My pleasure, thank you for taking the course! Can I ask where you got the course, was it on Udemy? If so, there should be a Q&A section where you can post your questions as well as any pictures, so I will be able to help you out. :)

​@@GetLearnt hey, thanks for your answer :) Not Udemy, I found you on FlippedNormals. I resolved my UVs issue yesterday (very proud of myself). I'm a beginner (well, kind of.. not sure cause I'm self thaught and had few breaks already) and I'd love to see more of your courses, I really like your way of teaching 3D. Rattan Rocker rocks! :)

My pleasure, thanks for watching! It's too bad there's not a lot of other tutorials that go over creating materials from scratch, I feel like it just makes sense to start there! :)

@@urmetlepp1 Thank you for watching! :) My pleasure.

@@Azrael_Bathory Beyond appreciative, thank you!

@@skinsvibes4436 Happy to help! :D

Your comment is more than enough! My pleasure, that makes me very happy to hear. I'm optimistic that after a couple more watches that you will get the hang of it. Also make sure to watch my other videos to get a broader range of techniques once you are confident enough, and I'm always happy to answer questions if you have any. :)

@@GetLearnt Surely I will watch more of your videos, your channel was a great find.

Hey, thanks for the heads up. I've re-uploaded it to Gumroad for free, let me know if there's any issues grabbing it! get-learnt.gumroad.com/l/material_ball

My pleasure! Thanks for watching. :)

Thanks for checking out the video! :)

Happy to help! Thanks for watching. :)

Ultimately it would depend on the shader that you are using, and how it is utilizing the AO map. The AO map itself is just used to denote areas that are obscured and could create areas of shadow. Now, my understanding is that most common use-cases for the AO maps are that they interact all light sources that are cast upon the object, and use the positions of those lights to determine what areas are facing away from the light source and darken them. This creates the 'self shadowing' look. I think you are going to find most if not all shaders you use with an AO map will work this way, however since shaders are just pieces of code, there is nothing to stop someone from writing one that only considers the ambient lighting in the AO display calculations.

​@@GetLearnt Thanks for the quick reply!

@@keegankochis No prob! :)

Fantastic, thanks for watching! 😌 I've still got some InstaMAT vids planned, so stay tuned! I've been having a lot of fun with the software myself, learning a lot of new things. I have a newer video on the channel looking at making a rock pile with it, if you haven't already checked it out!

Happy to help ☺️

Thank you! It's definitely a lot of concepts coming at you very fast! I tried to make these short enough that you can re-watch them a couple times if needed. Glad you've been enjoying the series! :)

Happy to help! Thanks for watching. :)

Thanks Käy! Hope it was thorough enough for you. :)

@@GetLearnt For sure! Was freewheeling earlier to see how well SD skills transfer, and then wanted to follow a solid tutorial to see what I missed. I learned a trick or two as well! :D For the normal to curvature trick I never used a divide with the basecolor. That's a nice touch which I'll use more :D. You could use a Height Shadows node set to ray tracing, and use light ( set at 0-0 for the light position) to get a really nice mask with tons of detail as well instead of the curvature based mask. Results are somewhat in between the facing normal and curvature.

@@proceduraldesign-kayvriend5105 I will say, the skill transfer is pretty good between these apps. Once you get over the minor stuff like packages and projects, it nearly feels like home. I'm happy to hear that! Hopefully you'll stick around for future InstaMAT vids as well, thanks for checking it out man. :) Oh wow, I just tried your suggestion with the Height Shadows node, what a great find! Would've been ideal for the the drooping mortar, I'll have to find another material we can make to use that. 🤔

My pleasure! Thanks for checking it out, looking forward to the next video!

Thank you for the kind words! I'm stoked you loved it, and thank you so much for voting on my feature request! It's sorely needed for anyone making custom nodes. This video has been a while in the making, haha. It's such an interesting and new (to me) workflow, it's exciting to be able to blend 3D and 2D in one package and avoid having to simulate, bake, export, repeat until you get something you like. I would highly encourage tackling the cobblestone and using this workflow, I'd be very curious of the results! :) Thank you for the super thanks as well, that is tremendously appreciated. I hope to continue the InstaMAT tutorials in the future. ❤️

@@GetLearnt I know that it is only needed for custom nodes, but for those it could be crucial. I am still just scratching the surface of InstaMAT, so I didn't try custom nodes yet. But in my head I was going through our nodes we made in SD, and I can't see the people who use them doing transforms etc just with sliders. Yep, this workflow is completely new to me too and I can't even imagine how long it took to figure it all out. All the more I appreciate you showing this in a free tutorial! 🙂 I hope you continue with InstaMAT tutorials, really looking forward to.

Happy to help! ☺️

My pleasure, thanks for watching Christina! I look forward to hearing any questions or comments you have on my second video, rest assured that there will be more videos to come. :) Currently there is a "Bezier Curve" node that will let you add a simple bezier curve with some controls, but I can't seem to figure out how to tile anything along it, so we may still have to wait on that one! Something I'll keep an eye on though, it could be a useful tutorial. 🙏

@@GetLearnt Thanks! Comments for sure, and maybe questions as well, if I can't find stuff I know from SD :-) I did vote for your feature request back when the video came out and just discovered that was already implemented in February. That was quick. I watched the video partially when you published it, but didn't have the possibility to test it myself for many weeks, therefore I came back today, I finally have some time. I will try to replicate your SD videos for fabric in InstaMat and am curious how that will turn out. Subscribed and will binge watch your videos, they seem to be great!

@@ChristinaMcKay Oh fantastic, much appreciated for your vote! It was a pleasant surprise for me as well, here's hoping some of my new ones get implemented here shortly as well haha. I love to hear it! I don't think you'll have much issue transferring SD into MAT, the skills are very transferable. Best of luck, I'll be anticipating comments and maybe questions too haha.

