Subway Wall Tiles in Quixel Mixer 2020

The finished product. Know how to make material renders look nice? Please let me know!

I’m working on an abandoned subway terminal scene called “Undergrowth” and I needed a great wall material for a backdrop. Here’s how I made one in Mixer 2020.

I have to say that I relied heavily on Josh Power’s tutorial “Create Grungy Tiles in Mixer 5” to create this material. Its a fantastic 5 minute tutorial that got me super comfortable working with layers and masks.

It’s taken me a few attempts to get comfortable working in Quixel Mixer 2020. All of my previous materials were outdoor/nature based and I couldn’t get anything near looking realistic.

For the “Undergrowth” project, I am building an abandoned subway station and I needed a wall tile to put up on the back wall. Dealing with classic geometry like squares and lines was a lot easier than organic shapes.

I first tried applying a base white swimming pool tile texture to a wall bsp and quickly realized how boring it was. The tiling was predictable, it was flat, and far too clean.

Going through Josh’s tutorial I realized how important it was to sweat the small stuff. The details. Masking away a tile here and there and painting plaster splotches where they used to be. Or raising/lowering and tilting individual tiles to break up the predictability.

Creating imperfections makes things come alive. Because our world is imperfect.

Layers

1. Base layer is Damaged Concrete
2. Next is a tactile sidewalk texture repeated 4x4. This gives the appearance of a grout pattern. Props to Josh on this one.
3. On top of that is wall plaster painted with a splotchy brush where tiles would be removed.
4. Then we’ve got the main attraction raised up a bit and sitting on the plaster. Old Swimming Pool Tiles. 4.1. A few of the tiles are masked out.
5. The same swimming pool tile texture duplicated, with the albedo changed to a black and then masked to look like a strip of black paint.
6. Painted Cracked Concrete Wall is used with the Damaged Concrete again to give some surface blemishes.
7. I struggled the most with the “dirt” layer. I wanted to create something similar to the reference photos, where it looks like exhaust or soot powder is bound to the tiles. I ended up going with a solid black layer with a perlin noise mask. This could be improved.
8. Finally I made two displacement layers (one for up, the other for down) to push some tiles in and out randomly. On the tiles I pushed in, I masked out the dirt layer.

Next Steps

• Figure out how to make a really pretty material render. I see a people using Marmoset Toolbag 3, but I don’t quite want to pay for a license yet. Blender maybe?
• Improve the dirt layer
• Include the material in the Undergrowth project.

This is story is featured on my blog at SharkPillow.com