Again, I know I'm repeating myself, but the idea that Adobe doesn't innovate is not based on facts. The tools may not go in the way you'd like them to as 3D artists, and that's understandable since they were not made for you in the first place, you are not the targeted user, but most Adobe tools, including Photoshop, gets some pretty unique features every year, sometimes every quarter. Adobe is also often one of the biggest contributor at Siggraph and has a huge research department that we - as Substance - can now leverage.
We are the ones at Adobe who are tasked to get you the tools you need now, and we intend on over-delivering
@Jerc When initially told about Adobe purchasing Allegorithmic, we were told one of the reasons was Adobe has resources which would help Allegorithmic develop tools which they could not do on their own. The developments I can see are;
- The ability to use Photoshop brushes inside Painter - Content Aware tiling in Alchemist.
Any chance you're able to shed more light on what other advancements you guys are making by working together? It's been a while since the two companies have started working together, and it might cool off some opinions if we learned about some cool features that were coming out due to this merger.
@Jerc When initially told about Adobe purchasing Allegorithmic, we were told one of the reasons was Adobe has resources which would help Allegorithmic develop tools which they could not do on their own. The developments I can see are;
- The ability to use Photoshop brushes inside Painter - Content Aware tiling in Alchemist.
Any chance you're able to shed more light on what other advancements you guys are making by working together? It's been a while since the two companies have started working together, and it might cool off some opinions if we learned about some cool features that were coming out due to this merger.
Eh, I would say both the Designer and Painter spring releases were substantial with what they offered. Baker improvements and optimization, new nodes or multidirectional things, that atlas splitter which detects components in an atlas is great. Painter having first the inclusion of a bunch of different symmetry modes with dynamic brushes is welcome in my opinion. Height blending and tessellation as well as the official release of alchemist and further integrations for the automation toolkit. Bakes are down to 30 seconds with RTX cards. All fairly substantial things in my opinion. Maybe not ground breaking mind you but in perspective Pixologic just recently figured out how to make a view cube to show your axis in 3d space.
A lot of the scan processing that has went into Alchemist is pretty impressive in my opinion as well. Still don't like any software going subscription only its a tired philosophy at this point and may cause problems down the line. But that doesn't change that opening up the bridge between PS and Substance is a good thing, the versatility of photoshop being piped into substance painter is something i would like more of as long as it stays in that sort of relationship. That they are symbiotic and not parasitic.
I watched some videos about material creation in Blender and it looks good but I don't understand if it's possible to export the textures created to use them in another software like you would do with designer. I read that you must use cycles to bake them, not sure if there is another way.
After having switched the Affinity firm wide where I work, I can say they are no better than Adobe in their handling of bugs. There are a few critical bugs, especially the one in saving over a network environment that can permanently corrupt your file. The half-assed response from Affinity was pretty much yeah we know that exists, we don't feel it is important enough, and we'll get around to it. And that was to a firm that has 1,000+ seats of all three of their software's.
Hop on the Affinity forums and look how long it took Afiinity to support targa files after their devs didn't see the need for such outdated file formats. The overall support from Affinity was so bad that it tarnished their product experiences.
So while it hurts that the rent to own model is no longer around, it feels like a lot of hate is just people shitting on Adobe because that is the hot thing to do right now. In the last full year since Adobe took over Substance, has the product gotten worse? Has it gotten stale? Has it the exact same feature set as a year ago?
If you really don't like Adobe, then vote with your wallet. This stuff will always happen if all we do is bitch but then still buy into the service. Same think for shitty reboots of movies or games broken on release that take day one patches that are 3 times the size of the original game download. Don't like them? Don't buy them, and for fucks sake don't pre-order those games! If they are no longer a viable option, they won't do them anymore.
Ashervisalis We're working on tons of other things but software development is hard and it takes time, no matter the resources available to you. We'll have much more to show and announce over the course of next year
The tools may not go in the way you'd like them to as 3D artists, and that's understandable since they were not made for you in the first place, you are not the targeted user, ...
We are the ones at Adobe who are tasked to get you the tools you need now, and we intend on over-delivering
yes thank you, we were the targeted users with Allegorithmic. Thats exactly where all the disappointment is coming from.
So Adobe does care about 3d artists now huh?? We will see...
yes thank you, we were the targeted users with Allegorithmic. Thats exactly where all the disappointment is coming from.
