Archive notice: This article was originally published on February 15, 2017. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Substance Designer from Allegorithmic is now known to most people as an efficient authoring tool for creating textures and materials for 3D models. And Allegorithmic is evidently not satisfied with the status quo. Two months after the 5.6 update, Substance Designer is now available in version 6.0. Here we briefly present the new features:
Overview of the New Features
Alongside workflow improvements and 32-bit support for creating HDR textures, version 6.0 has added interesting new nodes and filters.
Scan Process
Textures photographed several times with 4 to 8 different exposure angles (with an LED) can be fed into the software with a scan process. By combining several nodes, albedo and normal/height maps are generated automatically. The subsequent auto-tiling is also practical. After the scan process in Substance Designer, you can therefore continue working in your pipeline with a fully prepared material.
Curve and Text Nodes
With the new nodes, you have the ability to precisely influence colour information within your texture maps. You can now also integrate dynamic text into your textures.
Allegorithmic has also raised the bake limit to 8K and promises to expand the whole thing even further in future updates. You can read the complete release notes here. Anyone who wants to familiarize themselves with the features of the new version can, incidentally, also view free training from Allegorithmic here.
Download and Costs
Substance Designer 6.0 is available in several variants and packs. As with almost any software, there is a free 30-day trial version. The Indie licence for Substance Designer starts at €141. With the Substance Live subscription, you receive the tool together with Substance Painter and B2M for €19 per month. For an overview of prices and licences, this way.
Allegorithmic in DP
We will of course keep you up to date on news about Allegorithmic’s software. In addition, in our DP issue 03 : 16, there is a free workshop on Substance Designer that you can download here. In DP issue 05 : 15, we also showed how you can decorate a fire hydrant with the tool. (And if Allegorithmic keeps going like this, we probably will not stop looking at the tool for you for the time being either.)
