The Substance Materialize node allows you to easily create realistic material textures based on your own image inputs. When you add a Substance Materialize node to the Action schematic, you'll notice the familiar Substance tree of maps and shaders. Simply specify your input image, as well as optional Details, Grunge, and Relief maps, and use the menu settings to fine-tune the results.
Substance Materialize is available in two flavours, Substance Materialize and Substance Materialize PBR.
The option you choose is based mostly on your shading approach, or the results you are trying to achieve. Non-PBR shading is usually easier (but not always!) to set up and troubleshoot. Also, Substance Materializes is compatible with Allegorithmic's Bitmap2Material (B2M) version 2.2.
But if you plan on working with shader nodes using the Physically Based shader mode, then you must use the PBR version of Materialize. The textures output from the Substance PBR are made to integrate with a Physically Based Shader, especially when coupled to IBL Maps. Finally, Substance Materialize PBR, is compatible with Allegorithmic's Bitmap2Material (B2M) version 3.
![]() Initial sphere geometry |
![]() Input image: Single-frame .tif photo of rusty screws in a wall. |
![]() Result after applying inputs and various Substance settings. |
See the tooltips (or the B2M Help site) for help with each setting.
Materialize PBR inputs:
The Destination Resolution available in the main_input must be set to a resolution appropriate to the scene as it defines the resolution used for the maps, whereas the resolution defined in the Texture menu of the Substance node is the resolution for the maps outputs.
The Substance menu is somewhat different than if you added a Substance Texture preset. The Texture tab is similar, but the Parameters drop-down list allows you apply settings in a number of different areas and controls the contribution from each map.
See the tooltips (or the Substance B2M Help site) for help with each setting. But here are the descriptions for some of the most important settings.
Global menu
Diffuse | Base Colour 2
Roughness | Glossiness
Relief
And if you texture is to have any sort of metallic material, you need to set the Metallic options. you can do this by providing an optional metallic map. If none is available, you need to key it from the main_input image.
To key main_input to create a Metallic map:
These maps could be reused unto other images. Does not need to be a still frame!