Today, the Substance team unveils the first Substance Painter update of 2019, reconfirming its commitment to artists of all skill levels through a host of new features requested by users. Leveraging Substance’s unmatched R&D, today’s new features will help speed up the creation process by utilizing dynamic painting, material blending, real-time sculpting and more, all without sacrificing quality.
After debuting a prototype at Substance Days at GDC, displacement mapping and tessellation are now both available directly through the Substance Painter realtime viewport and in Iray. With the addition of tessellation and displacement, artists now sculpt their mesh and textures at an infinitesimal level, chiseling art in real-time.
Today’s update also introduces “Dynamic Strokes,” a new way to paint complex materials and environments. With Dynamic Strokes, brushes evolve over time to increase the uniqueness of a 3D asset, using an artist’s own parametric directions to guide it. Rather than painting each individual leaf and branch of an ivy vine, placing a single ivy asset will see the vegetation expand into lush overgrowth. A footprint in the sand can quickly become a trail walking off into the distance, and that’s just the start. Dynamic Strokes can help to create manicured patterns or randomly placed expansion, all within set parameters. Time cues can also be factored in, helping brushes to fade out, change color and morph depending on how long an artist has been painting. The new feature ships with 20 preset assets, and artists are encouraged to create their own.
Along with the Dynamic Strokes, the update also brings a simple way to blend and layer materials using height data using the “Compare Mask” effect. Artists can now compare the content of the current layer they are working on with the previous layer, then blend the two. This works with any channel in an artist’s texture set, and when paired with the “Seamless Material” template, can create tileable environments faster than ever before.
“2019 is going to be a big year for Substance Painter. We are full steam ahead on development, and this first update is a sign of our continued ambition,” said Jeremie Nogur, Director of Strategy Entertainment. "The new update delivers on requests by industry leaders, from games to product design, as well as our indie and hobbyist community."
Additional features include:
- New Projection Modes – Spherical and Planar projections have been added, expanding the options for the Fill layers; Decal movement has been simplified as well.
- Radial Symmetry – The Symmetry tool now features a radial option, making it easier than ever to create new geometric shapes, including complex spirographs.
- Layer Stack – Photoshop-like Eyeballs are now available in the layer stack, so artists can easily turn layers on and off.
- Texture Set List – Users can now select and change the resolution of multiple texture sets at once.
- Channels List – Users can now press the Alt key and click on a channel to single it out, then click it again to reactivate all channels.
- Dithering Override – In response to a request from users, the option to override dithering has been added.
- New Content – New effects, alphas, filters, materials and two new environment maps have been added.
The Substance Painter update is available now at no cost to Substance subscribers.
Pricing/Availability
The new update to Substance Painter is available today. Following the 30-day trial period, individual users will be able to subscribe to the Substance Indie or Pro plans. Substance Painter is also available for individual-license purchase, which includes 12 months of maintenance. Subscriptions to Substance Indie cost $19.90/month; Pro plans cost $99.90/month. Enterprise and education pricing is available upon request. Students and teachers can request a license at no cost.
