Digital material authoring software introduces new tools and filters for photogrammetric workflows.
CLERMONT-FERRAND, France -- Allegorithmic has released Substance Designer 5.6, a free update that adds seven new tools and filters to the industry-leading digital material authoring software, including solutions for both scanned and photogrammetric workflows.
Using Substance Designer 5.6, artists can now blend scanned materials with Substances and bitmaps, as well as achieve additional accuracy through the extraction of ambient occlusion and normal maps. This will be the first of many additions and innovations dedicated to scan-based material authoring, continuing Allegorithmic’s mission to create the de facto standard for every type of digital material creation workflow.
For artists experimenting with photogrammetry, Substance Designer 5.6 now offers a brand new set of tools. New additions include:
- Height Blend: Blend multiple materials or scans using their height maps for added realism. Output includes blended height and a mask to easily blend other channels of your materials.
- Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion: Artists can now generate an accurate ambient occlusion with real-world scale and depth of surface, simulating a raytraced bake in milliseconds.
- Color Match: Fine-tune the overall tint of your scans without destroying the color of small elements.
- Real-World Height to Normal: Set the width, length and/or maximum height of a surface to generate a world space accurate normal map, perfect for precise displacement or parallax effects.
- Snow Cover: Add a snow cover to any pre-existing material and create realistic effects like a windy blizzard or snowmelt. All snow piles realistically and can be adjusted via multiple parameters including thickness.
- Water Level: Adds an artificial water plane to a material. Tweak the water’s height, dirtiness, fogginess and freeze.
- Material Blend Height: Use the Height Blend method to blend two full materials using their height map, as well as making sure the albedos match properly, all in a single node.
- Non-Uniform Histogram Scan: The Histogram Scan node is a favorite of artists wanting to create nice animated masks and weathering. This new version adds custom inputs to drive the contrast and level of the mask on a per pixel basis, allowing for the generation of much more complex and rich masks.
“The goal of the Substance toolset has always been to provide the best tools for digital material authoring,” said Dr. Sébastien Deguy, Founder and CEO of Allegorithmic. “Now the enthusiasm we are seeing for scan-based content and photogrammetry has a dedicated outlet in Substance Designer.”
A free 30-day trial of Substance Designer 5.6 is available now.
Substance Designer 5.6 is available today for Linux, Mac OS and Windows, and is free for current license holders and Substance Live subscribers. For new users, indie licenses are priced at $149, while Pro licenses are available for $590. Licenses can be purchased directly through the Allegorithmic website or an authorized retailer.
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.
