Substance is now Adobe Substance 3D

ICYMI: https://substance3d.adobe.com/magazine/discover-the-new-adobe-substance-3d/


More info + extensive FAQ:

• https://www.substance3d.com/

Additional info & details:

• https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/3d-augmented-reality.html

It's good that they keep the Steam licenses intact/available.

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For anybody who really hates Adobe but needs a solid 3d texturing/baking app, try out Marmoset Toolbag 4. It is reasonable price, non-subscription, lightweight but powerful program. Perfect for small teams that won't benefit from things like smart materials as much.

( i have both and personally dont have anything against adobe, but i know some do. I use marmoset 99% of the time these days just cause its faster and gets the job done)

 

Not sure why they couldn't just leave things alone, it's been like what - 2 years since adobe bought them out? Having to go create new subscriptions and such just sucks.

 

Armorpaint has also come a long way and is free if you're willing to build it yourself.

 

Adobe killed Fuse before, so....

 

Sigh...
I am not usually one comment or complain about this kinda stuff... but Adobe has been killing things I loved for many years now. They buy stuff, get bored or don't know how to market it and... its gone. Freehand, Fireworks, Flash, Director/Shockwave, etc.

 

Yeah, they should just stick to their Photoshop and Acrobat Reader. Leave other things alone lol.
I knew from the very start Adobe was eventually going to pull their hand and finally take control of Substance. But hey I guess money talks and BS walks so Substance owners saw big $$ signs and obliged to the buyout lol.

But lets hope Adobe after the years of transition actually can stick with it.
It is nice to see Wes is still part of the team, so we'll see I suppose.

 

I still quite don’t understand how no one has caught up to photoshop yet, it has been stale for so many years it’s not funny, it is time that Adobe gets its comeuppance.

Affinity is sort of trying but there are too many awkward parts in its UI.

 

Yeah it beats me why as well. Photoshop is all a money grab. I mean yeah it has some really great compatibility for tablets and such as much tablet drivers are optimized moreso with photoshop than other paint programs.

But aside from that, not sure why a true competitor doesn't come along. Perhaps it's harder than it looks.

 

well, this is a bucketload of problems for us, licensing-wise.

Not that intact...

"You will get free updates on Steam up to the end of 2021"

 

To be honest I don't see how any of this is a problem.

It seems to me, for existing customers nothing will change until they want to change subscription or want new subscription. And even the "new" subscription is the same as the old one: $19.99 for the same three apps.

Am I missing some crucial information?

 

No Its all fine, not sure what all the commotion is about. As a substance indie subscriber my plan is intact, and the equivalent plan from adobe is same price with same features.

Adobe have added a bunch of great features in these releases, and additionally people saying they will "kill" the app, need to remember that adobe were on the board for substance for years, before aquisition and had major influence. They have owned substance for a while nowwere collororating with them on future plans which led to here, and now have added features, and are adding even more with the modeler coming up.

I get it, adobe have killed a lot of products, but not all aquisitions stay alive, thats the case in every industry. Lets see where they take it, before assuming its going to end badly.

And after all as many have said, lots of free alternatives if unhappy. Armor paint, quixel mixer, etc.

 

Ive now had updated information which resolves most of our issues, I think (which were related to education licensing, and having about 6 different 'types' of license when you factor in the different Substance/AdobeCC versus student/institution/student-at-institution scenarios we actually have)

 

Acrobat Reader genuinely has not been worth it for nearly a decade now. It was already on its last legs then and it was effectively meaningless even just a couple years in the browser plugin space, while the form filling space had been handled by foxit for ages.

The only time it really becomes an issue is when somebody tries to access some rare part of the pdf spec from like 2003 or whatever.

 

Those are only really substitutes for Substance Painter, though. There's still no real substitute for Substances.

 

Substances are just adaptive materials, so yeah there are tons of things that offer the same features. They just dont call them "substances" in other packages.

Besides, who actually loads substances as in .sbar themselves into engines these days? They are terrible for performance and 99% of the time will look the same but have better performance, when baked out as maps and used in a shader properly as they are meant to be

At which point you have tons of offerings that do the same

 

I missed that though. It was very convenient for me as I am very far from an artistic person. It was great just adjusting some sliders in the Unity Editor and on build it baked itself out to a material.
When they removed it, I felt the same as an artist would experience that Unity is removing all visual scripting offerings from the unityverse.
The substance plug-in was my visual scripting.

