Adobe releases Substance 3D Painter 11.0
An overview of the new features in Substance 3D Painter 11.0, the new version of the 3D texture painting software, compiled by Adobe Creative 3D Evangelist Wes McDermott.
Adobe has released Substance 3D Painter 11.0, the latest version of the 3D texture painting software for games, animation, motion graphics and VFX.
The release adds a new Auto-update system for project dependencies, updates the path tools, adds new utility filters and texture generators, and introduces native Metal support on macOS.
In related news, Substance 3D Painter is now available via a new Substance 3D Indie subscription on Steam, which also includes Substance 3D Designer and Substance 3D Modeler.
New Auto-update system automatically updates external resources used in a project
The headline feature in Substance 3D Painter 11.0 is the new Auto-update system, for automatically updating the external resources used in a project, like textures and 3D models.
Painter now automatically checks for changes, and automatically reloads updated assets.
The process can be triggered manually, or set to happen at user-defined intervals, and the functionality is exposed via Python, making it possible for technical artists to customize the workflow.
Updates to the path tools, including a new Filled path option
The release also updates the path tools introduced in Substance 3D Painter 9.0, adding a new Filled path tool (shown above) for creating filled areas on the surface of a 3D model.
The fills can cross gaps and object boundaries, and support mirror and radial symmetry, making them a quick way to create geometric patterns.
Workflow updates to the other path tools include a viewport preview while drawing out a path, auto-closure of paths, and the option to copy and paste path positions from materials to masks.
There are also new path snapping options, including angle snapping for path segments, and the ability to snap path points to mesh vertices.
You can find a full list of changes in the online release notes.
New filters and texture generators
The update also adds some of the image-manipulation filters that Adobe rolled out last year in Substance 3D Designer 14.0, the latest major version of the material-authoring software.
That includes the Quantize filter for posterizing an image, Stylization for creating painterly effects, and Anisotropic Kuwahara and Directional Distance for smudging brush strokes.
A new Bevel Smooth filter supersedes the existing Bevel filter.
There are also three new texture generators – Triangle Grid, Tile Random, and an improved Scratches Generator – and Voronoi and Voronoi Fractal can be used as 2D as well as 3D noises.
Other workflow improvements
Other changes include an experimental new option to have Substance 3D Painter automatically generate an optimal baking cage when baking textures from a 3D model, rather than using a custom mesh or setting the cage a fixed distance from the model’s surface.
There are also a number of smaller workflow updates, particularly when working with UV Tiles, copying and pasting layers and paths, or sending assets to other software.
Mac edition now uses Metal for rendering, not OpenGL
For Mac users, Substance 3D Painter 11.0 now uses Apple’s Metal graphics API for rendering in place of OpenGL, which Apple officially deprecated in 2018, in macOS 10.14.
The update also ends support for old Intel Macs, Apple having begun to switch to its own Apple Silicon processors – now used in all current Macs – in 2020.
Now available via the new Substance 3D Indie subscription on Steam
In related news, Substance 3D Painter is now available via Adobe’s new Substance 3D Indie subscription plan.
Available via Steam, it includes Substance 3D Painter, Substance 3D Designer, VR modeling app Substance 3D Modeler, and a library of 1,000 3D assets, and costs $24.99/month.
It seems to be intended as a more games-focused alternative to the existing Substance 3D Texturing plan, which includes Substance 3D Painter, Substance 3D Designer and asset capture app Substance 3D Sampler.
Substance 3D Texturing subscriptions include unmetered access to the Substance 3D Assets library, and cost $19.99/month, although that price will also rise to $24.99/month next week.
Price and system requirements
Substance 3D Painter 11.0 is available for Windows 10+, RHEL 8.6/9.2+ and Ubuntu 22.04+ Linux and macOS 12.0+.
Perpetual licences are available via Steam and cost $199.99. You can find details of the new Steam-based Substance Indie subscriptions in the story above.
The software is also available via Adobe’s Creative Cloud-based Substance 3D subscriptions.
Substance 3D Texturing subscriptions cost $19.99/month or $219.88/year; Substance 3D Collection subscriptions cost $49.99/month or $549.88/year. Both prices rise on 25 March 2025.
Read a list of new features in Substance 3D Painter 11.0 in the online release notes
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