So Adobe does care about 3d artists now huh?? We will see...
I don't doubt that the team formerly known as Allegorithmic care deeply about 3d artists, especially game artists, they clearly do. Adobe management however only cares about share holder value.
The reason why people are upset is not only for the money. One of the main reason is the lack of trust. A business should be based on a relationship of trust between the company and the consumers. So If a company say "perpetual licenses are here to stay, price of the software will not increase" and other good stuff, well, i expect that to be true. But if the next day i woke up and "hey, you know what, we increased the price, the maintenance plan will disappear and sub only" i feel mocked.
That's why many people are switching from commercial softwares to open source alternative like Blender. Because they are tired of all these licensing bullshit. With open source software at least i know that when i'll woke up in the morning, the license is still the same, the terms of use is still the same, the software is still there and i can focus on my art.
100 % free commercial softwares like DaVinci Resolve are a good option too because even if they disappear or change their terms of use, well at least i didn't pay anything until now.
I want to point out that Adobe-Allegorithmic is only an example that i took because we are in topic. There are many other companies that i could talk about that adopted the same line of thinking.
I watched some videos about material creation in Blender and it looks good but I don't understand if it's possible to export the textures created to use them in another software like you would do with designer. I read that you must use cycles to bake them, not sure if there is another way.
For now I believe that is the only way, which can easily be read as a downside to using blender for procedural texture creation. Hopefully that is addressed within a version update or two.
I watched some videos about material creation in Blender and it looks good but I don't understand if it's possible to export the textures created to use them in another software like you would do with designer. I read that you must use cycles to bake them, not sure if there is another way.
For now I believe that is the only way, which can easily be read as a downside to using blender for procedural texture creation. Hopefully that is addressed within a version update or two.
I see thanks, i also noticed that they fixed the issue with the scale tool using the industry compatible keymap. When i was trying to scale equally in all directions i had some problem with the small white circle that behaved strangely. Now it works correctly.
On a side note, check out the ad I'm getting on this page :P
Just thinking out loud here...what if I was to say, invert the logo colour scheme, remove Company name (but keep the affirmation) which I reckon will leave something like this
The tools may not go in the way you'd like them to as 3D artists, and that's understandable since they were not made for you in the first place, you are not the targeted user.
I'm assuming that includes the Substance suite...lol
Just look at 8/16-bit era type games and how they evolved despite being stuck with long outdated platforms and went on to squeeze every last bit out of some then 10+ years old piece of hardware.
I love the analogy ... people squeezing every last bit of an 8 bits machine .... this bring me one name in mind :
Again, I know I'm repeating myself, but the idea that Adobe doesn't innovate is not based on facts. The tools may not go in the way you'd like them to as 3D artists, and that's understandable since they were not made for you in the first place, you are not the targeted user, but most Adobe tools, including Photoshop, gets some pretty unique features every year, sometimes every quarter. Adobe is also often one of the biggest contributor at Siggraph and has a huge research department that we - as Substance - can now leverage.
We are the ones at Adobe who are tasked to get you the tools you need now, and we intend on over-delivering
LOL man. This is some gas lighting nonsense. I've been using photoshop for 20 years and so have a tonne of others on this site. They're a $30Billion company with 21000 employees and two of their BIG FEATURES in photoshop this last release were UNDO (which they had changed in 2007 for some unknown fucking reason) and changing the way the transform tool works after 20 years of it being one way. WHO in gods name asked for that shit. Never even mind the constant UI updates. Like how many new windows are gonna pop up when i open pshop?
Adobe barely shifts the needle. The only way they innovate is by acquiring other companies and their software or just every once in a while mashing siggraph white papers into their software in the least useful way. It's a retirement home for graphics programmers.
The topic of innovation in software is always fun to observe from the sidelines The audience asks for "innovation" because they assume innovation is a good thing ... and software companies also assume that it is a good thing because sure enough innovation will drive sales (hence the mindblowing tweet about changes in undo behavior in PS )
But at the end of the day ... when the direction of a production tool is driven by a "tech enthusiast" audience cheering like sheep at the newest iphone and geniunely enjoying installing a new OS to "play around with it" + software companies just adding stuff to justify their subscription model ... the end result is just bloat.
If anything, all I'd ever ask for Adobe would be for them to put their biggest focus on performance. But the cycle of new PS releases always being measurably slower and glitchier than the last has been repeating itself for years now.
