Designer material: Beef belly

Result

View on GitHub

Background

Using Adobe Substance Designer current latest version as of 2023/10/08.

Lately I’ve been feeling my guts and innards more than ever. So I decided to look on Google and ArtStation for some materials that depict organs and tissues but in a edible way, not only for zombie games.

Then I came with the idea of recreating some raw ingredients used in Mexican cuisine mainly in form of soups or tacos.

@lapinaenlacocina Menudo, Pancita De Res #menudo #pancitaderes #mexicanrecipes #paralacruda #foryoupage #momsrecipe #oreganodehigueras ♬ 80's quiet and dreamy synth pop - Gloveity

Have to mention that I feel really attracted to organic objects and textures with geometrical or fractal shapes. So the first choice is the tasteful beef belly.

Procedure

First of all, we need to gather some visual references from the web to figure out how material should behave with lighting. As for the touch, I remember a gummy-like feeling and quite elastic with nice bouncing. I’ll never forget the feel and taste in my mouth, it is usually cooked with a spicy broth, but I’ll focus con raw version of this tissue material.

Following images were arranged inside PureRef to be easily seen when using any content creation tool such as Substance Designer or Photoshop.

Alright! This should be easy using a geometrical node and the most suitable one is the Voronoi Fractal with some specific tunning to recreate tissue pattern. Further filtering and processing was required to use same pattern as for color, normal, displacement, surface scattering and anywhere needed to give material the most realistic feel.

Conclusion

Normal and height map where used for displacement. It is maxed at its most for give it the sense of depth. We can call it a day for now, having a nice medium-distance effect for the material with current displacement configuration. Further improvements could apply when I get some experience using Designer.

Happy creations!

Thanks for reading