@@GetLearnt I did discover the bezier curve, and it is great to throw in simple shapes to the height channel (and imho easier to use than the splines in SD). So far I did not try to extract masks or combine it with other stuff, but it looks like it can't compare with the possibilities the SD splines and paths offer. Let's hope it is a yet. Not offering that YET 🙂

Thank you! I'm stoked you enjoy it. :) While I have to use Substance Designer for my job (which I don't see ever changing in my current role), I will say that InstaMAT has already replaced basically anything else I do that exists outside of work in the artistic realm. It has some quirks, it did only just release 4 months ago, however it's a super solid application that has really blown me away. I don't see myself ever going back to SD as my main "personal" application for any particular reason, unless Abstract (the parent company) finds a way to be objectively worse than Adobe. That'd be a cold day in hell if that ever happened. If you're looking for more InstaMAT content on this channel, I think you are going to very happy, haha. I'm not saying I won't ever do SD videos again, but the desire wanes every time Adobe rears its head, sadly.

@@GetLearnt haha nice. Yeah I still have a permanent license for Painter, but really the only thing I miss from that is some of the mask creation behavior (specifically the polygon mask selection, where you can select faces of the mesh to be your mask). Hopefully Instamat incorporates that soon, but I'm really blown away with how much it does, and how well designed it is. If you don't mind me asking, what industry do you work in? I work in the VFX for film/tv industry, and most of my professional work ends up being 2d...haha.

@@SteveErnst117 Ya some of the masking limitations are a real killer for MAT texture painting, they don't even have the ability to paint in 2D at the time of writing this, which is basically a non-starter for alot of people. Being able to mask by polygons is also another great feature that it currently lacks like you mentioned, but I do expect that to eventually make its way into the app, I can be patient. It feels very well thought thru with how it all connects between the different tools it provides. Being able to use 3D meshes in material graphs, which could then be used as a brush or material layer in texture painting, all in one app. And it's performance is pretty good. It just all seems too good to be true sometimes, with a free commercial license to boot! I'm working in the AAA games industry right now, so lots of Substance products used on the daily. Haha I guess at the end of the day everything we do ends up being 2D on a screen now doesn't it? 😂

@@GetLearnt gotcha. I’m a freelancer, so i guess I have a bit more workflow freedom…lol

My pleasure! I'm learning some workflow game-changers at every turn, it's been great. 💪

My pleasure! Happy to help. :) And yes! So if you go switch into the settings panel on the left side, you should find some options for "orbit" I believe, I'm not at my computer so I can't quite recall. But there will be some options to have your camera do a continuous orbit around the model in your 3D viewport, great for showing things off.

@@GetLearnt I was able to rotate from the gear mark!

@@matsu7676 Niiice, glad you got it working! 🙏 🥳

I'd say you'd likely be able to do just that! The 3D options are a real game changer for me in MAT, it's so handy.

Hey thank you! Thanks for the suggestion! I am always open to suggestions, although I can't guarantee I will get to it. That sounds like an interesting challenge, I will add it to my ideas list, hopefully I find the time to give it a try! :)

Haha I'm glad you think so! I'm stoked you feel it's premium stuff. I like to keep the one-off videos here on YT so everyone can enjoy, but I am starting to brainstorm some longer course ideas that I'd like to sell! Its my pleasure, thank you for watching! ❤️

@@GetLearnt Please bring them!

Thank you! If I did my job right, yours will look just a good! 🙏

Done.

@@ChristinaMcKay Ur the best 🤗

My pleasure! Glad they're helpful, especially when making your own renderer! :)

Happy to help! Thank you for watching. ☺️

Then I have accomplished my goal! That's so good to hear, thank you for sticking through it and dropping a comment. Looking forward to getting some new MAT videos out to have you go through that journey all over again! :D

I appreciate that, thank you! I hope it was helpful for you. :)

My pleasure, thank you so much for the super! ❤

So glad to hear it! Just like SD, MAT is definitely a beast of a software with a pretty steep learning curve. Once you get a couple materials under your belt tho, it starts to make a lot of sense and you can go real far with creating materials with it. :)

My pleasure! Thanks for watching, I am stoked it helped. It can be a very intimidating software, I've got a couple tutorials that'll hopefully get you up and running with it in no time! :)

So just like an Input node creates a socket on a node when you add this graph into another graph, the Input Values will also create a socket on your node. You can then use an Input Value node in the master graph as an input for the socket on this node. In terms of actually exposing the Input Value variable itself and have it be a parameter in the node, I don't think you are able to do that. Ultimately what you would want to do in that instance is create a parameter for the node and use that parameter to override the variable on whatever node it is you want to control. That was a good question though, I had to do a little research myself to figure it out!

@@GetLearnt I tried opening an sbsar file with Substance Player and the Input Value node is available to be edited. So I guess it's automatically exposed? Same case with all the other input nodes (image, color). Thanks for answering man!

@@mr.j7899 Oh that's super cool, I don't use Player much so I hadn't considered that use case! Thanks for the update, and I'm always happy to help! Thanks for watching. :)

@@GetLearnt if you have time, hope you could discuss a bit about spline and path nodes!

My pleasure! I hope it's helped you out! Unfortunately it is not, and I'm even uncertain if I still have the files on my computer. If I find them, I will make sure to reply here so you can grab them! ☺️

I hope it helps! :)

For me it was relatively fast, however I got in earlier in January when they were doing early access. If you have been waiting a while, I would recommend reaching out to their support or on the InstaMATA Forums. I had seen them offering support for people having similar wait times.

@@GetLearnt Thank you