10 Best Substance Designer Courses and Certifications Online

When it comes to learning Substance Designer, online courses are a popular choice among individuals who seek to enhance their knowledge and skills in this field. With the vast array of options available, finding the best courses online can be a daunting task. However, by conducting thorough research and assessing various factors such as course content, instructor expertise, and student reviews, you can identify a course that suits your needs and objectives. In this article, we will provide an overview of the key considerations to keep in mind when selecting the best Substance Designer courses online.

Here’s a look at the Best Substance Designer Courses and Certifications Online and what they have to offer for you!

10 Best Substance Designer Courses and Certifications Online

1. Complete Game Character Workflow 02 Texturing and Rendering by Udemy Instructor (Udemy) (Our Best Pick)

The “Complete Game Character Workflow 02 Texturing and Rendering Course” is an online course offered by Udemy Instructor. The course encompasses the entire workflow of texturing, making materials, lighting, and rendering a complete character after modeling. This course is a continuation of the character modeling series and provides state-of-the-art techniques and tools to bring a character to life.

The course starts with an introduction and baking, followed by body texturing, eye texturing, leather material, knitting material, and finalizing fabrics. It then covers glove and boots, ornamental decoration, stitch brushes, and finalizing texturing. The course also teaches how to prepare animation and import assets, basic lighting and material, eye shader, tips and tricks to enhance graphics, sequencer, and rendering.

The course covers substance, PBR workflow, and Unreal Engine realtime rendering in detail. Color, composition, and lighting are also introduced to help students achieve good aesthetics. The course also features many other small tricks, including animation, quick rig, and dynamic simulation, to give students more power in their presentation.

Overall, the “Complete Game Character Workflow 02 Texturing and Rendering Course” is an in-depth course that provides students with the necessary skills and tools to create and render a complete game character.

2. Substance Designer 2020: Stylized material creation. by Jose Moreno (Udemy)

The Substance Designer 2020: Stylized Material Creation course is designed to teach students the fundamentals of creating materials from scratch using the powerful node system of Substance Designer. The course is instructed by Jose Moreno and covers the PBR workflow and necessary basics to create high-quality materials and stylized textures. It also teaches how to use them in any rendering or video game engine.

The course covers a range of topics, including navigating the interface and panels of Substance Designer, using blending modes and masks to blend images and create varied textures, and exploring the most important nodes available in the program. After mastering the fundamentals, students apply this knowledge by creating a basic material that follows the material creation workflow.

The course then progresses to creating six stylized and more advanced materials with new methods, concepts, and techniques using a variety of nodes available in Substance Designer. Students also learn how to blend and mix materials to create new combinations. In the final chapter, students learn how to render their materials to create an appealing and professional presentation for their portfolio and how to configure these materials to create terrains in Unreal Engine.

Overall, the course is structured into ten sections, including an introduction, fundamentals, nodes and patterns, ground material, sand material, grass materials, snow texture, woodplanks material, cobblestone, mixing materials and rendering, and the final chapter. By the end of the course, students should have a strong understanding of creating materials and textures using Substance Designer and how to use them effectively in any rendering or video game engine.

3. Substance Designer Basics: Create a Video Game Material by Rob Aduna (Udemy)

The Substance Designer Basics: Create a Video Game Material course, instructed by Rob Aduna, aims to teach novice Substance Designer users how to create professional quality textures for video games. Substance Designer is a powerful tool that has revolutionized video game art, but its steep learning curve can make it difficult to know where to start. This online course offers a comprehensive guide to the most commonly used shortcuts and an efficient workflow before diving deep into creating an industry standard material.

The course begins with an introduction to Substance Designer and its interface. This is followed by creating a Substance Designer project and learning about target and reference. Students will then create a package and graph, and learn about output nodes. The ideal workflow, which is height map driven, is also taught.

The next section covers creating a material with tile nodes, damage and weathering, grout details, roughness map, and base color/albedo. Students will also learn about exposing parameters and exporting outputs. The course is structured into three main sections: Introduction to Substance Designer, Creating A Project, and Creating The Material.

4. Intro to Substance Designer for Beginners by David Bittorf (Udemy)

This is a course titled “Intro to Substance Designer for Beginners” with instructor David Bittorf. The course focuses on creating a custom brick material that can be used in Substance Painter, with a duration of 1 hour and 28 minutes. It is designed for individuals who are new to Substance Designer and covers step-by-step instructions on how to create a material while showcasing how to export it to Substance Painter. The course teaches how to connect various nodes to create realistic materials and highlights the creation of normal maps, height maps, roughness maps, ambient occlusion, height variation per bricks, height variation for the cement, and exporting to Substance Painter.

The course contains 13 video tutorials, each averaging under 10 minutes, and can be viewed in order or by selecting a specific technique to learn. The course content is divided into 14 sections, including an introduction and overview, followed by the creation of normal maps, color parts 1 and 2, height maps, roughness, ambient occlusion, height variation per brick, height cement, and exporting to Substance Painter.

All files provided with the course require Substance Designer 2020 or newer to open. Overall, this course provides a beginner-friendly tutorial on creating a custom brick material using Substance Designer and exporting it to Substance Painter.

5. Intro to Substance Designer by Olga Polukhina (Udemy)

The Intro to Substance Designer course, led by Olga Polukhina, is designed to provide a comprehensive and thorough introduction to building procedural materials in Substance Designer. The course spans over six hours and is divided into three parts, each building on the knowledge acquired in the previous section.

Part 1 covers the basics of the Substance Designer interface and how to set up a Substance Library. It also includes a walkthrough on building the first PBR texture – a tiled PBR glazed brick texture, which is saved for later use. The section provides an opportunity to explore Atomic Nodes and how they function in building basic materials.

