LogInYou've seen many of them on 80 Level.
We regularly show you fantastic art from talented artists, but did you know about the Substance 3D Designer Insanity Awards? Adobe has honored those creators who made something especially stunning in 2023, and you can now see the winners. If you read 80 Level often, you will find many of them familiar.
Image credit: Marco Vitale
First Place – Marco Vitale, Neural Network
The winner of the first prize is Marco Vitale, who presented his impressive Convolutional Neural Network capable of image recognition during Nodevember.
"I implemented the famous VGG16 Model from scratch using the pretrained weights from the original model trained on the ImageNet dataset predicting 1000 different classes."
You can find a breakdown of the project in his blog. Not so long ago, he and Daniel Thiger also released Dete Trim Tool for Substance 3D Designer, which incorporates a unified workflow for creating trim sheets and eliminates the need for complex node setups and manual blending.
Image credit: Raouf Bejaoui
Second Place – Raouf Bejaoui, Fully Procedural Clicker
Senior Technical Director at Naughty Dog Raouf Bejaoui made an awesome 3D recreation of the Last of Us clicker from HBO's TV adaptation. The model is made entirely in Substance 3D Designer using only procedural noises and shapes and consists of "37 graphs, 150 outputs across all graphs, and 27 variants of ellipsoids, spheres, cubes, pyramids, rounded and capped cylinders SDFs with various bending states to build up the whole composition."
Image credit: Niki Marinov
Third Place – Niki Marinov, Stacked Suitcases
Niki Marinov's incredible material amazed us (and Adobe) with its detailed design that include multiple different surfaces. The artist used Houdini, Substance 3D Painter, and Substance 3D Designer to make it and Marmoset Toolbag for rendering.
"I was inspired by my love for Fujifilm cameras where I tried to replicate some of the Fuji Film Simulations that I usually use," he said. "Wanted to capture that feel of photography where you photograph everyday objects and let the composition and colors speak instead of it being some complex scene."
Image credit: Pablo Blanes
Fourth Place – Pablo Blanes, Procedural Colosseum
Pablo Blanes, a Texture Artist at Ubisoft Montreal, managed to recreate this cultural marvel without any modeling, as a single texture, and this is unbelievable in itself. If you want to know how he did it, check out the breakdown he kindly offered us, and maybe even try doing something like this yourself!
Image credit: Max Kutsenko
Fifth Place – Max Kutsenko, Substance Receipt
Next on the list is one of my personal favorites from last year, a material that inspired me with its attention to detail. Max Kutsenko, a Texture Artist at Ubisoft Barcelona, poured his soul into every little crease and even up with a new currency. If you want to see the nodes, read our interview with him here.
Image credit: Dave Miragliotta
Sixth Place – Dave Miragliotta, Old Door
Open the door to procedural material making with this beautiful work from Dave Miragliotta, Senior Environment Artist II at Respawn Entertainment. He added a certain charm to what we perceive as an everyday piece of any building with tags and scratches on the surface. The door might be old but it's not boring for sure.
Image credit: Oday Abuzaeed
Seventh Place – Oday Abuzaeed, Beach Sand
This project from Oday Abuzaeed should make you miss summer. The artist used Substance 3D Designer and Marmoset Toolbag to present it and added some sand sculptures to complete the look. What's even more impressive, it's procedural; you can find out how Abuzaeed set it up in this article.
Image credit: Jonathan Benainous
Eighth Place – Jonathan Benainous, Stained Glass
This absolutely stunning material was created for The Last of Us Part I by Jonathan Benainous, a Senior Environment Texture Artist at Naughty Dog. Made for the Capitol Interior in the game, the collection provides a closer look at the location with its colorful images.
Image credit: Yue Zhang
Ninth Place – Yue Zhang, Embroidery Practice
We haven't covered this beautiful embroidery made with Substance 3D Designer and Unreal Engine, but it firmly deserves to be awarded by Adobe. Just look at the intricate details and shiny pearls the artist embedded into the cloth – incredible work!
Image credit: Michael Di Lonardo
Image credit: Enrico Tammekänd
Image credit: Cem Tezcan
Tenth Place – Michael Di Lonardo, Stylized Bookshelf Material | Enrico Tammekänd, Ceramic Tiles | Cem Tezcan, Multisonic Paw
Finally, three talented artists have taken tenth place, their works different but great all the same. Michael Di Lonardo was awarded for the Stylized Bookshelf material, Enrico Tammekänd amazed Adobe with ceramic tiles, and Cem Tezcan won with Multisonic Paw, a procedurally-modeled imaginary handheld console.
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