 

Not sure what you mean by adaptive; they're fully procedural, but that's not really my point, which was that Substances are pretty much the defacto standard for procedural materials, across pretty much most of the content creation packages, as well as game engines.

 

Cold indifference?

 

Thats just semantics. Saying "fully procedural" is no different than a material that adapts, through procedures etc, to the surface/model at hand. Its the same thing, I dont think on an international forum it really matters to be that pedantic about choice of words But in case it was not clear, yes I meant prodedural materials (Although if we are being pedantic, I should point out not all substances are procedural. Some are some are not - this is even pointed out on substance source Hence my choice of words originally )

Regarding your comment on them being the standard, thats absolutely the case they are - I agree, just like photoshop is the standard. Hence why adobe bought them. People looking for alternate software, can do so with the suggestions, but if people are hoping to suddenly get an alternative to an industry standard then think again. It takes a lot of money and time to shift that, and its unlikely to come around anytime soon at the same quality level.

Otherwise adobe would have bought that instead of substance

 

Cheers. Ive honestly never come across the term before, they've been 'procedural' textures or materials to me since the late 90s.

 

Thats fair enough! I am always surprised to learn what people call things in other countries/companies/industries, I work on a team with people from 20 countries all working remote, so a lot of varying terms get thrown around for the same thing all the time

 

Yeah, but it has always been like that. A new version comes out every year and you can either upgrade to the new version or stay on the version that you've purchased.

The Substance also website says:

What I meant (and I should've worded it better) was that the Substance licenses on Steam are staying and won't get discontinued - which is a good thing.
.

 

Speaking of Affinity it's currently on sale for half price for the next six days.

 

This is very clearly a "for now" situation, considering how they've aggressively delisted previous versions in the past.

 

Im kinda nervous about Steam versions for these kinds of things. Marvelous Designer messed people around with upgrade paths, for example.
(The Foundry have been good, though. Even though you cant buy a perpetual license of Modo Indie any more, they've consistently grandfathered in new versions for free if you had one)

 

The only companies I trust to not screw me over are Foundry and Pixologic, but honestly I only trust them in the moment. The idea what subscription services are good because you "always get the latest version" or whatever is a lie concocted specifically to allow for greater control by whoever sells you the subscription. Pushing things away from product and towards services has made things dramatically worse for the end user and this is just one of the ways how.

 

Aside from perpetual licensing such as Pixologic with ZBrush, how substance was handling maintenance updates was the best thing ever. What you get is perpetual, see a new feature in new one that you like, okay get another maintenance plan for a year and keep that perpetual as well. It was the best world between fully perpetual and crap subscriptions.

 

Let's be honest, I would get rid of Adobe if I could, but Substance Designer and Painter working together are too good to replace them. I have tried a number of alternatives and while I have found decent replacements for Substance Painter (3dCoat, Quixel, Marmoset Toolbag, Mari, ...), there is nothing even near of Substance Designer. I have tried every single similar software (TextureLab, Material Maker, TexGraph, ...) and they are too basic. And after getting your textures in place, you have to export the maps, importing them in the target application, create materials, ... With Substance I create a material in Designer and I use it in Painter without any conversion or special operation.

Waiting for the day in which SideFX implement procedural textures in Houdini...

 

This is what big corps doing. Buy competition out. Dissolve it and eventually close it. Problem solved no need for chasing a rabbit. Now they can sit ducks and watch for another candidate to buy out.

 

I dont get why you would dissolve the competition after buying it. Wouldnt you want it to keep making money?

 

It would be twice the effort for not much more money since most would still use your products anyway.

 

Yes, you want keep making money, so you don't dilute marketing, running cost and income between competing products, if you can bring all under single hood.

You already own their asset and their community, which some will migrate. So can do whatever you want with it.

If I remember correctly, Yahoo "failed" to buy google, when they had an opportunity.
Now Yahoo is an insignificant player for google. Yahoo lost in that sense.

 

Very true, but with adobe, they tend to buy things to get into a market, (like a lot of companies do). And if it changes or market moves/evolves, they drop it if it doesn't support their core lane. (or more commonly, neglect it for years then kill it). Narrow or authoring tools have a short shelf life at adobe. PS and AI are used by everyone for everything, Substance... not so much. But, who knows, some of things that adobe has bought and killed over the years would have died anyway or earlier.

I am very interested in seeing what happens with the 3d modeler.