Banana Material Study – Ripe to Overripe | Substance Designer, Painter & Unreal Engine

This study focuses on creating a banana material that transitions from a ripe stage to an overripe one, where darker spots and surface changes begin to appear. Bananas are interesting organic materials because their surface color and texture change significantly as they age.
I chose to work on a banana because I noticed there are not many tutorials that focus on this type of material, and I wanted to explore how its aging process could be recreated using a procedural workflow.
The base material was first created in Substance Designer to build the main color variation and spot patterns. After that, the material was exported to Substance Painter where additional hand-painted details were added. The final asset was rendered in Unreal Engine using a real-time lighting setup.
This project was created as part of GAME 722: Materials at SCAD.
All models were created by me.

Most of the references were photographed by myself at a local supermarket. I documented bananas at different stages of ripeness to study the color variation and spot patterns that appear as the fruit ages. These references were used to guide the procedural material created in Substance Designer.