Making animated substances.

[Käy Vriend]

Hi guys, i wonder if there is some more information on how to make animated substances. I can expose some parameters to $time, and see something happening in substance player, but i havent a clue on how to add a speed and loop duration parameter to noises/transforms. Any sugggestions?

[Nicolas Wirrmann]

Speed is just a multiplier of time, but for making things loop it might be a bit more complicated.

If you are interested in looping noises, I shared some animated/loopable/tileable noises on polycount: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=129560&page=13

here is the direct link to the archive: https://www.dropbox.com/s/h7t5cgpm3hjk4v5/Noises_animated.zip

[Käy Vriend]

Thanks Nicolas, I checked out the noises and they are pretty neat. I do want to learn the logic of distortions over time and looping them, as I did in Genetica, but within substance and all of its perks. What would be a good starting point?

[Nicolas Wirrmann]

That's not the easiest part of substance designer

Fx-maps basically draw patterns, you can imagine that each pattern is drawn on a quad. You can then adjust the color, position, size, rotation of each quad using functions.

In the case of the looping noises, I created a function that makes the pattern move in circles, you can use the Cartesian node for that (first input is the radius, second is the angle [0, 2pi]). I've attached a simple example. If you want to animate this, just replace the constant for the radius by $time.
Depending on the radius and the time it takes to the pattern to make a full turn, you can adjust the speed and the loop duration.

If you open the noises I made, the "EllipseAnimation" function contains everything you need (or you can scratch your head and try to redo it if you want )

Ellipse animation uses the Ellipse function, it's in case you want to simulate a directional movement. In this case the pattern will move in a direction, fade out, go back to initial position, fade in.