Substance Designer for Ipad

I’d really love to see Substance 3D Designer come to the iPad.

I use Designer a lot, and I think it’s one of those programs that could actually work really well on a tablet. A big part of the workflow is building graphs, testing different nodes, tweaking values and experimenting with materials, so it would be great to be able to do some of that without always having to sit in front of a desktop PC.

For me, the biggest benefit would simply be convenience. Being able to work on a material while sitting on the couch, on a plane, while traveling, or basically anywhere away from my main workstation would be incredibly useful. Sometimes I just want to experiment with a graph or make a few changes, and having to go back to the computer for that can feel unnecessary.

Modern iPads are also surprisingly powerful. ZBrush, for example, works really well on the iPad, which shows that these devices are already capable of running serious 3D applications. Because Designer is mostly node-based, I also feel like the interface could translate pretty well to touch, especially for navigating graphs, connecting nodes and adjusting parameters. Apple Pencil support could be useful too.

It would also be really nice if projects could move easily between desktop and iPad. You could start something on your PC, keep working on it later from the iPad, and then continue again on desktop without having to change your workflow.

I don’t think an iPad version would need to replace the desktop version or have every single advanced feature from day one. Even having a solid version focused on creating, editing and experimenting with graphs would already be extremely useful.

I think Designer is a really good fit for the iPad, and I’d definitely use it regularly if you guys ever decided to bring it over.