Adobe has announced major updates to its Substance 3D suite of tools and services. It includes a 3D Materials SDK for developers and native Apple M-series chips support for Painter, Designer, and Sampler while taking further steps in the metaverse.
Scott Belsky, Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President of Adobe Creative Cloud say smart brands are ready for the metaverse by expanding their 3D and immersive content capabilities.
“That means creative artists with expertise in 3D have a wealth of opportunities,” he says.
“These innovations provide new superpowers to the rapidly growing number of creative people using Substance 3D.”
Adobe says Substance SD tools have experienced strong year-over-year growth of 100%, with hundreds of thousands of monthly active users.
Fabric 3D Updates
Native Apple M-series chips support for Substance Painter, Designer, and Sampler: Adobe says this will help 3D content creators work faster than ever.
Substance 3D Materials SDK: Adobe says this will allow developers to write their plugins and use the Substance 3D Material and Model engines in other applications. A new Substance 3D Automation Toolkit provides features for automating Substance file-based tasks.
Substance Materials plugin in Photoshop: This joins an existing plugin for Illustrator, which Adobe believes is already used by hundreds of thousands of Illustrator users. It helps users save time and eliminates numerous steps required to create texture and design variations and 3D effects. In addition, the latest update to the Substance 3D plugin for Unity allows artists to load, apply and modify parametric materials from Substance directly into the Unity engine, a development platform for creating 2D and 3D -multi-platform games and interactive experiences.
Substance 3D Modeler: Adobe says Modeler introduces an intuitive approach to 3D modeling that frees users from previously complex and technical constraints. The desktop and VR tool offers a wide range of creative possibilities, including creating concept art, sketching and prototyping, creating complex characters or props, or even sculpting an entire scene.
Sebastian Berg, head of digital excellence at HUGO BOSS AG, says integrating Adobe Substance 3D into the company’s product design and development processes has unlocked a new level of creative freedom for the HUGO BOSS team.
“The rise of the metaverse presents exciting opportunities for the fashion world, and Adobe Substance 3D tools are an integral part of our approach as we execute our plan to digitally develop 80% of our collections by the end of this year,” he says.
In the metaverse
Adobe Research and Adobe Commerce also released new AR and 3D shopping tools. The company says customers can now scan products on their mobile devices to access personalized shopping insights, product price comparisons, ratings, and product details.
This helps customers make better in-store purchasing decisions and gives retailers the tools to adapt to customer needs quickly. B2B companies can also use this technology to optimize warehouses. Adobe also previewed a new intelligent method for optimizing load time while maintaining visual fidelity for optimal AR customer experiences. The new AI-powered approach enables brands to deliver a high-quality AR experience in a fraction of the time it normally takes by prioritizing AR content most likely relevant to the viewer based on their movements in physical space.
The company says this will help brands alleviate the common challenges of slow loading times on large AR scenes. This technology will be integrated into Adobe Aero later this year.
Native Apple M-series chips support Substance Painter, Designer, and Sampler, and the Substance Materials Plugin for Photoshop is now available. The Substance 3D plugin for Unity will be available later this month, and Substance 3D Modeler, currently in beta, will be available later this year.
Adobe also extends free access to Substance 3D applications for educators and students worldwide. Universities that subscribe to the Creative Cloud All Apps plan already have free access to Adobe Substance 3D applications.
