Celtic Ornaments

Project

Recently, I’ve become increasingly fascinated by ornaments. I found myself constantly looking at Art Nouveau patterns, Art Deco motifs, and Celtic ornaments – eventually deciding to focus specifically on the latter. What attracted me most was the intricate knotwork, its strict logic, and its distinctive visual style.

I browsed through a huge number of similar images on Pinterest, and besides the patterns themselves, I also came across some very inspiring artworks (see example below).

In this article, I want to thoroughly break down the process of creating a decorative Celtic ornament and talk about my approach to procedural materials, decorative patterns, and final presentation.

References

The main goal of the project was not simply to create a visually appealing ornamental material, but to achieve the feeling of authentic carved stone with recognisable Celtic motifs, while preserving the readability of forms, relief depth, and material flexibility for further use in environment art.

Besides Pinterest, I also studied the book Celtic Ornament.

I intentionally searched for the most complex and visually interesting patterns in order to challenge myself during the modelling stage.

My goal was to emphasise and enhance the beauty of knotwork assembled into clean, organised patterns. Once I selected several ornaments, I started modelling them – progressing from simple forms to more complex ones.

Below, are examples of small elements from Chris Down’s book Celtic Ornament (2004):

Once you see patterns this mesmerising, it becomes very difficult to resist recreating them in 3D.

Goals

While creating this material, I set out to combine the best aspects of two different pipelines.

Fully procedural generation of complex interwoven knots in Substance Designer requires an enormous number of nodes and often produces artefacts in intersection areas. Manual modelling of every individual element in 3D, on the other hand, provides perfect geometry but sacrifices the advantages of a procedural workflow.

In this case, using Blender was fully justified.

The modelling pipeline itself was fairly straightforward and started with building a flat projection of the ornament based on the reference shape. Here I used the Solidify, Bevel, and Subdivision Surface modifiers.

I usually started with a symmetrical element and modelled only half of it using the Mirror modifier. After applying the modifier, I bent the lines according to the knot structure in order to preserve the logic of the ornament. The resulting element was then duplicated using Array.

Using Mirror was probably the single most important technical consideration to plan ahead for, otherwise a massive amount of work would need to be redone later. Since knots overlap each other, they break local symmetry, so it’s crucial to first create a technically correct shape that can tile seamlessly.

Sometimes during the concept phase, I realised that certain references simply didn’t work well together compositionally. In those situations, I had to redesign them slightly in order to preserve the style and rhythm of the lines while integrating the elements organically into the overall structure.

The main compositional challenge was balancing line thickness between different elements while preventing the ornament from turning into visual noise.

Below is an example – a spiral element from the reference and its modified version for the trim.

Useful tip: if a decorative element only looks good in isolation but gets lost inside the composition, it’s probably too complex.

I created these dragons specifically for a separate render shot. However, when I tried integrating them into the existing pattern composition, a problem became obvious: because of the silhouette shape, fitting the dragons into a circular composition created too much negative space.

To solve this, I exported the negative space silhouette into Photoshop and created an overpaint specifically for that area.

The result turned out unexpectedly successful, which is why this shot eventually became the project’s main presentation image.

Blockout & Composition

At the early stage, I usually create a very rough ornament blockout in order to evaluate:

• Scale
• Rhythm
• Balance between positive and negative space
• Line direction

This example shows one of the intermediate blocking stages where some patterns were already present. Here I analysed how the large focal elements interacted with one another.

I tested many different variations, but ultimately settled on this exact combination because I liked the interaction between the spiral’s three-way symmetry, the rounded four-way central shape, and the straight cross lines on the left side.

For smaller shapes, I created several angular forms.

They help support the focal elements around the edges of the composition. Some of these shapes were also taken from Chris Down’s book mentioned earlier.

Creating the Relief

The Height map is the foundation of materials like these. Almost the entire final appearance depends on the depth of the relief.

I tried to work in layers:

1. Primary forms
2. Secondary relief
3. Small surface chips
4. Surface noise
5. Micro damage

Perfectly clean edges immediately make the material feel “digital,” so it’s important to constantly break up ideal shapes.

I created surface chipping using the following setup.

The key part here was using Curvature Smooth to generate a Convexity mask. After that, the mask was distorted through Slope Blur and subtracted from the main relief.

I combined two different types of deformation and blended them together.

Later on, I added micropores, scratches, and subtle height variations.

It was very important not to overdo the noise and warp deformations in order to preserve the original knot logic and avoid turning the material into visually overloaded noise.

Maintaining the balance between decoration and realism was especially important. If too much damage is added, the ornament loses readability.

Runes

Initially, I had no plans to include runes in the project, so their appearance became more of an experiment.

I decided to take a somewhat “lazy” approach – mostly out of curiosity to see whether I could achieve a high-quality result starting from a fairly low-quality source image.

I found this image online by searching for “runes” and imported it into Designer.

