Why Substance Designer feels so outdated.

gnoop

While I still see no real alternative.  Just wonder if it's only my impression.    For years I see only cosmetic improvements .  Node bypass been best of them IMO  yet took decades of users prays  .    

Coming to Blender nodes  feel so much like breath  of fresh air .   Any custom node  saved in a library  could be done local to the file with a single click  or be just local override.   Groups are so simple  end easy , sharing  or "exposing" inputs is  so easy  too  while    SD is a non stop search for mistakes and never ending puzzle of  why some resources are missing now. 

 Blender never makes you such issues.     They did curves in SD but my gosh  managing  curves procedurally  is so much easier in Blender geometry nodes  and they are svg exportable .   Too bad SD can't even import svg properly . 

With Blender  any output in any place  is instantly understandable either by viewer node  and even could show  indexes like Houdini now  while in SD you need a special voodoo to see what your math change is actually doing  if its  doesn't match pixel processor expected output.     

Adobe and SD  never even tried to add some conveniences typical for 2d editors.  A transform gizmo that could scale around  precisely placed center , a modern style gradient gizmo.    I am so tired of multiple node knitting  where it's  2 sec  thing in any  2d image soft. 

I really wish Blender would do some image processing tools like blur, distance and  loop based warp aka slope blur  plus  something like fx-map node.   

poopipe

Adobe have completely stifled any forward progress since the icon went green - this is true and it's a real shame. It's still as powerful as it ever was though.

and I'll say it again.. 

Difficulties with dependency and library management are and have always been a skill issue - the system is robust, customisable, portable and works with version control systems. 
For any 'normal' use case,  you save things into a folder and they appear in the library. you can move that folder, update library aliases  and everything sorts itself out. If you don't organise your work you'll get into trouble it but that's true of literally everything and is 100% the fault of the user. 

Managing live dependencies across multiple projects, multiple contributors and multiple versions of designer is awkward but it is possible to manage with some guidelines and/or tooling. 

Working with 'embedded dependencies'  like you describe with blender and as are present in painter is a nice short-term win for those that don't name things properly or keep their stuff in order but it bites you in the arse long term when you have to go manually update 300 files cos you made a fix to something. 

gnoop

Thanks  poopipe  for you opinion . I agree that dependency management  is something that sure works there  when  you spend some of your energy on keeping it all consistent .   The problem SD  forces  it on you  while  in many other soft including Blender  it works other way  too, nothing is forced on you and it's what I call convenience.  In a rush  of last week before deadline I don't want to waste my stamina on such kind of self discipline.  I need  something that just work .    

A simple option of looking  all missing resources in certain new path/folder could solve it all at once.   Or showing  not just red "ghost" node but rather what it was last time when it worked , a name at least.     

  In a word there might be many  ways to make it less prone  to even  slightest  omission and mistakes .  Yet  no conveniences for easily fixing it.      Blender uses  local overrides for library items . it's super convenient  vs my SD libraries where I have already dozens of same but updated versions  after years  while still have to keep older ones  for older graphs.  

And what about quick link to Photoshop or vector soft  to bring splines or manual mask editing .  Both bitmap node brushes and svg node are so hopelessly outdated and ancient.  Why not bring it from Painter  at least .