For those who don’t know the tool: Adobe Substance 3D Painter is a texture painting hub that spits out textures and masks for other DCC apps.

Warp to Geometry, because decals deserve better

Substance 3D Painter has a new option called Warp to Geometry aimed squarely at one of texturing’s most reliable time sinks: projecting decals onto surfaces that refuse to behave. The feature lives as a new toggle in the contextual toolbar. When enabled, decals follow the curvature and topology of the mesh they are projected onto. The stated goal is cleaner results on complex surfaces, including cases where curvature shifts sharply and projection artifacts become obvious.

The practical change is easy to describe. A decal projection that would normally fade at the edges when the surface bends hard can retain its shape instead, with the toggle stopping that edge fade in the before-and-after comparison shown for the feature. If your decal workflow involves anything more dramatic than a flat panel, the point is clear: fewer hand fixes and fewer compromises to keep projected detail readable across tricky shapes.

Viewport post effects step up the lookdev game

Painter now includes additional post-processing effects in its built-in renderer. The intent is to let artists preview assets in the viewport under conditions that are closer to final renders. There are now 10 post effects in total. New options include lens flares and film grain. In other words, the viewport can lean further into presentation and context, so you can judge a surface with more of the usual render seasoning already applied.

This is still a preview context, not a final render pipeline. It is a way to iterate with more of the finishing layer visible while you paint, adjust, and evaluate. As always with shiny new viewport tricks, test new tools and innovations before using them in production.

Flatten layers, export fast, keep the editability

A new Flatten action has been added inside the layer stack. The workflow improvement here is about speed and convenience, especially when you want to get something out of your stack without committing to the full export pipeline. The flow described is simple. You can group layers and merge them to create a flattened copy. That flattened copy can be exported to disk. The payoff is a quicker path for getting textures or masks out of Painter so you can test them in other DCC applications, without having to go through the full export pipeline.

Crucially, flattening does not have to mean losing your ability to keep iterating. The original group can be saved as a Smart Material, making it possible to edit it in future. That is a useful balance for anyone who wants fast outputs for testing while keeping the layered logic intact for later adjustments. This is also the kind of change that quietly speeds up team communication. A flattened export is easier to pass around, and a saved Smart Material keeps the authoring side reusable for the next asset that needs the same treatment.

The end result is less friction when you need quick texutres for a test, while still keeping the layered work ready for a more considered pass later.

Project setup tweaks and a nod to USD workflows

Painter 12 also updates parts of project setup and iteration. The New project dialog has been reordered to make key settings quicker to access. There is also a new checkbox for reimporting the project mesh in the Project configuration dialog. Taken together, these are small adjustments that aim to reduce the number of clicks and the time spent hunting for the setting you always use.

Beyond that, there are smaller feature updates and bugfixes, including to USD workflow. Even when changes like these do not grab headlines, they often show up as day-to-day time saved, especially on projects where geometry keeps evolving and the texturing side needs to keep pace with mesh updates.

Platforms, licensing, and the money part

Substance 3D Painter 12.0 is available for Windows 11, Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 8.6 and 9.2 or later, Ubuntu 22.04 or later, and macOS 12.0 or later.

Perpetual licenses are available via Steam and cost $199.99.

The software is also available via Creative Cloud based 3D and AR subscriptions. Substance 3D Texturing subscriptions cost $24.99 per month or $249.99 per year. Substance 3D Collection subscriptions cost $59.99 per month or $599.99 per year. That gives teams and individuals a choice between a one time buy through Steam or subscription access through the 3D and AR plans, depending on how they prefer to budget tools and how often they expect to stay on the latest major versions.

If you are planning to fold these features into an existing pipeline, keep the usual discipline. Validate the new projection behavior on your typical asset types, check that flattened exports match what downstream expects, and confirm viewport effects do not mislead your approvals when compared to your final render targets. And yes, do a quick proejct side-by-side on something ugly, curved, and full of detail. The tools are clearly aimed at those moments.

