Darker than Zero and Brighter than One? Using HD Ranges in Substance Designer

Today we're going to dive into HD Ranges. In my experience many students don't take advantage of operations and values below 0 and above 1, which is shame because a lot of fun stuff happens there!
We'll do a quick run through of the concept and than show off two cool uses for it: A way to help with heightmap blending and for adding more interesting detail to our masks - as a bonus we'll make some cool sculpted elements.
If you found this helpful, a like and especially a bell-hit would be greatly appreciated - let's get to the graph!
Link to Example Graph:
drive.google.com/file/d/1xP_j...
Portolio:
www.artstation.com/johnnymalcolm

[@emerymarcell8898]

Seriously more people ought to be watching your content. It's so difficult to come across this level of incredibly useful Substance Designer content without paying for specialized courses at the very least. Love your work, subscribed and liked! Will be sharing as well :)

[@mehrankhan7871]

this is soooo helpful honestly thank you! I was just trying to get that "flat top" feel 2 days ago and it took soo many steps and the result was not good and certainly not controllable.

[@tompainter7167]

Thanks was a super simple gateway to explaining this type of nuanced thing that I often avoid on short deadline type projects 🔥

[@harrysanders818]

"Darker than Zero" sounds like an awesome Horror Movie title

[@yuval1995]

I salute you sir.

[@mlv617]

Awesome!! Thanks!!

[@grkn06]

Amazing, thanks for the tutorial. Really brought a new perspective, I feel enlightened.

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

You have ascended

[@MrMasterphoto]

Thank you, Johnny! Very useful tips and so easy explained! Can't wait to watch your next video!

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

Appreciate it! Aiming for 2-3 a week

[@kamp9580]

This is great

[@joppemin]

your new videos are pure gold!

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

Thank you! It definitely can get a little dry with some of this stuff, but I think it's worth sitting though for the technique

[@joppemin]

@@JohnnyHalcyon3D yeah I get that, though very useful for vfx artists as well to get some high quality alpha textures! big fan!

[@AndyxbecK]

Dude I love these videos, keep it up!

[@satyakimandal6572]

This is really helpful! Thank you so much!

[@JammieDodder]

My mind's been blown, love these vids so much!

[@Derabooo]

Thank you for all the great tips! Love the in depth explanations

[@ShubhamPatil-uj7yr]

Please to more stuff in stylized sculpt look what you shown was thing i was looking for year. Thanks u so much. Love

[@EuropaUX]

Amazing content Johnny, please keep it up!

[@trek3295]

this was really neat! i've been a fan of using ranges past 0 and 1 for other things but didnt realize you could do it in this program, so thank you for the video

[@michaelfiorentino1098]

im watching all your videos, they are great! tysm for your time and info.

[@yisun6579]

Thank you! The basic idea of bit depth has always been in the back of my head, but I only know when rendering an image as exr with 32bits is always better for compositing and color grading. I would never have known it can make such a big difference when comes to Height map creation in Substance Designer, you have opened my eyes.

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

Yup one of the big reasons its nice for those things is partly what we outline here, you just have more range (so more information) to work with with adjusting

[@peter9421]

Man, great great content! Quality!! Please keep it up. You deserve to grow. 🙏🙏

[@christopher8116]

This was a great video, I knew that 32bit Float were powerful and useful but didn't know some information you explained in this video.

[@ynnda6155]

This changes everything.

[@ezgiyurekli9397]

This is mind blowing. Thank you for sharing your wisdommm!

[@Bugulab]

it’s top secret information! seriously!

[@conner101howard]

For the engagement

[@aydaryakup4540]

maaan such a great channel. THANK YOU

[@alexdanilaart]

Awesome tips! You should start a gumroad also!