Then I cleaned up the image noise and separated the elements using Flood Fill nodes.

The resulting runes could then easily be scattered using Atlas Scatter.

To transform horizontal lines of text into circular inscriptions, I separated each row individually and adjusted symbol density through the Transform node. After that, I applied Cartesian to Polar.

If you apply Cartesian to Polar directly after Atlas Scatter, the symbols become distorted near the centre.

This way, a single image provided me with a complete set of runes for all of my height maps.

Sun-Faced Figure

I don’t know exactly what artefact this is or which deity it depicts, but I was deeply inspired by its rhythmic pattern and wanted to recreate it as well.

During the process, I decided to improve the original slightly by redirecting the lines connecting the pattern to the face and making the composition feel more coherent.

Doing this directly in 3D turned out to be fairly difficult, so after finishing the ray modelling, I created an overpaint of the facial area in Photoshop.

Then I rebuilt the pattern lines so that they all eventually formed the face as a unified composition.

Yggdrasil Tree

There are many images of this tree on Pinterest. One common feature among most of them is a tree inscribed within a circular silhouette.

I wanted the silhouette to feel as expressive as possible, so I moved away from strict symmetry in the trunk shape and introduced flowing, wave-like lines.

The roots also played a huge role in the silhouette. In many artworks they are nearly absent, even though their visual importance is hard to overestimate – every part of a plant can contribute to the artistic image.

For the tree, I gathered several references to better understand the direction I wanted to pursue. I explored different foliage variations and experimented with trunk and branch shapes – all in search of a form that truly worked visually.

I still have backups from various exploration stages – from large forms down to smaller details.

I also tried building the tree in SpeedTree, but achieving such a precise sculptural form procedurally turned out to be difficult.

Eventually, I started with a curve-based blockout in Blender and gradually refined the detail.

I kept the root-to-canopy mass ratio around 2:3 so the primary focus would remain on the upper portion of the tree.

At first, I attempted to create the canopy using 2D foliage, but quickly realised it wouldn’t provide the volume I needed.

Because of that, I created several separate branch assets and assembled larger branches and canopy fragments from them, distributing them throughout the tree.

I intentionally reduced foliage density in the lower section so the transition between branches and roots would feel more natural.

Color Work

Main Principles:

• Soft transitions
• Minimal saturation
• Variation driven through roughness rather than colour alone
• Emphasis on surface materiality

Key Observations

• Grunge patterns on metal
• Oxidation streaks
• Lack of oxidation on exposed metal edges due to constant friction
• Corrosion eating into the metal surface
• Multiple shades of blue and green within the patina
• Granular oxidation structure

For different bronze shades, I used colours sampled from calibration charts of various metal alloys.

The primary material ended up as a golden-bronze tone, while the additional shades were used as subtle micro-variations.

I paid a lot of attention to oxidation, which gives bronze its characteristic greenish-blue patina. I selected patina colours from references using Gradient Map.

While working on colour and roughness, it was important not to weaken the readability of the main ornament, so I made the shapes slightly brighter and the background darker.

The oxidation mostly appeared in areas with stronger Ambient Occlusion. I also added streak masks inspired by reference materials.

Naturally, roughness values in oxidised areas needed to be higher.

Very often, roughness is what makes a material feel visually “expensive.”

I also tried to avoid overly contrasty albedo values.

Rendering

At the final stage, I usually focus on:

• Readability
• Contrast
• Shape silhouette
• Depth
• Detail balance

At this point, I often take a break and return to the material several hours later – or even the next day. This helps reveal problems that become invisible during long work sessions.

For presentation, I used Marmoset Toolbag.

The primary goal was to emphasise the ornament lines and showcase the height map work.

Some rendering decisions I had:

• A slight camera rotation to break the absolute symmetry of the pattern
• A square crop with an almost fully inscribed circular element
• A minimalist scene without unnecessary effects or distracting objects

The material itself needed to remain the focal point.

I used soft ambient lighting, added a vignette, and highlighted the focal point with a single bright spotlight.

I can’t say this was a perfectly polished render – on the contrary, it was fairly simple. But it successfully accomplished its primary purpose: presenting the material clearly and effectively.

Conclusion

The hybrid pipeline proved to be the optimal solution for creating complex ornamental designs.

As this project demonstrates, the artistic side played a massive role – especially the overpaint work, which helped unify references and finished models into a cohesive composition.

My main advice to fellow artists: don’t try to make absolutely everything procedural when precise geometry is required. A 3D artist shouldn’t become a node fanatic – tools exist specifically to be combined.

The main conclusion I came to during this project is that strong ornaments are built not on the quantity of detail, but on quality of form, rhythm, and proper hierarchy.

Substance Designer provides tremendous freedom for creating materials like these, but ultimately it’s artistic decisions that define the final result.

I hope this article will be useful to anyone interested in decorative ornaments. Thank you for reading.