I believe that this, along with the emphasis on subscription models makes criticism of the Substance acquisition quite justified imho. Simply because even though it does make complete sense for the two companies involved (and I don't believe it to be a case of the Substance guys being "greedy" at all), it seems very likely to result in an inferior product : Likely addition of extra "intro screens" in typical Adobe fashion, probably a dependency on a CC launcher app (or at the very least it being pushed during install), less interesting pricing models for the end-user later down the line (no more rent-to-own), and so on.
If you work with clients then perpetual licenses are kind of a fantasy no? You need to stay current if you're expected to share files both ways. Otherwise I would still be in programs from 2008.
Allegorithmic sold out yes, a shame. Then again, Discreet sold out 20+ years ago and 3ds is still top modeling tool. I expect most here will still be subscribing or liberating Substance in foreseeable future regardless corporate / license changes.
Well, when working with clients you can always ask *them* to pay for whichever current/latest version their hotshot IT guy decided to adopt. If anything one could see this as a bit of a warning sign - teams always willing to jump on the "latest and coolest" version of art software without giving it at least 6 months to a year of proof-testing are usually the ones hoping to find automagical solutions to art problems. I am making a bit of a extreme simplification of course but there is certainly a trend.
Put differently : imho leads/ADs who do *not* care about forcing the latest and coolest revision of this or that software are almost always the ones with the strongest art background - because they know that automating this or that "surface level" aspect just for the sake of it will not necessarily help much, or might even cost time.
If you work with clients then perpetual licenses are kind of a fantasy no? You need to stay current if you're expected to share files both ways. Otherwise I would still be in programs from 2008.
Allegorithmic sold out yes, a shame. Then again, Discreet sold out 20+ years ago and 3ds is still top modeling tool. I expect most here will still be subscribing or liberating Substance in foreseeable future regardless corporate / license changes.
Sorry to highjack this but max is also a good example. Camera navigation was great (except for very small scales) until they "fixed" it and then had to fix it again.
On the other hand.. If I'm already writing: While a software is in development is makes sense to stay up to date to have the newest formats but when the software is (more or less) finished you don't have to change the serialized data all the time. So your argument is basically exactly what companies want: an environment where you constantly have to upgrade something to not fall behind. I mean look as this Apple nonsense. If you want to develop an app you have to use a recent x-code (ok) which requires a certain os (hmm.. ) which then is locked to certain hardware only (wtf?!) In the end you have to buy a completely new set of development hardware + software + mobile devices just to support one version jump where barely anything relevant for the app changes (as you can obviously still USE older apps). It's ridiculous.. If I want to get YOUR money.. What do you think I'm gonna do? I'm gonna hardcore Apple on you
Fact is most clients I work with are on current iterations of software, they want source files with their deliveries and they want to send reference files with minimal hassle. Staying current on software despite its relatively meaningless changes over the years isnt an argument I'm originating or a practice I care about in itself, rather a material condition for delivering the product, in many cases. If that doesnt apply to your work situation then you are off the hook, use whatever you want.
@dur23 You cherry picked 2 features out of literally hundreds And believe me, seeing things from the inside, if features as central as the transformation and undo were changed, it's because there was strong user data to support the change.
@pior You'll be happy to hear that for various teams, including Photoshop's, one of the main focus this year was performance, there was quite a bit of emphasis on it during Adobe MAX last week and it seems there was some significant improvements in PS and Premiere (haven't tried it myself yet).
Again, in time I think we will change your guy's minds about Substance at Adobe being a bad thing, we're working on some really great stuff.
Hehe Story Time : the undo thing really is an interesting case because it highlights the typical disconnect between engineers and users, and the inertia that ensues.
I don't know if it is still the case in the most recent revisions of PS but for the longest time, stepping back after painting a stroke placed on a new layer ... not only undid the stroke, but also the layer setting (IIRC), meaning that the next painted strokes would be done on the wrong layer. This is a well known issue (the "undo dance"), but the funny thing is that when users reported it (10 years ago. I was in one of these meetings.) the first reaction of the Adobe guys was to take the stance of "this is not a bug, this is a feature deeply rooted into the differences between undo (last step) and history steps (stepping back)". Sure thing - but from the user point of view it doesn't matter what the name is or what the justification is - it doesn't prevent it from being extremely annoying.
