Thursday, June 11th, 2015 Posted by Jim Thacker

Allegorithmic releases Substance Painter 1.4

Allegorithmic has released Substance Painter 1.4, the latest update to its next-generation texture-painting tool, increasing the flexiblity of the UI, and adding a new AO channel and the option to paint straight lines.

Create a custom Shelf for your workflow
We can’t find a full feature list online (Allegorithmic’s newsletter refers you to the changelog thread on its forum, which hasn’t been updated yet) but the main change to the UI seems to be the option to customise the Shelf.

Users can now resize the Shelf or set it to display custom alphas or shaders – Substance .sbsar files can now be imported directly as material presets – on startup, then save the customised version as a preset.

Paint straight lines onto a 3D surface
Outside the UI, there is a much-requested option to paint straight lines by [Shift]-clicking, as in Photoshop – with the obvious difference that the line is calculated with respect to the surface of the 3D object you’re painting.

You can see the workflow in action at 10:45 in the video – if you [Shift]-[Ctrl]-click, you also get angle snap.

There is a new ambient occlusion channel with the usual range of controls and the results displayed in real time in the viewport; and 20 new smart materials and procedural substances.

Coming soon: paint directly over mask generators
Another much-requested feature not included in the current update, but coming in release 1.4.1, is the option to customise the result of a mask generator by painting directly over its output in the viewport.

The video shows the new workflow in action, painting directly onto the mesh to manually augment or remove procedural edge wear effects, which you can see at 13:15.

Pricing and availability
Substance Designer 1.4 is available now for Windows and Mac OS X. New licences of the software cost $590 for the Pro version and $149 for the Indie edition. The update is free to registered users.

Visit the Substance Painter product page on Allegorithmic’s website