Substance 3D Designer's Japanese-Inspired Material Library Breakdown

Texture Artist Sabrina Feist developed her Japanese-inspired material library as part of her thesis for Game Art Animation studies at SAE Institute Frankfurt.

As she details, she was set from the start on channeling her long-standing inspiration into her bachelor thesis, focusing on the art of Japanese kimono fabric craftsmanship. The objective was to design and create distinctive patterns while honoring traditional Japanese design principles, including the symbolic use of motifs, patterns, and colors.

In total, this project includes two texture sets and a patch generator. The first set features a collection of basic fabrics, while the second set consists of the actual kimono fabrics. Together, they create a material library with four materials and one decal generator, offering over 20 presets for users to choose from.

The actual material creation was done in Substance 3D Designer, while additional features, such as UV-seam darkening, modifiable gradients, folds, and creases, were done with Substance 3D Painter. For the 3D modeling of the kimono garments, Sabrina Feist used Marvelous Designer and 3ds Max to clean up and refine the meshes. In the final stage, she rendered multiple versions of her kimono fabric designs in Marmoset Toolbag 4 and also edited a demo reel using After Effects.

See more renders on Sabrina Feist's ArtStation and follow along her creation process in this article.

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