Today, Allegorithmic launches “Materialize: The Digital Material Contest,” a competition that challenges artists to digitally reproduce photorealistic materials from real-world references. Starting with Allegorithmic’s popular Mattershots Instagram account, contestants select from one of the 750+ materials available and then recreate it in Substance Designer for a chance to win one of several prizes.
Allegorithmic created the Mattershots social media account as a way to introduce a daily dose of material inspiration to the Substance community, offering new ways to think about colors, textures and other design options. The Materialize contest is an opportunity for both artists with experience using Substance Designer, and those new to the tool, to show how closely they can recreate and creatively interpret materials that match their real-world counterparts. Submissions will be accepted fromOctober 24 through November 24 at 11:59 p.m. PST.
Once contestants have selected an image to model their design on, they'll have the option to either start from scratch or select an existing texture from Allegorithmic’s Substance Source PBR library as a starting point. All entries must be designed in Substance Designer, and contestants must also specify which of the two categories they wish to be judged in, general or MDL.
Once the entry is complete, contestants should send in a copy of the newly created material alongside an image of the original source, one image of the created texture in Iray render mode on Plane HD and their SBS or MDL file to demonstrate the craft behind the design.
Three winners will be selected in each category, with the top entries judged by a jury of industry experts, including:
- Don Arceta – Lead Artist, Playground Games
- Marc Austin – Build Supervisor, Double Negative
- Scott DeWoody – Firmwide Creative Media Manager, Gensler
- Pierre Hulot – Digital Manager, French luxury industry
- Nicolas Paulhac – CMF Designer, Substance Source Project Manager
- Nicolas Wirrman – Substance Designer Product Manager, Allegorithmic
Winners will be announced on December 6, 2017. The winning entries will be based on following criteria: reference matching accuracy, material level of details (complexity and technical quality), material tweaks and exposed parameters.
Prizes include:
- 1st Place (General) – HP DreamColor Z23x Professional display monitor
- 2nd Place (General) – NVIDIA M5000
- 3rd Place (General) – X-Rite Photo Pro 2 ColorChecker
- 1st Place (MDL) – NVIDIA P6000
- 2nd Place (MDL) – NVIDIA P5000
- 3rd Place (MDL) – NVIDIA M5000
All winners will also receive one year of Substance, and a one-year subscription to ArtStation TBC. For interested parties unfamiliar with Substance Designer, Allegorithmic is currently offering a 30-day free trial.
For a complete set of rules, including how to enter, please visit the Materialize contest page.
A video tutorial designed especially for the contest is also available:
