Archive notice: This article was originally published on 18 December 2019. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The new Adobe Substance 2019.3 release is out and, alongside a new brush engine, brings features and news for long-announced projects such as automatic UV unwrapping, cross-UV tile painting and more. The most important changes at a glance:
Substance Painter 2019.3 Highlights
Brush Engine: Photoshop Brushes, Settings and More
With the new release, Substance Painter has reworked the brush engine with help from Adobe’s Photoshop team. Native support for Photoshop brushes is the first addition: all Photoshop brushes can be imported as ABR files.
Alongside this change, further features have also been added to the painting tool. These include…
- Alpha Blending Mode “Lighten” for better opacity layering while painting
- Roundness and Flip support as a new Substance Alpha
- Brush Preview for visualising the cursor based on the selected brushes (full preview, outline and crosshair)
- Spacing and Position Jitter minimum and maximum values increased to 1000, as well as new “Axis” and “Distribution” parameters
Anarigami: Auto UVs Feature
Originally known as “Project Anorigami”, Substance Painter now includes a UV unwrapping feature. While only previews existed until now, you can use the feature yourself after the update, even though it is currently still marked as beta. The tool automatically creates UVs for imported 3D models if they are missing. The function handles seams, unwrapping and packing the UV islands.
New Content: Filters, Brush Presets and More
The new 2019.3 version contains new filters for oil paint, watercolour and comic effects. There are also 18 new brush presets, two new tool presets named “Gouache Dense” and “Gouache Faded”, new alphas and a new “UV Checker” generator. This can be used to analyse a mesh’s UV coordinates, as in other applications.
UDIM Painting: Beta Registration
Also long in development: cross-UDIM painting, which lets you work seamlessly across multiple UV tiles in Painter. The feature is not yet included with the current release, however. Instead, the first 500 artists can register via this link to try the feature.
All changes on the Substance website and in the release notes
