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Allegorithmic Ships Substance Painter 2.0

AAA texturing tool powered by NVIDIA’s Iray renderer streamlines game asset pipeline; photorealistic rendering and curated asset store now available.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Today at GDC 2016, Allegorithmic has released Substance Painter 2.0, an update that turns the popular texturing tool into a mini-pipeline. Now game artists can paint, render and share their creations without ever having to leave their viewport.

Substance Painter is a patented, next-gen painting application that accurately replicates the look of shine, decay, patina and fractures virtually via a particle-based painting system. Multi-channel brushes follow physical laws, helping artists achieve PBR-quality details at high speeds. 

“Artists can now create and shed the most beautiful light on their 3D assets in the same place,” said Allegorithmic founder and CEO Sébastien Deguy. “With Substance Painter 2.0, all you need is a modeler and you have a complete Look Development pipeline.”

At the core of this new workflow is NVIDIA’s Iray renderer. Freshly integrated, this powerful path tracer can produce photorealistic renders at the touch of a button, with no restrictions on resolution or material complexity.

Other Key Features Include:

  • New Creation Tools: Substance Painter 2.0 launches with an enhanced library of scanned materials, smart masks, finishing filters and tool brushes. Artists can continue to build this library through a live link to Substance Share, which gives them free access to the community’s best designs.
  • Substance Store: Curated materials, brushes, patches, HDRIs, and meshes are now available for purchase. Items can be obtained individually, or as Mood Packs that cover specific themes like “Sci-Fi Alien” and “Medieval Knight.” For added convenience, all assets immediately download into user libraries.
  • Smudge and Clone: New painting tools make it possible to create smudges and clone channel regions, barring the need for touch-ups in external software.
  • Imaging and Viewport Updates: Full screen mode, 3D mouse support, and improved image quality have all been added, making the experience of asset creation more immersive. Improved normal mapping will also enable better renders on material heights.
  • Direct Exports to Engines and Showcase SitesSketchfab and ArtStation now have direct links through the viewport, making the portfolio creation process simple.

Substance Painter 2.0 is available today for the Mac OSX, Windows and Linux platforms. Indie licenses are available for $149, while pro licenses are $590. Interested artists can purchase Substance Painter on allegorithmic.com, Steam or the Unity Asset store.

To learn more about Substance Painter 2.0, check out the Q&A below:

1. How does Substance Painter 2.0 streamline the current game asset pipeline?

In the past, game artists had to use a mix of modeling, texturing, rendering, and middleware to create a finished piece. With the release of Substance Painter 2.0, now assets can be created with just two products: a modeler and SP2.

The addition of NVIDIA’s Iray brings photorealistic, path-traced renders to our users. Now they don’t need an external renderer when they want to create marketing or portfolio pieces. The new Smudge and Clone tools also cut out the need for other pieces of software, allowing artists to do even more within Painter.

SP2 also arrives with the most useful library of content creation tools ever shipped with a Substance release. New smart masks, finishing filters and tool brushes help artists start the creation process much further down the line, and should open up new creative avenues.

2. What does the integration of Iray do for game artists?

Iray allows professional artists and hobbyists to immediately start showing their work in the best light possible. Artists can now produce a photorealistic render at the touch of a button, with no restrictions on resolution or material complexity. For professional artists this means that marketing materials for a game launch can be finalized in SP2. For hobbyists or people looking to break into the industry, this ensures a simple way to produce portfolio images. Once rendered, these can be easily exported to showcase sites like Sketchfab and ArtStation through the viewport.

3. Is Substance Painter 2 VR-ready?

Yes, it is. Over the past year, we’ve been working with Oculus and Vive to make sure Substance Painter is ready for any VR project.

Since VR is an art form that prizes environments, the use of believable and/or interesting textures will be essential to artists that want to immerse people in these new worlds. And since over 50% of games are created with Substance (75% of AAA games), it was important to us that our users could start incorporating these textures right away. Now they can.

4. How is the Substance Store different from Substance Share?

Substance Share is a platform that allows our users to exchange free community-created content. Textures, meshes, materials, effects, shaders - anything they want to share is up there and available for people to use and interact with. These items come from all types of creators, from hobbyists to professional artists.

Substance Store, on the other hand, is our new marketplace where users can buy professionally created content that has been curated by Allegorithmic. Everything on the store is professional-grade and will continue to grow over time. We see this as another option for our community.

6. How do the Store’s Mood Packs differ from other curated content?

Mood Packs are a new concept that furnish all the assets you need to create an AAA-quality scene right out of the box. These assets include not only models, but also tools, brushes, lighting, and 3D assets.  

Much like the items in a Playmobil or Lego set, these assets can be used in one or many different scenes.

Each Mood Pack is structured around a universe and a main character (Sci-Fi Alien, Medieval Knight), and includes ready-to-assemble assets.

7. Can users make Substance Store requests? If so, how do they do it?

Yes. We want the Store to grow, and user requests are always welcome. They just have to send us a message here to start the process.

Source: Allegorithmic

Jennifer Wolfe's picture

Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.