Silent Ember - Procedural Cigarette Material | Substance 3D
Realistic cigarette material created as a fully procedural PBR material in Substance 3D Designer.
The cigarette paper, filter, burn, ash and even the smoke textures all come from a single Designer graph, with no photo textures.
The material builds paper fibers, seams, print rings and small wrinkles, a controllable burn/char mask with glowing ember, a procedural ash layer and smoke alpha cards. Key parameters (burn length, dirt and aging, color variation, random seed) let the same graph generate many different cigarettes for close‑up renders or environment props.
The cigarette and ashtray are simple low‑poly meshes modeled in Autodesk Maya.
The wooden ashtray is textured in Substance 3D Painter, and everything is lit and rendered in Marmoset Toolbag.
No real tobacco brands or logos are used – this is a personal study focused on procedural materials in Substance 3D Designer and realistic PBR rendering.
This material study was inspired by the breakdown from Cem Tezcan (Blockmind): https://www.artstation.com/artwork/L2ZoVk
Any feedback or critique is very welcome!
Main Render.
Final render – fully procedural cigarette material in a simple ashtray scene (Marmoset Toolbag).
Cigarette burning + smoke
Real‑time burn test – procedural cigarette material with animated burn mask and smoke cards.
Close‑up burn only
Close‑up of the burn progression on the cigarette tip – glowing ember and ash breakup.
Texture maps image.
PBR texture outputs from Substance 3D Designer – BaseColor, Roughness, Normal, Height, AO, Emissive, Opacity and Smoke Mask.
Designer graph image.
Substance 3D Designer graph for the fully procedural cigarette and smoke material.
Parameters / Attributes
Material parameter overview – exposed controls for burn length, aging, dirt amount, color variation and random seed.