Allegorithmic Unveils Substance Painter 2017.2 and More at Substance Days Hollywood 2017

Technology developer Allegorithmic had a whopping 10 major announcements coming out of its Substance Days Hollywood event held just ahead of SIGGRAPH 2017, including new tools, new partnerships, and the latest on where the company is going next.

Conducted at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Games & Animation in Hollywood, CA, July 27-29, the second annual Substance Days Hollywood boasted a full three days of special Masterclasses from some of the most talented artists working in AAA games, networking opportunities with Substance users of all skill levels, and public sessions featuring artists from the games, VFX, and AEC industries.

Here’s a quick rundown of the news:

• Substance Painter 2017.2 – Features include Anchor Points, new filters, performance boosts and scripting options.

• Live Link from Substance Painter to Unity – The scripting API has been updated to allow Substance Painter to transmit data continuously to third-party applications. The first experiment with this new feature is a Unity plugin creating a live link between the game engine and Substance Painter, allowing artists to see the results of their texturing process in-game, in real-time!

• Substance Automation Toolkit – This toolkit allows users to automate their workflow using command line tools and a brand new Python API. Not only will this cut iteration times, it will help users texture massive amounts of assets automatically. Substance Automation Toolkit comes free with subscriptions to the Substance Indie plan and Substance Designer Indie licenses (paid for pro users).

• Substance Source in Unity – Starting in August, users will have access to Substance Source in Unity. Just hit the Substance Source button in the Unity interface, download your Substance, and your material will be instantly available in the Unity asset library.

• Substance Source in Unreal Engine 4 – Substance Source is also coming to Unreal Engine 4! Instantly access Substance Source and download your materials from a library of over 1,000 options. The plugin will be available on the UE4 Marketplace in August.

• AxF Support in Substance Designer – Soon, users will be able to import AxF files in Substance Designer by using dedicated SBS and MDL templates for scan post-processing. Create hybrid materials by adding procedural parameters on top of a scan. This is just one step of bigger developments to make scan workflows with Substance easier and smoother.

• New After School Offer – Last year, Allegorithmic made Substance licenses completely free for students and teachers alike. This year, graduating students can access the Substance monthly plan at half-price ($9.95/month) for their first year out of school. Available this August.

• MeetMAT Art Book – The top entries from the Meet MAT 3D Painting Contest are being compiled into a book! Coming soon.
• ArtStation Partnership – For every subscription to the Substance Indie monthly plan, users will soon get a free two-month ArtStation Pro account to help artists build up their portfolios! With an ArtStation Pro account, users can create their own domain names and customize their portfolio page with premium themes, with unlimited bandwidth for pages and projects. Pro account users will also appear at the top of searches and get a Pro badge

• New Research & Development Prototypes – Allegorithmic is currently conducting research on high-quality, real-time lighting and shadowing, automatic UV mapping, interactive surface seaming and artificial intelligence for materials.

For those of you who weren’t able to attend the second annual Substance Days Hollywood, check out the keynote address in the player below:

Source: Allegorithmic

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.