Workflow improvements
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When vehicles are displayed at high speed, rotating wheels can produce a stroboscope effect, making motion look unnatural and distracting for drivers. Standard motion blur with fullscreen shaders does not work correctly on rotating wheels, so dedicated blurred wheel models with textures are necessary to preserve realism.
Manually creating these textures in Photoshop is time-consuming, particularly when dealing with full PBR workflows. To solve this, I built a Substance Designer graph that automates the process.
The tool blurs tread and sidewall separately, processes each PBR channel individually to prevent channel contamination and supports multiple blur iterations to represent different stages of velocity.
The automated wheel blur tool significantly reduces manual work while producing realistic motion effects for high-speed vehicles. By preventing distracting stroboscope artifacts and maintaining full PBR fidelity, it enhances visual realism and driver focus in simulation environments.
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