Creating Realistic Raindrop Effects In Substance 3D Designer Without Fluid Simulations

Senior Material Artist Kai Mergener, the creator behind various tools like this custom node designed for essential splatter operations, is currently exploring procedural rain effects in Substance 3D Designer and sharing his progress.

Fluid simulations have always posed a challenge for Kai, which is why he set out to replicate their visual behavior within Substance 3D Designer using Signed Distance Fields (SDFs). Drawing inspiration from real-life observations, particularly how rain interacts with a windowpane, he experimented with his own approach to simulate the effect. While there is still some stuff to refine, the method is already said to achieve realistic surface tension and organic movement.

Here's roughly how it works, according to Kai:

• Pixel Processor for generating animated rain streaks;
• Poisson Distribution for small and medium drops;
• Animated Perlin Noise and Tile Sampler to simulate larger drops forming and vanishing;
• SDF transformation to capture surface tension and allow for smooth interpolation;
• Time function animation to flipbook, then rendering with Blender's Cycles.

The artist plans to share an in-depth tutorial on this setup once he refines drop snapping and improves realism, so stay tuned and follow Kai Mergener on LinkedIn for updates.

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