New Substance 3D Viewer lets you work with 3D assets in Photoshop
Adobe has released Substance 3D Viewer, a free standalone desktop app that enables users to “open, view, and design with 3D objects”.
It is primarily intended for graphic designers, working inside Photoshop.
The app makes it possible to drag and drop 3D files in common formats like OBJ, FBX, STL and USD into Photoshop, and have them appear in the software as Smart Objects.
The size, viewing angle, lighting and materials of the model can then be edited in the app.
It is available free in beta for anyone with an Adobe Creative Cloud account, but can currently only be used with the latest beta build of Photoshop.
Restoring Photoshop’s old native 3D functionality, but via a standalone app?
Photoshop used to have its own built-in 3D engine, making it possible to import and edit 3D models inside the software, but Adobe deprecated it in 2021, with Photoshop 22.2 the last release to fully support the toolset.
The new Substance 3D Viewer restores some of that functionality, but via a standalone app.
With it, users can drag and drop a 3D model onto the Photoshop canvas to have it show up as a new Smart Object.
It is then possible to adjust the position, size, viewing angle, lighting and materials for the 3D model inside the app, and send the updates back to Photoshop.
At the time of writing, the online documentation is still a work in progress, but the app supports both “CAD files or widely used [DCC] formats, including USD, OBJ, FBX, and STL”.
It is also possible to “export or take snapshots of 3D models for use in other applications”: the accompanying image shows the logos for Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat.
Price, system requirements and release date
The Substance 3D Viewer app is available free in beta to anyone with an Adobe Creative Cloud account. It can be downloaded using the Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app.
Adobe hasn’t announced a release date for the stable version yet.
You can find system requirements and pricing for Photoshop itself in our story on Photoshop 26.0, the current stable release of the software.
Read more about Adobe’s free Substance 3D Viewer app in the online documentation
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