The post Adobe releases Substance 3D Painter 12 with decal warp first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

SKAP is an online service built to boost skin detail for digital heads used in VFX and games. The workflow starts from what most teams already have: a head model plus textures in the 2K to 8K range. From that input, SKAP generates 16K textures aimed at pushing pores and fine wrinkles into the kind of resolution that makes shader graphs feel seen.

The core outputs are displacement and cavity. Normal maps are also part of the offering for game engine use in Unity and Unreal Engine. Haemoglobin and melanin maps are available as additional outputs, aimed at supporting more accurate blood flow and pigmentation patterns.

What you feed it

SKAP takes two main ingredients: a head model file with suitable topology, resolution, and UV layout, plus a 2K to 8K texture, either diffuse or displacement. An optional ID mask can be uploaded to identify non-skin areas of the head, with the claim that it improves output quality. Not independently verified at press time.

UV layouts for MetaHuman assets in Unreal Engine and scans from 3D Scan Store are part of the compatibility story.

The maps that come back out

Displacement and cavity are the headline outputs, intended to drop into familiar surfacing and render pipelines. Multi-channel displacement is part of the feature set, splitting low-, medium-, and high-frequency detail across RGB channels Normal maps can also be generated for real-time work in Unity and Unreal Engine. Haemoglobin and melanin maps round out the optional set for skin shading workflows that want dedicated pigment signals. On the SKAP homepage, same-day turnaround and manual calibration by an in-house team are presented as marketing claims.

The handoff is blunt and practical. After the sculpt is finalised, the export list is a basemesh plus an 8K displacement texture,. A few craft notes from the trenches: It suggests storing a morph target before detailing, pushing detail a little stronger than usual, then blending intensity back with the morph brush at low settings to control where the detail lands. It also recommends setting alpha mid value to 50 to help avoid an overly bumpy look when dragging alphas.

Preview before you commit, because rendering is a snitch

Previews as a sanity check: A 2D map preview helps review micro-detail distribution and coherence before applying it back onto the 3D model. A 3D result view supports the same idea: validate the signal, then decide how it fits the look.

Pricing in human numbers

SKAP uses a credit model. A base set of displacement and cavity outputs uses 40 credits. Normal, haemoglobin, and melanin outputs add an additional 5 to 15 credits. Each credit has a base cost of 1 US dollar, with discounts available for bulk purchases.

Where it lands in production reality

In practical terms, SKAP is pitched as a middle move: take an existing head, feed it in, pull back higher-resolution skin detail, and keep rolling without booking a full scan job. The documentation includes guides for using the outputs in Mari and in Maya with Arnold.

As always, new tools and innovations should be tested before use in production. Run it through your own shaders, your own lighting, and your own deadlines, then decide whether it earns a place in the wokrflow.

https://skap.texturing.xyz/

The post Texturing XYZ puts SKAP online, pores included first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: The PBR Asset Browser by Can Of Textures is a material library sold via Superhive for use inside Blender’s Asset Browser, targeting Cycles and Eevee users who want ready-built surfaces.

The 5000 PBR Asset Browser packages more than 5000 physically based rendering materials into a Blend file configured for Blender’s native Asset Browser. The library is organised into 13 categories including bricks, wood, fabric, metal, plastic and tiles.

Each material includes standard PBR maps. You’ll get Base Color, Roughness, Normal and Displacement maps, with Metallic and Opacity maps where required. Textures are supplied at 2K resolution in JPG format.

The workflow is deliberately simple. Users extract the archive, open the provided Blend file, and access the materials via drag-and-drop in their own scenes. No addon is required. No external asset manager is referenced.

The materials are compatible with Blender’s Cycles and Eevee render engines. In addition to the prepared Blend file, the pack includes individual texture folders, allowing manual setup in other tools such as Unreal Engine and Unity.

Organisation into category folders is presented as a way to keep Blender responsive by limiting the number of visible assets at a time. The materials are offered under a GPL licence, with the product page stating both personal and commercial use are permitted.

At the time of writing, the complete version is shown on Superhive in a range of approximately USD 18.75 to USD 25 depending on discounts. No subscription necessary!

