Material Nodes Overview

The Blend node blends or mixes two separate inputs with a user-defined blend mode and an optional opacity mask. It is the most useful node in Designer; almost any graph that you build will use this node. It's similar to having two layers above one another in Painter or Photoshop, blending them with the mode of the top layer.

The Uniform Color node returns a solid, user-defined color or value. It is a simple node that is used often as a starting point for adding color or creating specific values. Switch this node to grayscale if using it to output a shade of gray. Using the grayscale color mode improves performance and makes graphs easier to edit.

The Bitmap node is used to either import a bitmap into your graph or to create a bitmap for use with the 2D painting tools. Whenever you need a bitmap file in your graph, this is the node you should use. You can either create the node from scratch, or by dropping a bitmap in a supported format into the graph view.

The Levels node lets you remap the tones of an input by setting input and output remap factors. The interface of the levels node is similar to the levels feature in Photoshop. The levels node also has a Histogram preview in the parameters.

The levels node is one of the core nodes in Substance Designer, and is often used to remap and adjust values in a graph, as it provides the most precise and accurate interface for changing values.

An Output node is a special node that serves as a termination point for your graphs. Output nodes don't perform any processing on their input. The Output node has only a single input slot that automatically adapts to either color or grayscale. Output nodes have no parameters, instead they have attributes that help organize your assets.

This node generates one of the most basic, but most useful noises, with soft, simple random blobs at a customizable scale. It has some extra controls for creating looping movements within the noise. If you're not sure what noise to use, gaussian noise is often a good choice.

The tile generator node is one of the most advanced nodes in the library. Master the tile generator and you will be able to create most patterns with it. The tile generator is highly customizable and can be used in almost any graph, even graphs that don't need patterns. Adjust the parameters and use custom shapes to create limitless variations.

Histogram scan is a simple node that lets you remap the contrast and brightness of input grayscale images. It can be used to "grow" and "shrink" masks in dynamic ways. You can use this as an alternative to the levels atomic node, as it is often easier to use.

This node takes a height map as input and generates an ambient occlusion map from it. It uses Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion (HBAO), an advanced algorithm. You can use it to create high-quality AO maps from procedural height maps. A Ray Tracing Ambient Occlusion (RTAO) node is also available but is more computationally expensive.

Blur HQ does a high-quality gaussian blur on its input, just like the filter in Photoshop. It is much higher quality than the standard atomic "Blur" node, but also slower to calculate. You can customize the blur's quality level using a parameter in this node.