Creating Old-School TV Screen Material Using Substance 3D Designer

Introduction

Hi! My name is Anatolii Marin, and I am a Material Artist. My passion for video games started with ELITE back in 1987. Yes, I'm old! For many years, making the games I loved to play felt like real magic to me.

In 2021, I saw a video on YouTube by Javier Perez, where he showed how materials are created in Substance 3D Designer. It impressed me so much that at the age of 40, I decided to start learning 3D. Since then, I have been spending all my free time after my main job on this. When I reached the texturing stage, I realized that I wanted to focus only on creating textures and materials.

In 2022, I was invited to be a mentor at a 3D school, helping students with their homework and creating textures together with them. At the same time, I was learning the full pipeline of creating models and environments for video games. In 2023, I started working at Keywords Studios Sperasoft Serbia as a 3D and Material Artist on a large AAA project.

My tasks include creating textures, materials, generators, and sometimes environment models. Of course, my main tool is Substance 3D Designer. Creating materials, textures, trims, and tools for the team is crazy fun. Every task is a challenge and an adventure that we go through together as a team.

Idea: CRT TV Screen Material

The idea to create a TV screen material came after I saw a short video on social media, where an artist showed how a shader works in Unreal Engine. I became curious: Is it possible to build a CRT TV material in Substance 3D Designer?

I thought about this idea for several weeks and tried different approaches. The breakthrough happened after I read an article about how old color TVs work.

Breaking the Image into RGB

In short, I tried to interpret the basic laws of optics inside the material. Old CRTs have small cells (slots). A color image on the screen is created by splitting these cells into three parts – three colors (red, green, and blue). The combination of the brightness of these three colors creates the illusion of a single color.

My task was to split a color image in Substance 3D Designer into three parts (RGB) and then combine them again, using the principle of a color CRT with an aperture mask.

Substance 3D Designer Workflow

In Substance 3D Designer, there is a node called RGBA Split, which allows you to separate a color image into channels.

After creating a single cell of the CRT aperture mask, I duplicated it using the Tile Sampler Greyscale node.

Then, using the Blend node, I mixed the intensity masks of the three channels with the tiled cells.

After coloring the result in the corresponding colors, I combined everything together using masks.

Now, as you can see, the image of Keanu Reeves becomes "cell-based," as if we are looking at it on the screen of an old TV.

Material Settings: Resolution Control 

In the material settings, there is one main parameter – the number of cells vertically and horizontally. This parameter lets you adjust the "quality" of the CRT image in steps of 64 pixels when using the material in Substance 3D Painter.

I shared this material on my ArtStation page as a free download. It works not only in my favorite Substance 3D Designer, but also in Substance 3D Painter.

Moiré Effect & Realism

In the end, creating a material with the needed effect turned out to be easier than I expected. But it still required not only software skills, but also a bit of school physics.

The main difficulty, in my opinion, was making the material look realistic. I wanted to show the moiré pattern – the ripple and wavy lines that you can see on old color CRT screens when the cells are very close to each other.

The moiré effect in the material appeared by itself because of the large number of small, similar shapes placed close together. This happened because I followed the real principle of how a CRT works.

Conclusion

In general, creating any material requires not only artistic skills but also some basic knowledge of science, and sometimes even life experience. This mix of different skills helps me create many types of materials.

To artists who are starting to learn Substance 3D Designer, or are still thinking about it, I want to say: I haven't found any software that is better and easier to understand so far. The time you spend learning it will pay off – you just need to start.

I wish all artists to find an area where they really enjoy their work.

Anatol Marin, Material Artist