Now 10 years later, changes are made to the undo/history system, default hotkeys are changed, and so on. Whether or not the change is good or even alleviates the issue is one thing, but the inertia is quite remarkable.
It's partly this kind of things that makes people feel nervous about the merger - there is just a lot of baggage to clean up, and user trust to regain. It just comes with the Adobe territory.
@dur23 You cherry picked 2 features out of literally hundreds And believe me, seeing things from the inside, if features as central as the transformation and undo were changed, it's because there was strong user data to support the change.
Again, in time I think we will change your guy's minds about Substance at Adobe being a bad thing, we're working on some really great stuff.
I don't doubt for the time being you guys are going to be doing some great things. I'm always rather impressed with your updates and the features y'all implement.
What i don't trust, adobe. I don't trust the monopolization of tools like this. Same thing with autodesk. They own too much and now they just whirl around and barely budge the needle while still having huge fundamental issues with their software. @pior described this better than i did.
I didn't cherry pick those two features, they made entire animated gif laced features page with 6-7 "key new features" two of which were undo and changing the transform tool. I also have a hard time believing that after 20 years of the transform tool functioning one way all of the sudden "their data" suggested they should change it.
Allegorithmic sold out yes, a shame. Then again, Discreet sold out 20+ years ago and 3ds is still top modeling tool. I expect most here will still be subscribing or liberating Substance in foreseeable future regardless corporate / license changes.
I don't think they "sold out". In this world just get your money and gtfo.
But on 3DS being the "top modeling tool", i don't think this really has anything to do with it being the best modeling tool. I think it's more of a combination of mass acquisitions, huge marketing budgets, crafty sales departments and roughly keeping up with the industry. I haven't seen anything "new" come out of autodesk in maya or max in ages. They just own the industry.
I'd just like to add, that this isn't really coming from a place hatred. I would absolutely love it if i saw a adobe/autodesk updates that blew me outta the water. I genuinely want to be impressed.
On Quixel Mixer going free and merging with Epic Games.. Well now this has got to sting for Adobe, and since its now adobe (as opposed to allegorithmic) the fans (former fans?) won't have much feelings of loyalty for the software itself. One bad move after another on their part.
I don't think they "sold out". In this world just get your money and gtfo.
You dont think they did what you immediately then said they did?
Ha! They literally sold their company yes. I meant more so in the pejorative sense. Ie Sacrificing their artistic or creative integrity for money. Like Musicians, etc.
I don't think they "sold out". In this world just get your money and gtfo.
You dont think they did what you immediately then said they did?
Ha! They literally sold their company yes. I meant more so in the pejorative sense. Ie Sacrificing their artistic or creative integrity for money. Like Musicians, etc.
Again, in time I think we will change your guy's minds about Substance at Adobe being a bad thing, we're working on some really great stuff.
Can you try to change our minds about the subscription-only model being a bad thing too?
I don't want to seem like a pest here, but even if you guys have some awesome stuff to release, that doesn't help with this recent subscription news.
We consider Substance as a full experience and ecosystem: it has software, services, content, plugins, etc. This experience is what the very big majority of users are asking and purchasing today, and this is what we are pushing. And as Jeremie mentioned, there is a lot of new things to come.
However, there are users who just need to have Painter or Designer in standalone. This is why we offer this option on Steam.
So Substance experience on Substance website, and Painter/Designer standalone on Steam.
The tools may not go in the way you'd like them to as 3D artists, and that's understandable since they were not made for you in the first place, you are not the targeted user.
You don’t say?
I suspect the merger with Adobe has a lot less to do with pushing the
envelope as their PR department would have us believe and more in line with
Sebastien Deguy's megalomania.
Allegorithmicwas championed by their customer base not only
for their innovative tools but also for their progressive pricing structure
which enabled indie developers to create textured assets free from the cost
burden imposed by Autodesk and Adobe. Allegorithmic was respected and loved by
the game development industry world-wide – but for Sebastien Deguy, that wasn’t
enough.
Adobe never cared for professional 3D artists or even
enthusiasts; their shareholders are only interested in the one segment that
maximizes profits - the masses. Just like Apple's professional user base who
were left floundering in favour of the iDevice generation, indie game devs will
find themselves similarly sidelined as the shift in focus from texture
artist to empowering corporate marketing drones rolls inexorably on.
