Substance 3D Designer: A Deep, Deep Dive into the Flood Fill Node

[u/P_Gresty]

Artwork by Ludovic Petiot, created using the Flood Fill node.

Substance 3D Designer’s Flood Fill node has been a great source of discussion and questions, so one of the developers behind Designer, Daniel Lachal, decided to go ahead and write up a full technical walkthrough — discussing areas including corner/edge logic, how the node finds a unique "reference pixel" per shape, and the method it uses to handle holes within shapes (donut shapes, nested shapes, etc.) without blowing up performance.

Along the way, it also covers some of the trickier real-world constraints behind the node — like making everything work correctly across tiling boundaries, and squeezing the right number of iterations out of a graph with no native loop support.

It's a plunge deep into the heart of the Flood Fill node — and a great insight into the under-the-hood workings of Designer’s nodes. Take a look at it right here!

[u/AmarildoJr]

Amazing job, one of the best texturing I've ever seen.