Adobe releases Substance 3D Sampler 3.3.1

Adobe’s preview of Substance 3D Sampler 3.3 at its Substance Days 2022 user event earlier this year (begins at 00:26:15). The new version of the material authoring tool was released yesterday.

Originally posted on 18 May 2022. Scroll down for news of the Substance 3D Sampler 3.3.1 update.

Adobe has released Substance 3D Sampler 3.3, the latest version of its material-authoring software, previously known as Substance Alchemist.

The update adds a Photoshop-style Content-Aware Fill tool for removing unwanted details from materials or HDRIs, and improves workflow in the software’s environment lighting toolset and Clone Stamp tool.

Remove unwanted details semi-automatically from all of the channels of a material at once
The main new feature in Substance 3D Sampler 3.3 is a Photoshop-style Content-Aware Fill tool for removing unwanted details from images, by sampling surrounding parts of the image to generate a clean replacement.

Users paint a freehand mask to identify the details to be removed, with the software then processing all of the PBR material channels at once, so it generates a new normal map at the same time as the diffuse map.

Content-Aware Fill – currently only available in the Windows and macOS editions of the software – also works inisde other toolsets, so it can also be used to remove objects from HDRIs.

Display lighting environments as spherical projections for editing
Other changes to the new environment lighting toolset, introduced in Substance 3D Sampler 3.0, include the option to display environments as spherical projections, to make them easier to edit.

In addition, the existing 2D view gets a new exposure slider; and viewer settings are now stored per-material or per-environment-light, and persist when switching from one asset to another.

Workflow improvements to Clone Stamp, Crop and Transform
Workflow improvements include a handy-looking update to the Clone Stamp tool, with users now able to paint multiple stamp strokes on a layer in one go, with each stroke shown separately in the layer stack.

The results of a clone operation are also now shown directly in the brush preview.

The Crop and Transform widgets get keyboard shortcuts for centering the transformation and locking the aspect ratio to square; and the brush toolbar has been redesigned to match new Adobe apps like Fresco.

It is also now possible to send materials directly to Substance 3D Stager, Adobe’s scene layout and rendering software without exporting and re-importing files, previously only possible with environments.