Part 2 delves into advanced Atomic Nodes and how to expose Input Parameters to create procedural materials with Dynamic Functions. Materials blending is also covered, utilizing the brick wall from Part 1 to create a more complex procedural material.

Part 3 is a sneak peek at advanced concepts and features a tutorial on building a simple animated water material. This section provides an opportunity to explore more advanced Dynamic Functions and the Pixel Processor node.

The course is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to Substance Designer, covering all the basics, including animated materials. The three-part structure is designed to facilitate a clear progression from fundamentals to advanced techniques.

6. Intro to Animated Materials with Substance Designer by Olga Polukhina (Udemy)

Course Title: Intro to Animated Materials with Substance Designer

This course provides an introduction to Substance Designer’s common Nodes and Dynamic Functions used in animating Substance materials. The course is designed to build an Animation Test material that will incorporate these nodes and functions to create almost unlimited animation possibilities.

Throughout the course, the Pixel Processor, Splatter, Transform 2D and FX Map nodes will be examined one at a time, noting their strengths and weaknesses in material animation. Additionally, several other Nodes and techniques will be explored to create more functionality in material.

The course will also cover how to use Dynamic Functions to animate noises in the Substance Library as well as the colors of the material.

The course is structured into different sections with an introduction.

7. Substance Designer – Intro to FX Maps by Olga Polukhina (Udemy)

The Substance Designer – Intro to FX Maps course is centered around teaching users about FX Map nodes and their various applications beyond procedural noise creation. The course is instructed by Olga Polukhina and focuses on making procedural and animated noises and masks that can be reused in a variety of materials.

The course begins with a basic introduction to the FX Map node and how it works, followed by a detailed explanation of how to create an FX Map-driven animated mask. The first step involves creating a simple scratches noise that will be animated with a second FX Map.

Next, the Gradient Map node is introduced as a tool for creating grayscale and color masks that can be used to blend materials. Finally, the course covers the Material Blend and Multi-Material Blend nodes and how they can be used to create a variety of different animated materials by reusing the mask stored in the Substance Library.

Overall, the course is organized into a single section titled “Making Masks & Noises with FX Maps” and consists of multiple videos that progressively build upon one another to teach users the necessary skills to create and manipulate FX Map nodes effectively.

8. Substance Designer – Wood, Wood Floors & Wood Carving by Olga Polukhina (Udemy)

The Substance Designer – Wood, Wood Floors & Wood Carving course is instructed by Olga Polukhina and focuses on using reusable masks to create a variety of wooden textures.

The course begins with creating a basic wood material with an adjustable polish parameter. Through this material, two basic floor types, planks and parquet, are created and later combined to form a composite floor material. The masks and functions in the floor materials utilize the polish input from the original wood. As the polish is reduced, both the floor and the wood roughen up.

Towards the end of the course, reusable nodes are introduced that enable grayscale bitmaps to be transformed into carved designs on wood. The color in the carving can also be adjusted, and like the flooring, all roughening is dependent on the polish parameter.

The course is divided into four sections: Introduction, Basic Wood Material, Wood Flooring, and Wood Carving.

9. Substance Designer – Simple Water with Directional Controls by Olga Polukhina (Udemy)

Course Title: Substance Designer – Simple Water with Directional Controls

Course Instructors: Olga Polukhina

Course Short Description: This course provides an introduction to basic Dynamic Functions and Exposing Parameters, while creating an animated water material.

Course Long Description: In this course, learners will explore the creation of a simple water animation. Through the process of making the material, they will learn about creating and exposing parameters, as well as some basic dynamic functions that will drive the animation. Additionally, learners will discover how to drive several related functions with a single parameter, which enables the creation of a liquid that seamlessly moves from standing to moving with one slider.

The course is designed to offer simple functions, making it suitable for individuals who are new to exploring the procedural aspects of Substance Designer. For those with some knowledge of animated materials, the course provides a lightweight water material.

Course Content and Sections:

– Introduction: Provides an overview of the course and learning objectives.

10. Create a Realistic Roof Shader with Substance Designer by 3dmotive LLC (Udemy)

The course titled “Create a Realistic Roof Shader with Substance Designer” is offered by 3dmotive LLC. The course focuses on using Substance Designer to create shaders and materials for games and film. The course covers the creation of a roof texture using 3ds Max, ZBrush and Substance Designer. The course is divided into three sections: Modeling and Optimizing the Roof Tiles, Texturing and Baking our Maps, and Rendering Maps and Building our Shader.

In the first section, the course covers the creation of low poly tiles in 3ds Max. Then, the course moves into ZBrush where variations of the tiles are sculpted and damage is added. The tiles are then optimized for export back to 3ds Max. The texture is set up to tile perfectly and have variation in size, rotation, and shape. Additionally, materials are assigned for the color map.

In the second section, a baker scene is set up in Marmoset Toolbag 3 to bake out all the texture maps using their new baker. Once the baked maps look good, the course moves into Substance Designer where the final texture maps are created. The normal map is improved with smaller details, and the final albedo, roughness, and metallic maps are created. The final texture is polished, and the render is done in Marmoset Toolbag 3.

The course instructor, Emiel Sleegers, is a 20-year-old 3D environment artist working in the game industry. He has worked for companies like Playground Games and Ubisoft and has one announced title on his name, Forza Horizon 3, with another title on the way. He is a self-taught artist who decided to learn about game development four years ago.

Overall, the course aims to provide a comprehensive approach to creating a realistic roof shader using Substance Designer. The course covers modeling, texturing, baking, rendering, and building a shader.