GDC 2025 Session Viewer

Laura Gallagher gives an in depth breakdown of how she coded Loom, a procedural textile generator using Substance Designer which has been developed specifically with game character artists in mind. Tools to create procedural textiles allow artists to fully customize the look and feel of their textiles down to the individual fibers, controlling their spin, breakup, thickness, colors and more.
The talk has two major sections, the first being a crash course in textile anatomy, defining terms like weft, warp, S or Z spin and covering some of the basic weave types like twill and satin. The second section shows how these terms translate directly to code within Substance Designer. In both sections we start from individual fibers, describe their properties and zoom out from there, covering how fibers are spun into singles, how singles spun into yarn and ultimately how yarn is woven into textile.

Takeaway

Attendees learn the fundamentals of textile anatomy, gain new ideas on how to implement interesting textiles in their chosen engine, benefit from the lessons learned to carry out a complex creation project within Substance Designer and ultimately walk away with a deeper appreciation for the breadth and beauty of real-world textiles.

Intended Audience

This talk is for character artists and shader artists of all levels that want to deepen their appreciation of textiles, and for Substance Designer users of all walks looking to benefit from a detailed case-study of how a complex procedural textile generator was created.