Original Source: Substance: Red Rock Cliff Face | Bradfolio
100% Naturally organic Substance Designer goodness! This red rock cliff face has the following tweakability:
Rendered with Marmoset Toolbag.
I almost always approach my Substance Designer workflow like I would a sculpture. I start with very simple, abstract primary and secondary forms. While these forms are very deliberate, they usually aren’t much to look at when looked at in isolation. But when these layers are combined in interesting ways, together they produce something much more complex and believable. Some layers are additively combined to build up the forms and layers of detail, and some layers are subtracted in order to create new and interesting forms.
You can see in the image below how the main forms are broken down and accumulated. The isolated form layers themselves are actually VERY simple. They are merely a suggestion of particular frequency of detail.
Substance: Red Cliff Face Height Breakdown
You can see from these WIP images below, how my exploration of form began.
The first pass was an additive approach created by instancing rock layer shapes. This gave me the layered I was after, however I found it hard to influence the layers by larger low frequency shapes.