Allegorithmic Releases New Substance Designer 6—Material Authoring Tool

Allegorithmic has just released the all new Substance Designer 6, its material authoring software system for 3D professionals working across a range of industries from architectural visualization to gaming and special effects. The new version comes packed with some pretty neat features making version 6 more powerful than ever.

Hot items include the new scan processing tools plus new nodes and 32-bit floating point compositing.

Substance Designer 6—The Details

The new Scan Processing nodes allow users to create accurate, scanned materials from a set of pre-lit photos that the end-user takes (or someone else could take them). The photos can be taken even with a smartphone; what is required is about 4-8 photos are taken of the same surface with varying light angles which can be accomplished with a tripod, LED strip, or even a flashlight. Feed these 4-8 photos into Substance Designer 6 and the scan processor does the rest.

01 – Scan results from new Substance Designer 6.

The filter will cross check the different photos and extract a pure albedo as well as an amazingly detailed normal map or height map. The filter will even work on shiny materials and metals, says Allegorithmic.

There is also a new Smart Auto Tile node which analyzes the features of each channel of the material and finds the best way to cut and stitch together maps that eliminate seams. This Smart Auto Tile node filter adapts to just about any type of material, no matter how complex.

The Curve node allows the user to define a curve profile to remap color data. It is useful for defining height maps. Check out the wood door panel image below for an example.

02 – Anther example of what is possible with the new Substance Designer 6. (Image: Allegorithmic. Artist: Ben Wilson. All rights reserved.)

The Text node filter is clearly about text. It also comes with dedicated filters like glow, drop shadow, and outline. Check out the image below for what it can do. The bakers received 4 new features:

• You can now bake by material/texture set as in Substance Painter, limiting the hassle when your scene contains multiple materials.
• The bake limit has been pushed to 8k (and will be pushed even further in future updates)
• The X/Y ratio can be unlocked for non-uniform (non-square) baking.
• You can (finally) cancel the baking process before it finishes.

The underlying work necessary for these features will open doors for further development around the bakers.

03 – The new Text node in Substance Designer 6 looks very promising. (image: Allegorithmic. Artist: David Nicholis, All rights reserved.)

Finally, Allegorithmic says the new 32-bit compositing is “going to open new doors.” Users can play with the new Panorama Shape node to create their own HDR studio maps. A new Parent Toolbar appears in the UI and provides useful new UX features.

Availability and Pricing

Substance Designer 6 is available now for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Users of Substance Live Indie ($19.90/month) and Substance Live Pro ($99.90/month), who have access to all the latest versions of Substance tools and monthly content downloads, have immediate access to the new release.

Current Substance Designer 5 license holders can upgrade for $75.USD. For new users, Indie licenses are priced at $149.USD while Pro licenses are available for $590.USD.

To learn more about Substance Designer 6 go here now.