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Participant
July 16, 2025

Updating to Designer v15 broke my project - crashes on load

  • July 16, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 547 views

I updated to the new version 15, opened the project I had been working on earlier in the day on the previous software version, Designer crashed while loading it. Tried a few more times, same thing.

I then downgraded my install back to the latest version of v14, tried to open my project. Designer now does the same thing, crashes while loading my project.

 

What on earth happened in that update to break something so irrecoverably?! I can't open my old file in the old version!

 

I get the feeling it's something to do with failing to load resources properly, and instead of giving a warning and allowing you to correct the failed resources, it just crashes.

 

I use this for my job - need this fixed asap.

4 replies

Participant
August 18, 2025

I have similar problem, was trying to update project to 15.0 version. Project with sculpted highpoly/plane for bake and it just crashes as soon as I click update. What helped to go to lower version remove everything from resources and then update to 15.0. it is not a great solution aspecially if you have a lot of files to update. Advices from thread didn't help in my case. 

Participant
July 30, 2025

Hey thanks for the response!

 

I did try turning off the outputs when opening a graph etc which I think helped to at least get me to figure out what had happened.

 

As it turns out it was running out memory/hitting the memory limit when I tried to open that graph.

Strange thing to me is that I had no problem opening and working on that same graph in the exact same state before updating to the new version.

So I went in and changed the memory limit in the prefs to be much higher. It was set surprisingly low for some reason.

 

Given that only became as issue after updating it concerns me that in the new update either Designer is using more memory than before, or for some reason when I updated it changed the memory limit from what it was to be too low.

Nicolas3D
Community Manager
Community Manager
July 16, 2025

Sorry to read that.
Just to be sure, has the file been modified since the Designer update? 

Luca Giarrizzo
Community Manager
Community Manager
July 16, 2025

Hi! I am sorry you are experiencing this, and am happy to help!

 

First, let us make sure the Substance engine can compute the graph, and remove the 3D View from the equation for now:

 

  1. Start Designer 15.0.0
  2. Go to Edit > Preferences > Graph
  3. Uncheck 'View outputs in 3D View when opening a graph', and click OK
  4. Go to 'Tools > Switch engine..."
  5. Select the "Direct3D" or "Vulkan" engine that is not in italic, and click OK
  6. Load your project

 

Please let me know about the result!

 

Best regards.

Luca Giarrizzo | Quality Engineer - Substance 3D Designer | Adobe