InstaMat might be the future!
Over the past few days, I started experimenting with InstaMAT, a node-based material creation tool similar to Substance Designer.
To get familiar with the workflow, I followed a Substance Designer tutorial and recreated an ornamental fabric pattern. The goal wasn’t just to copy the result, but to understand how the workflow translates over from Designer to Instamat for these kinds of materials that are heavily reliant on very specific shapes and blends.
Why InstaMAT?
I decided to try InstaMAT because it offers a node-based workflow for procedural materials, similar to Substance Designer, but with a free license available. Another big reason to get into it was the fact that it combines several workflows together in one place- asset texturing, element graphs for procedural texturing, and even material layering. It essentially has what it takes to replace Substance Painter, Substance Designer, and Quixel Mixer, and become your one and only go-to standard when it comes to any texture work whatsoever for your games or CG work.
Since material creation is an important part of environment art, especially for reusable assets and trim sheets, I wanted to get more comfortable with procedural texturing via node based workflows, so I could author any textures I need from scratch.
Learning the Workflow
Coming from a more traditional texturing approach, working in a new piece of software felt a bit overwhelming at first. But things went smoothly after the initial learning curve.
Some of the key concepts I focused on were:
- Breaking patterns into simple shapes
- Using masks to control different parts of the material
- Layering details gradually instead of trying to build everything at once
- Reusing nodes and blending them in different ways
Building the Fabric Pattern
The material consists of two main parts:
Base Fabric
The base fabric was created using:
- noise patterns for subtle variation
- directional warping to simulate fabric flow
- height information to give it a woven look
This helped create a surface that doesn’t feel flat, even before adding the ornamental details.
Ornamental Border
The decorative strip was built using:
- repeated shapes arranged in a pattern
- masks to separate gold and colored elements
- height blending to give the pattern a slightly embossed look
This part was especially interesting because small adjustments in spacing and scale made a big difference in how clean the pattern looked.
Breakdown
To better understand the material, I broke the graph into a few main sections: thread detail, fabric base, ornamental pattern, and final blending.
Thread and Base Detail
The base fabric starts with a simple shape that gets refined using blur and blending to create a soft thread-like form. This is then combined with directional noise to introduce subtle variation and simulate the irregularity of woven fibers.
Using height information early on helped define how light interacts with the surface later when generating normals and ambient occlusion.
Pattern Construction
The ornamental elements are built using simple shapes like circles and gradients, which are then combined and transformed to form repeating patterns.
I separated the pattern into smaller components:
- circular disc patterns
- crescent-like shapes
- repeating borders
These were then tiled and blended together to create a more complex design. Breaking the pattern into smaller parts made it easier to control spacing, scale, and alignment.
Fabric and Ornament Integration
Once the base fabric and ornamental patterns were ready, they were blended together using masks and height-based blending.
Some key steps here included:
- using masks to isolate different material regions
- blending height maps to give the ornament a slightly raised feel
- adding subtle noise to break uniformity
The goal was to make the ornament feel like it sits naturally on top of the fabric rather than looking pasted on.
Normals, Roughness, and Final Output
The final stage involved generating the PBR maps:
- Normal map from the height information to define surface detail
- Roughness map to control how light interacts with different parts of the material
- Base color with slight variations to avoid flatness
Combining these maps helped give the material more depth and made the fabric feel more believable under lighting.
What I Learned
This small exercise helped me understand a few important things:
- Procedural materials are all about breaking problems into smaller steps, just like when you're modeling and assembling a 3D environment. That's why we have modular kits.
- Reusability is a huge advantage — parts of the graph can be reused in other materials
- Even complex patterns are often built from very simple nodes combined together
- Iteration is fast once the graph is set up properly
Thoughts on InstaMAT
So far, InstaMAT feels like a solid alternative for procedural material creation as well as asset texturing. It can replace both Substance Painter and Substance Designer for you.
It has:
- a familiar node-based workflow
- support for common PBR outputs
- enough flexibility to recreate Substance Designer-style materials
I still have a lot to explore, but it seems like a good tool for building materials for real-time environments.
Final Thoughts
This was a small study, but it was a useful step toward improving my material workflow.
Going forward, I want to:
- create more materials from scratch
- build materials specifically for environment use (walls, floors, props)
- integrate these materials into Unreal Engine scenes
Overall, this was a good introduction to procedural material creation, and I’m looking forward to exploring it further. You can (and should) get Instamat for yourself, it might be the missing piece in your pipeline, use this link: InstaMat website
My ArtStation: link