That’s right, it is the office cube dweller that drew the
short straw and is now tasked with the unenviable job of designing the company
stationary who is ultimately Adobe’s target market. Except this time, the poor
sap will be expected to make his logos and pie charts pop in 3D with bright plastic
material shaders rendered courtesy of Adobe Dimension. That is where
Allegorithmic’s efforts will be directed towards in the coming years.
Let’s not forget about who else is working on this poor man’s
version of Keyshot. Yes, the Mixamo crew; the same people who promised the now
all too familiar load of manure about the great things they were going to
accomplish for us 3D artists with their newfound Adobe partnership. It is a very telling precursor of things to come.
The Founder of Allegorithmic has far greater illusions of
grandeur that apparently transcend beyond those of us here at Polycount and
other 3D communities. Sebastien Deguy doesn't just want to be known as the
maverick who altered the workflow of texture painting, he wants his legacy to
be forever remembered alongside the likes of Thomas Knoll and Russell Brown;
worshiped as some deity of visual communications as it were. If that means
putting putting those who originally helped prop up his success, the loyal game developers, on the sacrificial altar of mandatory subscription services to achieve his Peter Jackson moment, so be it.
At least the Dilbert cube dwellers have something to
celebrate now, I guess.
Yes, you will still be able to renew a maintenance or update a legacy perpetual license until October 2020, effectively prolonging the maintenance until October 2021. After that you'll still be able to use Steam to get perpetual licenses for either Painter or Designer.
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Thank you for keeping it real, but at the same time keep it professional too!
@Jerc Ah, I was under the impression one wouldn't be able to buy perpetual licenses anywhere, but if it will be available on Steam after next October, that isn't so bad.
I would gladly pay Abobe styled subscription whatever they ask for it if at least one of Substance software will be really truly convenient. Yeah, all alternatives are even worse. Filter forge is dead . 3dcoat is trying to rival Zbrush rather than SP. Quixel Mixer is promising but too much lacking currently.
Mari is overpriced and good for projection painting only really.
Still both SP and SD are so far away from be "all you need" for textures and since anchor feature in SP didn't make a single step in right direction. Projecting image is still a huge pain in a... after Mari . Both SD and SP are still lacking many so basic conveniences.
And I am afraid we wouldn't see them evolving much with Adobe, rather frozen in time for years
Speaking objectively it all comes down to what you do with the Substance suite. In my case i pratically never use Designer so i won't talk about it. For Painter i have a huge library of materials and smart materials so my usual workflow is: import the mesh---> bake---> apply materials---> tweak them---> paint details if needed ( decals, alphas, manual paint etc. )---> done
If you are like me you don't really need to update Painter. Stick with the perpetual and you will be good for decades until a new standard come out.
If you use Painter for more advanced stuff, maybe particles or other things than you probably want to stay up to date with the latest features. If you also use Alchemist then the subscription is the only solution.
Over the years i kept updating both Painter and Designer even if i have the perpetual simply because i like to stay up to date but out of all the features they released over these 4 years of using their softwares, only maybe 3-4 were useful to me.
Quixel is a good alternative but the problem is that transfering over 1k materials to it from Painter is a huge pain that i won't do. Also i can't convert the smart materials so they would be lost.
I would gladly pay Abobe styled subscription whatever they ask for it if at least one of Substance software will be really truly convenient. Yeah, all alternatives are even worse. Filter forge is dead . 3dcoat is trying to rival Zbrush rather than SP. Quixel Mixer is promising but too much lacking currently.
Mari is overpriced and good for projection painting only really.
Still both SP and SD are so far away from be "all you need" for textures and since anchor feature in SP didn't make a single step in right direction. Projecting image is still a huge pain in a... after Mari . Both SD and SP are still lacking many so basic conveniences.
Since you are bringing up Mari and projection painting it sounds like you are simply looking for a 3D texture painter?
I too was in early on the SP train when it first went publicly available but it never felt right for what I do (was more like a tool for masking pre-made materials, not very artsy) and the procedural stuff didn't interest me much. As you say Mari is only good for projection painting, the others you mentioned I have not tried (3D Coat has been stuck in my 'need to trial this properly' queue for years now).
Since I do need to paint and project source images and painting feel is more important than techy features or fancy viewports I have simply resigned myself to using Mudbox for this task. Simple enough as a sidekick program with almost no learning curve, paints pretty well and can handle sizeable assets - and the UDIM support and Photoshop bridge comes in handy, too.