The value proposition is scale and convenience rather than new shading technology. More than 5000 2K PBR materials, pre-organised for Blender’s Asset Browser, at an indie-friendly price point. As always, new tools and libraries should be tested before deployment in production environments.

https://superhivemarket.com/products/5000-pbr-asset-browser

The post 5000 PBR materials, zero node wrangling first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Quixel / Epic has officially discontinued Quixel Mixer and published a final version as an offline application. Quixel describes this release as the last one and states that there will be no further updates. The same announcement also makes clear that the software is provided without official support, which is the polite corporate way of saying: archive it now, because nobody is coming back with a hotfix later.

What was Quixel Mixer?

For anyone who has not used it: Quixel Mixer is a standalone material and texture authoring tool for building PBR texture sets via layers, masks, and blends, typically used for game assets, VFX props, and environment work. In a pipeline it sits in the “author texture maps for a mesh” slot, exporting standard texture maps that can be consumed by DCC tools and renderers. The discontinuation does not change what the tool is good at, it changes the expectations around maintenance and long-term compatibility.

How to get it?

Quixel states the final offline build is available via Quixel account login, and secondary coverage notes an installer option to download free Mixer asset packs, described as including 800+ assets. Older Mixer versions remain downloadable, but with no guarantee they will keep working. For production, this boils down to a familiar rule: if Mixer is still part of your workflow, lock the installer, lock the asset packs, and treat the whole thing like legacy software that must be reproducible rather than “kept current”.

The post Quixel Mixer dead, final offline version released first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Unity is a real time engine used for games, virtual production and interactive content. Polybrush was its in editor mesh and vertex painting tool. The new alternative is designed as a Unity editor extension for painting and modifying meshes directly inside the engine.

RealBlend Mesh Painting and Creation is an editor extension available via the Unity Asset Store. It is designed to provide mesh editing and painting workflows directly inside the Unity editor, reducing the need to round trip to external DCC applications for certain environment art tasks. RealBlend supports vertex painting, mesh sculpting and procedural geometry creation within Unity.

Unity deprecated PolyBrush, so I made a better one :) – Realblend
byu/AdamNapper inUnity3D

Vertex painting and layer blending

RealBlend enables vertex colour painting on meshes inside the scene view. Vertex colour painting stores colour data per vertex, allowing artists to drive shader blending, material variation or masks without additional texture maps. The tool supports multi layer blending across Unity’s render pipelines. Layer limits differ by pipeline. Up to five layers are supported in HDRP and up to three layers in URP and the Built in pipeline, according to the product description.

Sculpting and mesh editing

In addition to painting, RealBlend includes sculpting tools such as move, push and smooth. These tools operate directly on mesh geometry inside the Unity editor, allowing artists to adjust forms without exporting to modelling software. Because vertex density determines sculpting resolution, practical results will depend on mesh topology.

Procedural mesh creation

RealBlend also includes procedural mesh creation tools to generate planes, curved walls and custom surfaces procedurally. This positions the tool as more than a paint overlay system. It can be used to create base geometry and then modify or paint it in the same environment. The exact parameter controls for procedural generation are not described in detail on the Asset Store page.

Additional utilities

Along are utilities for mesh baking and a mask packer for RGBA maps. Mask packing typically combines multiple greyscale textures into different colour channels of a single texture to optimise memory usage. Procedural noise functions are also referenced for creating dirt and wear effects. These can be used to introduce variation without external texture authoring.

Pipeline compatibility and pricing

RealBlend is listed as compatible with the Built in Render Pipeline, URP and HDRP. The product is distributed through the Unity Asset Store. Pricing is 20€, currently discounted to 14.40€ (may vary by region and promotion – I don’t understand those pricing policies at all anymore, so you should consult the Asset Store listing for current pricing and licence terms. Do that HERE) No subscription requirement is indicated on the product page.

Production considerations

In editor mesh painting and sculpting can accelerate environment art iteration, particularly for blending materials, adding surface variation or shaping greybox geometry. However, tools that modify mesh data directly inside the engine should be evaluated for asset stability, version control behaviour and compatibility with existing shader setups.

As always, new tools and editor extensions should be validated in controlled conditions prior to deployment in active projects.

// https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/painting/realblend-mesh-painting-creation-352952

The post RealBlend brings mesh painting back to Unity first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.