What an atlas is

Atlases are a set of small elements such as rocks, leaves or debris grouped together in one asset. These small elements can then be used individually or can be scatted on top of a material.

Learn more how to separate the elements in an atlas using Substance 3D Designer here

Learn more about how to scatter atlases into a background in the documentation here

Image: "Raspberry and laurel leaves" by Baptiste Manteau (link)

Auto QA

When you upload an atlas on Substance 3D Community Assets, the platform will perform an automatic check to make sure that the asset is working, complete, and does not have any dangerous data.

It checks a few elements:

• The material needs to have a minimum of the following outputs:
  • Base Color
  • Normal
  • Roughness
  • Height

Metallic is expected but not mandatory.

• The output size must be set as dynamic.
• It must be possible to create a render for the material.

Automatic Thumbnail Render

For all atlases uploaded on the platform, the thumbnail is automatically generated during the upload process.

In order to create the displacement, it takes into account the physical size set in the sbsar itself, so don’t forget to set it when you create your material!

It is usually set in centimeters.

More than the physical size itself, what is the most important here for the render is the ratio between the width of the material (x and y) and its height (z).

For a flat parquet material it could be 200 200 0.5 (2 meters wide, half a centimeter between the deepest visible point and the highest one of the material), for a vinyl it could be 25 25 0 (25 cm wide, completely flat), for an old eroded stone wall it could be 150 150 9 etc.