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

Yup that's the plan :)

[@zeus3005]

This is great! Also helped me understand why my normal maps were getting that artifacting. Love it

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

Hell yeah, my plan is to make a dedicated artifact video

[@CrimsyCreates]

@@JohnnyHalcyon3D Hello, I have been studying your videos for a couple days and I LOVE them so much! They are so, so helpful to learn the more technical aspects of SD! I was wondering if you ever ended up making the artefact video you mentioned under this comment? I have been having trouble with banding artefacts in my AO and normal nodes and it's been really bothersome so I thought I would ask, if anyone knows how to fix it it's you! Thanks again for all the priceless teachings! (‘∀’●)♡

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

@@CrimsyCreates Havent been able to make that video - but my guess would be you have 8bit info going into your outputs. Make sure you're at 16bits

[@oscarkottursson3552]

Where I can put above than 1 like to that vid? Priceless info, thank you.

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

You can put the extras on the other videos ;)

[@Soulsphere001]

Another good and interesting video. I think my current biggest limitation is that I'm very bad at knowing how to colour things in Substance Designer (especially when using the IRay renderer). If you wouldn't mind making a video regarding how best to colour things, that would be useful to me. I have found a lot of tutorials on various things, including for roughness, but nothing for colouring things. ... Well, other than a couple videos from Adobe.

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

I can make some general videos on color theory and how you can best apply them, do you have any specifics? Generally I like to just lay different solid colors over with masks, and than adjust the blends with things like HSL or levels + more masks as I go. It also shouldnt really matter if you're using IRay or now

[@Soulsphere001]

@@JohnnyHalcyon3D I suppose one specific might be dealing with gradient maps and how best to get the colours one wants in specific areas. I guess an example might be dealing with a wood texture. ... Though now that I bring that up, I should examine the Wood American Cherry node, which I've been meaning to do but forgot about. I think I just need to experiment with colours some and not try and take the easy way out. Since I've tended to plug a Normal into a Curvature Smooth into a Gradient Map, maybe into a node to control contrast, and then into an HSL node. I should probably treat every element as something completely different. Though one problem I've had with colouring is IRay making my colouring far too bright, on a brick wall, though I hardly ever use the IRay anyway. I think it still highlighted some colouring issues I was likely having, but I'm not exactly sure how to fix that. I'm not sure if I need to use more colours in the gradient, use more gradients in different parts of it, or if I should concentrate on other aspects of it. Though I get the feeling adding more contrasting colours would help, so I'll try either adding more colours to a single gradient map or adding a few gradient maps. Or, like you said, use a few different solid colours using Blend nodes with masks. Then probably let the rest of the maps take care of shading and such. I should use my brick wall for colour experimentation.

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

@@Soulsphere001 You're second paragraph is the key - you really cant just do that. For instance in this case you're specifically tying one attribute (color) to another (curvature) i.e wherever you have a certain amount of covexity/concavity you will nessecarily have the same color. Sometimes this is what you want, but you should know that that's what you're doing - creating a link between them. Color is something that just improves with time spent making/studying art generally

[@Soulsphere001]

@@JohnnyHalcyon3D All right, John, thank you for the tips. I'll have to keep them in mind.

[@Viterkim]

Couldn't you histogram select the values that are between 0 and 1, but not those values, then use that as a mask when you do the blend ?

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

I'm not sure I follow you?

[@Viterkim]

@@JohnnyHalcyon3D I tried setting it up with a graph here :) drive.google.com/file/d/1_u-zML84tGfEqGMOMAMLukCA_-VYot2-/view?usp=sharing Something like that (its missing the effect on the very top or at the bottom though)

[@Viterkim]

@@JohnnyHalcyon3D Tried commenting with a google drive link for a graph showcasing it. Don't know if youtube shadow bans it (they usually do with links). I can send a graph with the example in it if you can't see the link :D

[@red4666]

I’m not sure I understand why you’re doing all that extra stuff. Couldn’t you simply use the Add/Sub blend mode? That way black will stay black, white will stay white, and only the transition will either get added or subtracted based on whether they are above or below 0.5.

[@JohnnyHalcyon3D]

In this situation you could invert B and use add/sub just fine yup. I like this method for when the bottom texture isnt normalized, and also when I want the area thats fully white to expand more (like in the AO example)