Installation and Compatibility
The utility nodes process the VersaTile data outputs from the pattern generators to generate a wide range of maps and effects useful when taking your material through to completion. If you’re familiar with working with the Flood Fill nodes, they can be thought of as being mostly very similar to nodes like Flood Fill to Random Color/Grayscale, Flood Fill to Gradient, Flood Fill to BBox Size, Flood Fill to Position, and so on. In some cases they’re just extracting data into separate, more usable maps. In other cases they are doing something more complex, like mapping materials to the tiles, generating color sequences from the index maps, bluring an input in local tile space to avoid bleeding from neighbouring tiles etc. I’ve basically tried to think of everything a user might want to do with this data and made a node for it.
The nodes are all documented in the navigation panel to the left, but I will go over a few of the more powerful and less self-explanitory ones here.
The jewels in the crown for this system when it comes to easily adding detail and natural variety to your tiles are the MT VT Mapper nodes. It is made up of 4 nodes:
All of which are very useful when building your final material, but the material version plays a big role because it allows you to easily map any tileable base material to the tiles’ surface and adds randomness to the placement of the sampled details. It has a range of parameters for controlling the amount of randomness applied to positions, rotations, scale, UV flipping etc. The sampled details are also oriented to the tiles’ local rotations, which is crucial when it comes to mapping directionally dependent details, such as wood grain.
Oak base material’s Base Color map.
Oak base material’s Base Color map after mapping to a mansion weave pattern using MT VT Mansion Weave and the MT VT Mapper.
The MT VT Index Sequencer nodes are available in both color and grayscale versions and can be used to create a sequence of colors mapped along a range of index values. All index types are supported. See Pattern Structure and Index Types for more information about the different types of index maps included in the VersTile data outputs. A user specified number of colors are arranged sequentially along the selected index type, with a few type-specific parameters for manipulating the index values and the ability to set the number of times a color occurs before the next color begins. The node also provides a Repeat Count output that represents the size of the sequence before it repeats again. This value can be used in conjuction with the Guarantee Multiples Of parameter provided with each pattern generator node to ensure that both the tile pattern and the color sequence are taken into account and tileability is maintained.
![Weave Index map of MT VT Herringbone. Guarantee Multiples Of = [16, 16].](https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/54fb4b89-d95a-4c82-9974-b8c87d1b1118/c2576974-b7d7-4b12-a27f-e7e7da5bd017/Herringbone_weaveIndex.jpg)
Weave Index map of MT VT Herringbone. Guarantee Multiples Of = [16, 16].
![A 16x16 Weave Index sequence that emulates a houndstooth fabric pattern. Generated using MT VT Index Sequencer. Index Source = Weave Index, Weave Pattern Directions = 2, Number of Colors (both directions) = 4, Color [1-4] Count = 4.](https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/54fb4b89-d95a-4c82-9974-b8c87d1b1118/d2396da8-7b79-4269-871b-3e6b35df8009/Herringbone_houndstoothPattern.jpg)
A 16x16 Weave Index sequence that emulates a houndstooth fabric pattern. Generated using MT VT Index Sequencer. Index Source = Weave Index, Weave Pattern Directions = 2, Number of Colors (both directions) = 4, Color [1-4] Count = 4.
The MT VT Sampler nodes are available in both color and grayscale versions and can be used to sample from a map input. It can be set to sample by tile positions to essentially flood a maps values to fill each tile, or it can sample by one of the provided grid index types. This sampling mode can be used as an alternative to MT VT Index Sequencer for applying a specific pattern to the tiles colors. There are a number of ways to create a valid color pattern map input, but the following method is what I would recommend:
Create a new document in the image editor of your choice and make it a size that is the nearest power of 2 size that will fit your pattern into. So if your pattern is for example 6x9 tiles, then your map should be 8x16 pixels in size.
Simply paint the desired colors into the each pixel of the map. If your map size is bigger than your pattern size, make sure your pattern is positioned in the top left of the map.
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Remember that each pixel will represent a different tile and will be sampled depending on its Grid Index, so parameters such as Offset Repetition Mode will affect how the map is sampled.
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Save out the map and import it into your Substance Designer graph to be used as the MT VT Sampler input and set Sample By to Grid Index, and Repeat Size to the size of your pattern, [6, 9] for the example from above. With Power of 2 Compensation set to True and your pattern generator node’s Guarantee Multiples Of parameter set to match you pattern size, then your pattern should be correctly mapped to your tiles with perfect repetition.
![MT VT Hexagon grid index. Offset Repetition Mode = Alternating and Guarantee Multiples Of set to [6, 6].](https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/54fb4b89-d95a-4c82-9974-b8c87d1b1118/159626f8-fd96-415b-9b5f-288b5315cda2/Hexagon_gridIndex.png)
MT VT Hexagon grid index. Offset Repetition Mode = Alternating and Guarantee Multiples Of set to [6, 6].
6x6 pattern stored in an 8x8 bitmap.
![Result of the MT VT Sampler Color node with the previous image as its input. Sample By = Grid Index, Repeat Size = [6, 6], and Power of 2 Compensation = True.](https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/54fb4b89-d95a-4c82-9974-b8c87d1b1118/a60a2ca5-1ee8-46e4-befa-a086dee770b0/Hexagon_patternOutput.png)
Result of the MT VT Sampler Color node with the previous image as its input. Sample By = Grid Index, Repeat Size = [6, 6], and Power of 2 Compensation = True.
The pattern generators all include an edge distance map for all tiles in the pattern and this map can be extracted using MT VT to Edge Distance. This effect can also be achieved using the standard distance node and the Opacity output from the pattern generators, but this stops working in the case that Joint Width is set to 0 and tiles are therfore flush to each other. This node guarantees predictable results regardless of joint widths.
MT VT Arenberg Parquet edge distances.