Announcing Adobe Substance 3D :Tools for the next generation of creativity

For years, many creatives saw 3D creativity as equal parts exciting and forbidding. We were blown away by the enveloping, fantastical world’s game developers built and the incredibly immersive 3D visual effects in movies, but many of us thought creating in 3D was too technically demanding. 3D fueled our imaginations, but we couldn’t imagine using it ourselves.

The last year has changed that. When the pandemic made getting together for photo shoots and other creative projects impossible, companies turned to 3D to create. Fashion brands used 3D to speed their design processes. Lowe’s used it to digitize their entire catalog for virtual shopping. And 3D virtual photography was the foundation for a Ben & Jerry’s marketing campaign.

Keshav Vijayaraghavan, Founder & CEO, House of Blue Beans – a product visualization studio that recreated Lowe’s entire catalog, said “Creating 3D images, by contrast, is cheaper and faster than a conventional photo shoot, and has the advantage of creating future-proof assets that open up the possibility of augmented and virtual shopping experiences.”

These companies and thousands of others discovered that creating in 3D not only gave them incredible creative freedom, but that it was also faster, cheaper, more scalable, and more sustainable. Fortunately, the pandemic won’t be with us forever, but 3D creativity certainly will. 3D is the next generation of creativity.

To empower creatives to succeed in 3D, today we’re releasing the Adobe Substance 3D Collection, a suite of interoperable tools and services that support 3D creativity from the beginning to the end of any project.

The collection has an exceptional heritage in the 3D community. Its foundation is the Substance suite, which has been used for years to create the vast majority of AAA game titles, including Raji, Half Life Alyx and Microsoft Flight Simulator, along with movies like Star Wars: Episode IX and Blade Runner 2049 (Oscar winner for best visual effects), design, architecture, and more. The team behind Substance joined Adobe two years ago and have since been at work building a suite of powerful, accessible, and integrated 3D tools.

The team’s goal was to build tools that are easy to learn, but impossible to outgrow, so that there are no limits to your creativity. Substance 3D provides the cutting-edge technology that veteran 3D artists require, while making the medium accessible for new 3D enthusiasts. It uses the power of artificial intelligence to eliminate much of the technical complexity of 3D design and features the “what you see is what you get” interface artists are familiar with from Photoshop or Illustrator. And the collection isn’t just about tools — it also includes thousands of models, textures, lighting systems, and other assets you can use to jump-start your projects.

“The value proposition of 3D is multifold. Thanks to 3D, overall iterations can be minimized. We are looking to use software like Substance to create this real world material, so we have an exact equivalent to what exists out there in the world”, added Keshav. 

The Substance 3D Collection includes:

Substance 3D Stager: Built on the foundation established by Adobe Dimension, Stager lets you easily assemble models, materials, and lighting in a 3D scene and produce stunning virtual photographs and renderings.

Substance 3D Painter: Often called the Photoshop of 3D, Painter allows you to apply textures and materials to a 3D object. Those detailed and infinitely customizable textures are key to making 3D objects seem so realistic that you can imagine reaching out and touching them.

Substance 3D Sampler: Sampler (built on the foundation of Substance Alchemist) makes creating materials even simpler. You can bring in a photo and quickly apply filters and mix elements to produce a texture or other material in a matter of minutes. 

Substance 3D Designer: With Designer, you can create your own customizable textures, materials, and even 3D models from scratch.

Substance 3D Asset Library: Our content team has created thousands of customizable 3D assets, including models, lights, and materials. The models include everything from a rusty screwdriver to an airplane cabin wall and cover all sorts of uses, from fashion and automobile design to architecture and games — everything you need to get a head start on whatever project you’re planning and make your scene rich with detail and nuance. And you’ll be able to see how these expertly created assets were made so you can apply the same techniques to your own creations.

This collection is just the beginning of our 3D innovation. We’ve also opened a private beta of an upcoming tool called Substance 3D Modeler, a modeling tool that allows you to create your own 3D objects. Modeler uses a VR interface to recreate the natural, organic feeling of sculpting clay with your hands and it lets you interact with your model on the desktop so you can leverage the precision of mouse and tablet controls.

One of the exciting things about 3D creativity is how versatile it is. While many designers are using 3D now to create marketing images and product catalogs, it’s also capable of creating entire immersive worlds in virtual or augmented reality that are purely the product of a creative person’s imagination. I believe many of our future experiences will come through a 3D, immersive interface. Artists are the dreamers and risk-takers who will discover what’s possible in this new medium and I can’t wait to see what you’ll create with the Substance 3D Collection.