And youve hit on what painter is for - which is applying materials that other people have made to your model - this works great for large studio pipelines (particularly those that require outsource) where you want consistent and correct materials on hundreds/thousands of assets. There are other workflow benefits such as UV independence and the fact you can make your own masking/projection tools that seem to get downplayed a bit.
Anyway, I converted over to the subscription at home recently and my house didn't burn down. The pricing for commercial licensing under the new model is very impressive as well so in all its a thumbs up from me
I figure it was for that poopipe, hence me doing my painting in zbrush, ie the base diffuse. I still think it s a bit of a weird program, but will have
to add it to my list of things I will forced to be enthusiastic about, like marvelous designer etc
Every decent sized studio in existence is going to look at this change to pricing and say "Yeah whatever, we still need the tools so we'll pay" and anybody who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.
If you as a freelancer or indie don't want to pay a premium price for premium tools, that's entirely up to you. Frankly some of the bigger benefits of using the Substance suite are only really leveraged by large teams anyway.
Yes, you will still be able to renew a maintenance or update a legacy perpetual license until October 2020, effectively prolonging the maintenance until October 2021. After that you'll still be able to use Steam to get perpetual licenses for either Painter or Designer.
So, fast forward to end of Sept 2020 - so this means we should _now_ update our perpetual licenses for the last time!?
Replies
Adobe is also often one of the biggest contributor at Siggraph and has a huge research department that we - as Substance - can now leverage.
We are the ones at Adobe who are tasked to get you the tools you need now, and we intend on over-delivering
- The ability to use Photoshop brushes inside Painter
- Content Aware tiling in Alchemist.
Any chance you're able to shed more light on what other advancements you guys are making by working together? It's been a while since the two companies have started working together, and it might cool off some opinions if we learned about some cool features that were coming out due to this merger.
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2692070#Comment_2692070
Check out whats being done with it for Nodevember: https://twitter.com/search?q=#nodevember #b3d&src=typeahead_click
I read that you must use cycles to bake them, not sure if there is another way.
Hop on the Affinity forums and look how long it took Afiinity to support targa files after their devs didn't see the need for such outdated file formats. The overall support from Affinity was so bad that it tarnished their product experiences.
So while it hurts that the rent to own model is no longer around, it feels like a lot of hate is just people shitting on Adobe because that is the hot thing to do right now. In the last full year since Adobe took over Substance, has the product gotten worse? Has it gotten stale? Has it the exact same feature set as a year ago?
If you really don't like Adobe, then vote with your wallet. This stuff will always happen if all we do is bitch but then still buy into the service. Same think for shitty reboots of movies or games broken on release that take day one patches that are 3 times the size of the original game download. Don't like them? Don't buy them, and for fucks sake don't pre-order those games! If they are no longer a viable option, they won't do them anymore.
We'll have much more to show and announce over the course of next year
A business should be based on a relationship of trust between the company and the consumers.
So If a company say "perpetual licenses are here to stay, price of the software will not increase" and other good stuff, well, i expect that to be true.
But if the next day i woke up and "hey, you know what, we increased the price, the maintenance plan will disappear and sub only" i feel mocked.
That's why many people are switching from commercial softwares to open source alternative like Blender. Because they are tired of all these licensing bullshit.
With open source software at least i know that when i'll woke up in the morning, the license is still the same, the terms of use is still the same, the software is still there and i can focus on my art.
100 % free commercial softwares like DaVinci Resolve are a good option too because even if they disappear or change their terms of use, well at least i didn't pay anything until now.
I want to point out that Adobe-Allegorithmic is only an example that i took because we are in topic. There are many other companies that i could talk about that adopted the same line of thinking.
Ashervisalis said:
[snip]
On a side note, check out the ad I'm getting on this page :P
Just thinking out loud here...what if I was to say, invert the logo colour scheme, remove Company name (but keep the affirmation) which I reckon will leave something like this
Jerc said:
The tools may not go in the way you'd like them to as 3D artists, and that's understandable since they were not made for you in the first place, you are not the targeted user.
Adobe barely shifts the needle. The only way they innovate is by acquiring other companies and their software or just every once in a while mashing siggraph white papers into their software in the least useful way. It's a retirement home for graphics programmers.
