Substance Designer Spaghetti & Meatballs by Daniel Thiger

A fully narrated, step-by-step tutorial where Daniel Thiger walks you through building a procedural Spaghetti & Meatballs material in Substance Designer. This isn’t just about copying a dish—it’s about understanding how to break down complex, organic surfaces into layered, procedural components. You’ll learn his approach to building structure, adding detail, and keeping your graph clean and flexible.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Build complex, layered materials from simple procedural building blocks.
• Create realistic pasta strands, meatballs, and sauce using Substance Designer nodes.
• Understand Daniel’s approach to breaking down organic surfaces for procedural texturing.
• Develop a clean, modular graph structure for easy iteration and reuse.

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic understanding of Substance Designer interface and node workflow.
• Tools: Substance Designer (any version).
• Hardware: Standard PC capable of running Substance Designer.

📝 Description

This tutorial is a deep dive into procedural thinking with Substance Designer. Daniel doesn’t just show you the final graph—he explains the why behind every node and decision. You’ll see how he starts with simple shapes and builds up complexity through careful layering and blending.

The course focuses on breaking down a real-world subject (a plate of spaghetti) into its core procedural components. You’ll learn how to create the long, twisting pasta strands, the lumpy, textured meatballs, and the glossy, splattered tomato sauce. Each element is built using non-destructive, procedural techniques that you can adapt for any other material.

Daniel’s teaching style is practical and grounded. He shares the exact same workflow he uses for his professional work at studios like Dice and Bungie. By the end, you’ll have a solid understanding of how to approach any complex material with a procedural mindset.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• Artists who want to move beyond basic materials and tackle complex, organic surfaces.
• Substance Designer users looking to improve their node graph organization and workflow.
• Anyone interested in learning procedural food or surface texturing techniques.

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Daniel Thiger is a veteran texture and material artist with 15 years of experience in the gaming industry, having worked at both Dice and Bungie. He is a recognized expert in procedural material creation and has collaborated with Allegorithmic on their Signature Series. He has spoken at GDC 2018 and his work has been featured in 3D Artist, 80lvl, and Marmoset Toolbag. He is passionate about teaching the community how to master Substance Designer from the ground up.

🏁 Final Result

• A fully procedural, high-resolution Spaghetti & Meatballs material ready for use in your own projects.
• A reusable node graph structure that demonstrates a powerful approach to layering and organic surface creation.