June 2021 is a big month for the Adobe Substance 3D apps. This latest release of Designer features a brand new geometry graph(!), new raytracing nodes and more!
But first let's address the elephant in the room. There is a new icon, a new branding, a -slightly- updated app name, all this because the Substance tools have finalized their transition into the Adobe ecosystem and are now more connected to Creative Cloud.
So what changes for you, as Substance users on Steam?
Not much more than cosmetics actually. You will keep receiving updates at the same time as the Adobe releases, the Linux version is still going strong, Steam sales are still a thing and there is no plan to change any of that. We hope this alleviates some of the fears expressed when Allegorithmic joined Adobe, a bit more than 2 years ago now.
Now about this release, we have some great stuff for you all:
- A new geometry graph allowing you build procedural models from scratch or by assembling pre-built elements. This allows you build many things from pieces of furniture to kitbashed mechanical assemblies, scatter objects on a surface, create plants or buildings, we can't wait to see what you come up with.
- A new default shader with built-in support for advanced material effects such as sheen, clear-coat, anisotropy, advanced subsurface scattering and more.
- New raytraced nodes to generate Ambient Occlusion, shadows, bent normals or irradiance for advanced effects.
- Updated publishing flow to make it easier to generate SBSAR quickly.
As always, for the full list of new features and improvements, head over to our dedicated article.
Finally, we want to emphasize that this is a first step in a new chapter for the Substance tools and the Substance team, and that we're working hard on the next step, with many, many things we're super excited about coming your way in the next year. Thank you all and happy texturing/modeling!