use the Load Substance button in the Substance Package Browser rollout to load a specific texture type. Then drag from the Substance node's Diffuse channel to the Diffuse channel on the Standard node. A Map Output node is automatically added to the material tree between the Substance and Standard nodes.
The other channels—Normal, Bump, and Displacement on the Substance node—also can be mapped to the Standard node. If you link the Normal map to the Standard node, you need to go through a Normal Bump map before linking to the Standard node's Bump channel.
Any Substance textures that have a Displacement channel can link directly to the Displacement channel on the Standard material node. The Height channel in Substance textures also can be linked to the Standard node's Displacement channel. The Height channel combines the Bump and Displacement information into a single channel. If a Substance texture is linked to both the Bump and Displacement channels, you can use the Relief Balance setting in the Parameters rollout to change the weighting between these two channels.
Some Substance textures such as Fencing have an Opacity channel. Connecting this channel to the Opacity channel on the Standard node causes the area between the fence links to show what is behind them. The Autumn Leaves texture has an Opacity channel also. Figure 31.3 shows an autumn leaves texture on top of a grass texture.
FIGURE 31.3
Some textures use the Opacity channel to allow textures beneath to show through.
Several other Substance textures have an Emissive channel. This can be connected to the Self-Illumination channel to create a glow.
After the Substance map node is linked in, you can apply it to a scene object and render to see its results.
Randomizing Substance textures
Although the Substance node has several different rollouts available, including Texture Size, Coordinates, and Noise, each specific texture has its own set of parameters with several options for randomizing the texture. For example, Crumpled Paper has a Crumpled Paper Parameters rollout with settings for Crumple, Dirt, Paper Color, and so on.
Almost every Substance texture also has a Random Seed setting that controls the randomness of the texture. By changing this value, you can create a uniquely different texture, even though all the other settings are identical. Also, two textures with the same Random Seed value