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Substance Painter: How to Create Tiling Cinder Block Textures (Clean/Painted and Old/Damaged)

Category: Substance Painter
June 27, 2024

You need Cinder Block textures and you need them now.

There aren't any cinder blocks Standard Materials or Smart Materials that are included with Substance Painter.

So what are your options?

If you look in the Marketplace, there are a few cinder block materials to download but none that are clean and painted.

You could learn Substance Designer and create the material yourself. But that will take up a lot of time. Designer is not easy software to pick up if you haven't used it already.

You could find a cinder block wall to take a photograph of then bring it into Substance Sampler. Let Sampler convert the photo into a material to use. But that requires you to go out and find the right cinder block wall to photograph.

What's the best option?

You can stay entirely in Substance Painter and use a Brick Generator texture. This texture comes standard with Painter and includes procedural properties for you to adjust everything you need for the cinder blocks size and spacing.

Using the Brick Generator to create a mask then build up the material yourself where you'll have full control over every property.

In this tutorial I will show you how to create two types of cinder block textures entirely in Substance Painter: clean/painted and old/damage.

What you will learn:

  • How to use Brick Generator texture to create cinder block patterns
  • How to use Anchor Points
  • How to distress the cinder blocks and create uneven edges
  • How to create clean, painted cinder blocks
  • How to create old, damaged cinder blocks
  • How to use Standard Materials with the cinder block patterns
  • How to add roughness variation
  • How to sharpen your textures
  • How to export your textures for UE4 or UE5
  • And much more

Let's get to it!

Video Tutorial 1/2: Clean/Painted Cinder Blocks

Video Tutorial 2/2: Old/Damaged Cinder Blocks

Quick Overview

Here is an overview of the layer stack and material build up.

  • You create a cinder block pattern using Brick Generator Texture
  • This pattern is used as a Mask to control cinder block color, roughness, height and grout color, roughness, height
  • Anchor point is created for this brick generator mask to reference it anywhere in the layer stack
  • You then create how the cinder block and the grout will look using the Brick Generator mask

Brick Generator Texture

Brick Generator is a procedural texture that can be found in Library tab under Textures:

Brick Generator allows you to change the size and spacing of each brick to create cinder block pattern.

Use this Brick Generator texture to create the cinder block pattern mask.

The setup:

  • Create Fill Layer
  • Add Black Mask
  • Add Fill into the Black Mask
  • Under Grayscale of the Fill Effect, add Brick Generator texture
  • Switch the viewport to Mask
  • Change Brick Generator properties to determine the pattern of the cinder blocks

Blur Slope Filter

Cinder block pattern looks too perfect.

Blur Slope Filter will allow you to distress the straight lines of the cinder block pattern.

  • Add a Filter to the Brick Generator Black Mask
  • Under Filters choose Blur Slope
  • Blur Slope Blend Mode is set to Replace
  • Under Source Type choose Custom Noise
  • Under Image Inputs use a grunge grayscale map to distort the edges with
  • Mess around with the rest of the properties (watch the videos to see what I set)

You can copy/paste the Blur Slope Filter and start stacking these filters on top of each. Simply change the grayscale texture being used.

If needed, you can add regular Blur Filter on top of the Slope Blur to soften the edges.

Creating an Anchor Point

Anchor Point is a reference of something you've done so you can reuse it anywhere else in the layer stack.

In our case, it allows us to create the Cinder Block Mask once and then reuse it anywhere within a single layer or an entire folder.

  • Right Click on the Cinder Block Mask and choose Add Anchor Point

Contain the Brick and Grout within Folders

Once Cinder Block Mask is created it's time to work on the cinder blocks and grout.

For the Cinder Block and for the Grout, keep both of them within their own folders.

  • Create a folder one for the Cinder Block and one for the Grout
  • Add Black Mask to each folder
  • Add Fill to the Black Mask

Referencing the Mask Anchor Point

Let's reference the created Anchor Point into the Black Mask Fill Effect of the folder. This ensures that everything within this folder will use the Cinder Block Mask you created.

  • Select the Folder's Black Mask Fill Effect
  • Under Grayscale property switch to Anchor Points
  • Choose the Anchor Point created for the Cinder Block Mask
  • Do this for the Cinder Block

Do the same thing for the Grout folder with one adjustment. After adding an existing Anchor Point to the Grout, go to Levels and enable Invert.

This will invert the Cinder Block Mask and allow you to create the layer setup for the Grout only.

Create the Cinder Block and Grout Layer Information

Begin to work within each folder and create how you want the Cinder Block and the Grout to look.

Clean/Painted Cinder Blocks:

Clean/Painted Grout:

Setup for Clean/Pained Cinder Block Height Detail

Creating the clean/pained cinder block height detail is very simple. This allows you to control the amount of micro height detail without messing with cinder block indentations.

  • Create new Fill layer
  • Disable every channel but the Height
  • Create Black Mask
  • Add Fill Effect into the Black mask
  • Input a grayscale grunge texture to be used for Height detail

Go back to Fill Layer and adjust the Height amount:

Setup for Clean/Pained Cinder Block Roughness Variation

Clean, painted cinder blocks are shiny but also have some roughness variation.

By default they have solid roughness value which makes it look the same across the entire surface:

To create roughness variation:

  • Create new Fill layer
  • Disable every channel but Roughness
  • Create Black Mask
  • Add Fill Effect into the Black mask
  • Input a grayscale grunge texture to be used for Roughness variation

Go back to Fill Layer and adjust Roughness amount to add the variation:

Final result with Roughness Variation:

Using Standard Materials for Old/Damaged Cinder Blocks

For the old/damaged bricks I used Standard Materials. These allow you to have more detailed information already part of the material.

The two materials used are: Concrete Coarse and Concrete Cast. Both can be found in Standard Materials tab. But you can use any available materials or even download new ones.

The process of using them is the same as for clean/painted cinder blocks.

Make sure to place each material within its own folder. That folder should have a Black Mask and a Fill Effect to reference an Anchor Point.

Then work within each folder to add more filters, layers and variations within the texture for grout and for cinder blocks.

Old/Damaged Cinder Blocks layers and result:

Old/Damaged Grout layers and result:

Substance Painter Essentials Tutorial Course

If you need help for how to add various layers, smart masks and build up your material further, take a look at this complete tutorial course "Substance Painter Essentials" to show you how.

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About World of Level Design

My name is AlexG. I am self-taught level designer, game environment artist and the creator of World of Level Design.com. I've learned everything I know from personal experimentation and decades of being around various online communities of fellow environment artist and level designers. On World of Level Design you will find tutorials to make you become the best level designer and game environment artist.

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