Thursday, November 23rd, 2017 Posted by Jim Thacker

Allegorithmic unveils Substance Painter 2017.4


Allegorithmic has unveiled Substance Painter 2017.4, the new update to its 3D texture painting software. The release, due to ship later today, adds support for layer instances and a live link to Unreal Engine.

Layer instances let you share layer properties between texture sets
The main new feature in Substance Painter 2017.4 is support for layer instances, enabling users to share the content of one or more layers across multiple texture sets.

Allegorithmic says that the change should make look dev faster on complex assets that require more than one texture set, and get artists used to tools like Mari “one step closer to [their] usual UDIM-based workflow”.

At the minute, it only works with materials and effects: painting on instanced layers is still bound to the current texture set, but the firm says that this will be addressed in “the near future”.

Live link to Unreal Engine as well as Unity
The live link plugin for Unity has also been updated, and now links to Unreal Engine as well.

The plugin, first introduced in Substance Painter 2017.2, makes it possible to see any changes made to an asset in Substance Painter update inside the game engine in real time.

Since then, third-party developer Hedgehog Labs has also released its own free plugin providing a live link from Substance Painter to a range of DCC apps, including 3ds Max, Blender, Maya and Modo.

Substance Painter 2017.4 also adds 20 new procedural materials ranging from chainmails to patterned plastics, and 40 new grunge maps, several of them procedural.

Pricing and availability
Substance Painter 2017.4 is due to ship later today for Windows 7+, CentOS 6.6 or Ubuntu 12.4 Linux and Mac OS X 10.11+.

New Indie licences, intended for artists and studios earning less than $100,000 per year, cost $149, including 12 months’ maintenance. Further updates cost $75/year. A floating Pro licence now costs $990.


Read a full list of new features in Substance Painter 2017.4 on Allegorithmic’s blog

Visit the Substance Painter website