Substance 3D creator Sébastien Deguy to leave Adobe
Sébastien Deguy at the 2023 Scientific and Technical Academy Awards. The tech pioneer is to leave Adobe after two decades heading development of the Substance 3D tools. Image: Oscars.
Substance 3D tools pioneer Sébastien Deguy is to leave Adobe.
In a post on LinkedIn, the Allegorithmic founder writes that “after 30 years of unwavering, all-consuming involvement in the world of computer graphics … I’m closing this chapter of my career and life”.
In his leaving message, Deguy paid tribute to the “care, trust [and] human-first spirit” of the Substance 3D team and the impact “our tools … have had on so many digital artists”.
The Substance 3D VFX showreel. Although initially targeted at games artists, by the end of the 2010s, tools like Substance 3D Designer and Painter had also been adopted in visual effects.
The end of an industry-changing 23-year journey
Sébastien Deguy founded Allegorithmic in 2002 to develop texturing software based on his PhD research on mathematical noise functions at France’s University of Auvergne.
Although the new company’s earliest products were Photoshop and After Effects plugins, a conversation with former id Software developer Dave Taylor alerted Deguy to the need for similar tools in game development.
Allegorithmic quickly capitalized on the gap in the market with its Substance Engine, and Substance Designer, later Substance 3D Designer, its material-authoring software.
The advent of PBR workflows in the mid-2010s were a tipping point for Designer, with games artists quickly switching from a Photoshop-based approach to procedural material authoring.
Allegorithmic also launched Substance Painter, later Substance 3D Painter – a tool that Deguy has described as “our masterpiece” – opening up workflows to less technically minded artists.
By the end of the decade, both applications were starting to be adopted in VFX pipelines, one key early project being Framestore’s Oscar-winning work on Blade Runner: 2049.
Adobe acquired Allegorithmic in 2019, with Deguy moving to Adobe as its VP of 3D & Immersive tools, and later its Head of 3D and Metaverse.
In 2023, he received a Sci-Tech Academy Award for his work on the Substance Engine, with Substance Painter receiving an Engineering Science & Technology Emmy the following year.
Powerful software, developed with a ‘human-first’ spirit
Although the Substance 3D product family has since grown, the original Substance apps remain unusual within the industry for the sense of personal investment that many artists feel in them.
Particularly during the Allegorithmic years, they represented not simply powerful tools with which to do work, but a vision for the spirit in which those tools should be developed.
In his LinkedIn post, Deguy paid tribute to the work of the Substance 3D team, and the impact that the technology they developed has had on the lives of digital artists.
“What struck me most, as I shared the news of my departure over the past weeks, was what people chose to remember: not the Oscar or the Emmy, not the business numbers [but] the culture, the values.”
“Nearly every message I received spoke of a shared feeling — that Allegorithmic and the 3D group at Adobe were special places, shaped by care, trust, and a human-first spirit.
“That’s what stayed with people. That’s what stays with me.”
Deguy – a lifelong film enthusiast, and an electronic musician with a string of high-profile collaborations to his name – will announce details of his “next adventure” over the coming days.
Read Substance 3D pioneer Seb Deguy’s announcement that he leaving the 3D industry
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