But at the end of the day ... when the direction of a production tool is driven by a "tech enthusiast" audience cheering like sheep at the newest iphone and geniunely enjoying installing a new OS to "play around with it" + software companies just adding stuff to justify their subscription model ... the end result is just bloat.
If anything, all I'd ever ask for Adobe would be for them to put their biggest focus on performance. But the cycle of new PS releases always being measurably slower and glitchier than the last has been repeating itself for years now.
I believe that this, along with the emphasis on subscription models makes criticism of the Substance acquisition quite justified imho. Simply because even though it does make complete sense for the two companies involved (and I don't believe it to be a case of the Substance guys being "greedy" at all), it seems very likely to result in an inferior product : Likely addition of extra "intro screens" in typical Adobe fashion, probably a dependency on a CC launcher app (or at the very least it being pushed during install), less interesting pricing models for the end-user later down the line (no more rent-to-own), and so on.
Allegorithmic sold out yes, a shame. Then again, Discreet sold out 20+ years ago and 3ds is still top modeling tool. I expect most here will still be subscribing or liberating Substance in foreseeable future regardless corporate / license changes.
Put differently : imho leads/ADs who do *not* care about forcing the latest and coolest revision of this or that software are almost always the ones with the strongest art background - because they know that automating this or that "surface level" aspect just for the sake of it will not necessarily help much, or might even cost time.
On the other hand.. If I'm already writing: While a software is in development is makes sense to stay up to date to have the newest formats but when the software is (more or less) finished you don't have to change the serialized data all the time. So your argument is basically exactly what companies want: an environment where you constantly have to upgrade something to not fall behind.
I mean look as this Apple nonsense. If you want to develop an app you have to use a recent x-code (ok) which requires a certain os (hmm.. ) which then is locked to certain hardware only (wtf?!) In the end you have to buy a completely new set of development hardware + software + mobile devices just to support one version jump where barely anything relevant for the app changes (as you can obviously still USE older apps). It's ridiculous..
If I want to get YOUR money.. What do you think I'm gonna do? I'm gonna hardcore Apple on you
@pior You'll be happy to hear that for various teams, including Photoshop's, one of the main focus this year was performance, there was quite a bit of emphasis on it during Adobe MAX last week and it seems there was some significant improvements in PS and Premiere (haven't tried it myself yet).
Again, in time I think we will change your guy's minds about Substance at Adobe being a bad thing, we're working on some really great stuff.
I don't know if it is still the case in the most recent revisions of PS but for the longest time, stepping back after painting a stroke placed on a new layer ... not only undid the stroke, but also the layer setting (IIRC), meaning that the next painted strokes would be done on the wrong layer. This is a well known issue (the "undo dance"), but the funny thing is that when users reported it (10 years ago. I was in one of these meetings.) the first reaction of the Adobe guys was to take the stance of "this is not a bug, this is a feature deeply rooted into the differences between undo (last step) and history steps (stepping back)". Sure thing - but from the user point of view it doesn't matter what the name is or what the justification is - it doesn't prevent it from being extremely annoying.
Now 10 years later, changes are made to the undo/history system, default hotkeys are changed, and so on. Whether or not the change is good or even alleviates the issue is one thing, but the inertia is quite remarkable.
It's partly this kind of things that makes people feel nervous about the merger - there is just a lot of baggage to clean up, and user trust to regain. It just comes with the Adobe territory.
What i don't trust, adobe. I don't trust the monopolization of tools like this. Same thing with autodesk. They own too much and now they just whirl around and barely budge the needle while still having huge fundamental issues with their software. @pior described this better than i did.
I didn't cherry pick those two features, they made entire animated gif laced features page with 6-7 "key new features" two of which were undo and changing the transform tool. I also have a hard time believing that after 20 years of the transform tool functioning one way all of the sudden "their data" suggested they should change it.
I don't think they "sold out". In this world just get your money and gtfo.
But on 3DS being the "top modeling tool", i don't think this really has anything to do with it being the best modeling tool. I think it's more of a combination of mass acquisitions, huge marketing budgets, crafty sales departments and roughly keeping up with the industry. I haven't seen anything "new" come out of autodesk in maya or max in ages. They just own the industry.
I meant more so in the pejorative sense. Ie Sacrificing their artistic or creative integrity for money. Like Musicians, etc.
Can you try to change our minds about the subscription-only model being a bad thing too?
