More Substance Designer practice! This time I wanted to explore the ZBrush to Designer workflow as it applies to environment art. So I created the semi-stylized cobblestones with faked foliage.
I sculpted three variations of a cobblestone, set up a tiling pattern, and created a simple ground in ZBrush. Next I added some Quixel Megascans plant assets into the cracks between stones.
I took this high poly sculpt and the foliage meshes into Marmoset Toolbag to bake out two different texture sets. Then I was able to take the baked maps into Designer to create the base color, as well as enhance and combine the rest of the maps to get the final textures.
I like to show my materials in a practical context, so I took the sample scene from the "English College Level 4 Sample" environment on UE Marketplace and applied my cobblestones material to the road. I did this in UE5.3, so I used a nanite mesh with displacement via material to get the height. Adding my own material to the existing scene was the only thing I did to get the Unreal screenshots, but I thought it was a good way to show how the material actually looks in-engine!
