Thursday, October 21st, 2010 Posted by Jim Thacker

TurboSquid to sell Allegorithmic ‘substances’

TurboSquid has opened up a new section of its online store devoted to Allegorithmic’s ‘substances’ – lightweight, dynamic-resolution procedural textures.

The assets, which are arranged in standard categories, including bricks, concrete and natural materials, typically sell for $5 to $15.

3ds Max and Maya users will already be familiar with substances, which come built in to the new versions of the software. Allegorithmic’s technology is also used by major game developers including NCsoft and Funcom.

PRESS RELEASE (Excerpts)
Allegorithmic and TurboSquid today announced the arrival of a new online marketplace that will host a new form of dynamic and lightweight texture material called ‘substances’ that will be made easily available to all 3D artists. These new substances can be customized to fit individual needs, providing design visualization professionals with endless creative possibilities.

“In the past, it has been difficult for 3D designers and artists to find quality textures to enhance their work,” said Beau Pershall, vice president of business development at TurboSquid. “However, the hundreds of new dynamic substances provided in the online marketplace will allow customers to be more original and innovative than ever before. This is truly the next-generation of textures, directly usable in current art pipelines.”

The Substance online marketplace provides 3D designers and artists using Autodesk’s 3ds Max and Maya 2011 Subscription Advantage Packs with a resource to find and purchase hundreds of new substances for use within 3D applications. This is in addition to the 75 substances already embedded within 3ds Max and Maya that are free and ready for production.

The substances in the online marketplace will also be made available to users of Allegorithmic’s Substance Player, a free stand alone application, and Substance Designer, Allegorithmic’s authoring tool.

The provided substances include the following characteristics:

  • Parametric: substances can be tweaked at run-time to generate hundreds of variations from a single asset
  • Multi-output: substances feature several texture maps (diffuse, specular, normal, etc.) in a single file
  • Dynamic resolution (up to 2K): texture sizes can be adapted to work with different projects
  • Lightweight: substance files weigh a few kilobytes, making them easy to distribute

The Substance online marketplace is currently populated with individual substances added by Allegorithmic. Eventually, Substance Designer users will be able to produce and publish their own content helping customers to easily develop more advanced and inspired projects.

“TurboSquid is the number one marketplace in the 3D world so it was a natural next step for us to enter into this very beneficial partnership,” said Sebastien Deguy, Founder and CEO of Allegorithmic. “Allegorithmic is excited to be bringing this new type of content to the community and looks forward to seeing the artistic content our users are bound to create.”

Pricing and Availability
The majority of the individual substances in the online marketplace will cost between USD $5 and $15. There will also be some complimentary substances, as well as collections that will be available for USD $50 to $200.

Visit the Substance marketplace on Turbo Squid