I don't want to seem like a pest here, but even if you guys have some awesome stuff to release, that doesn't help with this recent subscription news.
This experience is what the very big majority of users are asking and purchasing today, and this is what we are pushing.
And as Jeremie mentioned, there is a lot of new things to come.
However, there are users who just need to have Painter or Designer in standalone. This is why we offer this option on Steam.
So Substance experience on Substance website, and Painter/Designer standalone on Steam.
You don’t say?
I suspect the merger with Adobe has a lot less to do with pushing the envelope as their PR department would have us believe and more in line with Sebastien Deguy's megalomania.
Allegorithmic was championed by their customer base not only for their innovative tools but also for their progressive pricing structure which enabled indie developers to create textured assets free from the cost burden imposed by Autodesk and Adobe. Allegorithmic was respected and loved by the game development industry world-wide – but for Sebastien Deguy, that wasn’t enough.
Adobe never cared for professional 3D artists or even enthusiasts; their shareholders are only interested in the one segment that maximizes profits - the masses. Just like Apple's professional user base who were left floundering in favour of the iDevice generation, indie game devs will find themselves similarly sidelined as the shift in focus from texture artist to empowering corporate marketing drones rolls inexorably on.
That’s right, it is the office cube dweller that drew the short straw and is now tasked with the unenviable job of designing the company stationary who is ultimately Adobe’s target market. Except this time, the poor sap will be expected to make his logos and pie charts pop in 3D with bright plastic material shaders rendered courtesy of Adobe Dimension. That is where Allegorithmic’s efforts will be directed towards in the coming years.
Let’s not forget about who else is working on this poor man’s version of Keyshot. Yes, the Mixamo crew; the same people who promised the now all too familiar load of manure about the great things they were going to accomplish for us 3D artists with their newfound Adobe partnership. It is a very telling precursor of things to come.
The Founder of Allegorithmic has far greater illusions of grandeur that apparently transcend beyond those of us here at Polycount and other 3D communities. Sebastien Deguy doesn't just want to be known as the maverick who altered the workflow of texture painting, he wants his legacy to be forever remembered alongside the likes of Thomas Knoll and Russell Brown; worshiped as some deity of visual communications as it were. If that means putting putting those who originally helped prop up his success, the loyal game developers, on the sacrificial altar of mandatory subscription services to achieve his Peter Jackson moment, so be it.
At least the Dilbert cube dwellers have something to celebrate now, I guess.
After that you'll still be able to use Steam to get perpetual licenses for either Painter or Designer.
Remember this is a community, and software developers are a key part of who we are.
https://polycount.com/discussion/63361/information-about-polycount-new-member-introductions/p1
Respect Your Fellow Artists
Some simple guidelines for showing respect to other artists of Polycount.
Thank you for keeping it real, but at the same time keep it professional too!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1194110/Substance_Painter_2020/
In my case i pratically never use Designer so i won't talk about it. For Painter i have a huge library of materials and smart materials so my usual workflow is: import the mesh---> bake---> apply materials---> tweak them---> paint details if needed ( decals, alphas, manual paint etc. )---> done
If you are like me you don't really need to update Painter. Stick with the perpetual and you will be good for decades until a new standard come out.
If you use Painter for more advanced stuff, maybe particles or other things than you probably want to stay up to date with the latest features.
If you also use Alchemist then the subscription is the only solution.
Over the years i kept updating both Painter and Designer even if i have the perpetual simply because i like to stay up to date but out of all the features they released over these 4 years of using their softwares, only maybe 3-4 were useful to me.
Quixel is a good alternative but the problem is that transfering over 1k materials to it from Painter is a huge pain that i won't do.
Also i can't convert the smart materials so they would be lost.
There are other workflow benefits such as UV independence and the fact you can make your own masking/projection tools that seem to get downplayed a bit.
Anyway, I converted over to the subscription at home recently and my house didn't burn down.
The pricing for commercial licensing under the new model is very impressive as well so in all its a thumbs up from me
If you as a freelancer or indie don't want to pay a premium price for premium tools, that's entirely up to you. Frankly some of the bigger benefits of using the Substance suite are only really leveraged by large teams anyway.
So, fast forward to end of Sept 2020 - so this means we should _now_ update our perpetual licenses for the last time!?
Side note that we will still offer perpetual licenses through Steam