Introducing Adobe Substance 3D Stager and Dimension update!

[JMathews]

Hi everyone!  Jeanette here, lead product manager for Dimension.  It's been a little while since I've had an announcement for the community, but I'm very happy to be able to break the silence on some exciting news.

Today we launched a new application - Adobe Substance 3D Stager!  Stager is built by the same team that built Dimension with a shared foundation for some technology while also being a bit reimagined.  Where Dimension was a general purpose application that was intended for those new to 3D to learn, Stager is a dedicated scene staging application that is more powerful for professional 3D artists while retaining it's approachability for those learning 3D.

So what are some of the key differences between Dimension and Stager?

• Dimension was more general purpose where Stager is specifically part of the new Substance 3D Collection which offers multiple applications for an end-to-end 3D workflow including modeling, texturing, and staging.
• The rendering engine has been updated and reworked to the Adobe Mercury Rendering Engine.  This engine is multi-technique, including both real time and ray tracing in a single engine.  It is built with entire new infrastructure for modernizing techniques, improving performance and scaling to be available on more hardware.
• Stager's material system has been updated for a new version of the Adobe Standard Material definition with tons of new effects like displacement, subsurface scattering, dispersion, clear coat, sheen, anisotropy, and more.
• Stager includes a variety of general new staging features including collision based layout, multi-camera resolution outputs, physical lights, and much more.

What does this mean for Dimension?

• Dimension will continue to be available as part of Creative Cloud All Apps plans - there is no change to it's availability!  To see Dimension Creative Cloud desktop go to settings > apps > and enable "Show older apps" setting.
• Dimension doesn't have any major planned releases right now  - we'll be putting new features into Stager, but we will provide support updates for Dimension!
• You can open Dimension files in Stager to take advantage of all the new features - also try Stager out for a full 30 day free trial!

Want to learn more about everything?  Check out some of these resources:

• Adobe.com 3D & Augmented Reality page
• Adobe.com Substance 3D Stager page

We're really excited about the opportunity to build a new family of 3D applications that work seamlessly to provide an end-to-end experience for modeling, texturing, and staging 3D models and scenes and we hope you enjoy the new Substance 3D Stager app!

--

Edit: 8/17

Thank you all for the great conversation on Dimension and Stager.  It's clear there's a lot of passion and excitement for amazing staging apps, and I take my duty to the community seriously.  Please know that all of your concerns about pricing, confusion on the Dimension status, and Stager future, have been escalated to our leadership teams and we're working on some possible improvements!

Here's a round up of the latest information based on some questions and discussion that have happened in various threads:

Dimension

• Dimension is still part of Creative Cloud All Apps plan.
• Dimension is currently hidden by deafult on Creative Cloud Desktop.
• To see Dimension you must go to CCD > Preference > Apps > and enable "Show older apps"
• The "Show older apps" option may be disabled by administrators for education and enterprise organizations.
• We are actively working to REVERSE this so that Dimension is not hidden, as it is confusing and inaccurate.
• Update 8/19: This is now reversed!  Dimension is available by default and you no longer need to enable "Show older apps".
• Dimension is NOT end-of-lifed, but we are not working on new features for it (at this time).

Stager

• Stager is exclusive to the Substance 3D Collection plan. 
• There are currently not any single app plans for Substance apps - we are investigating this possibility!
• It is not currently planned that any Substance apps will be added to the CC All Apps plans.
• HOWEVER, the exception is that Substance 3D Collection is free for those with CC All Apps for Higher Education.
• HOWEVER, the limitation is that Substance 3D Collection for Higher Education is available for Shared Device Licensing (SDL) and Feature Restricted Licensing (FRL).  It is not yet available for Named User Licensing (NUL).
• We hope to work on Named User Licensing for Higher Edu support, but I don't have a clear timeline on that.  It's months at least.  Unfortunately there's little we can do to accellerate this.  Adobe licensing land is a bit complicated and we have people working on it!

As always I try to be as transparent as possible with the community, but there's limits to what I can say on a public forum.  Everything is subject to change, and I will do my best to communicate as we move forward!

[JMathews]

Absolutely!

First - make sure that you're using a material with either a height map plugged on or a Substance that uses the height channel.  You can see this in the material tab of the Properties panel:

Then go to the object tab of the properties panel and enable displacement.

[bryanua]

As of right now, there have been 1.1K views of this post and precisely 1 like (and a ton of people having issues with trying to use Dimension, from what I can tell from all of the post notifications). Adobe, are you receiving your users' feedback on the direction you are headed with this?

[JMathews]

I am here and listening.  That's all I can say for now!

[bryanua]

Just to clarify @JMathews, I am not planning to download the trial versions of any of the new apps. As I mentioned in my first post, I've invested a great deal of time to implement a workflow of making my own models and importing them into Dimension, which was very time consuming, though, seemingly worthwhile for what I was going to be able to accomplish, but the application was limited, and I, like others who have commented was awaiting new feature releases FOR DIMENSION (all the way back from at least 2019 where YOU shared that their were plans for animation features co...). I am NOT going to be moving forward with any other Adobe products outside of my current subscription. Has Adobe considered everyone's feedback on this? The fact that Dimension is now being considered an "Older App" and will not receive further updates even though it is included in paid plans is completely unacceptable and I'm not going to begin to adopt (read: support) these new apps when the usability that was already included in my plan has been ripped out from under me. Especially as I am in the middle of implementing the final assets from my Dimension investment into many of my professional projects. This frustration is not directed at you @JMathews, but you have been the voice of Adobe for Dimension on this forum, so unfortunately it looks like you have mislead us. 

[Josua5EC8]

Same goes for me. I definitely don't plan on downloading and testing the trial versions either. Enough is enough! Fortunately, I'm in the situation where I only have one external commercial plug-in within the Creative Cloud so far, which means I have more flexibility to look for alternatives. It takes times, but that makes the hurdle before the switch that much easier. I'll definitely be preparing to say goodbye to Creative Cloud over the next few months, unless 3D Stager is added as Dimension successor within the Creative Cloud, as it should be. It's now up to Adobe alone to decide how they will respond to customer criticism. I will definitely not let myself be bullied and pushed into an additional subscription.

[JMathews]

I always give the most accurate information I can in a public forum at any given time.  However, things do change.  Two years ago we weren't considering Stager as a new product, I really thought we were working on a Dimension 4.0 and animation and such would be part of that app.  I can't apologize for all the things that change, but I do hope you and the rest of the community know that I try very hard to be transparent as possible.

[bryanua]

That's a fair response, but with the amount of backlash on the release of the Substance apps, I think it's fair to say that it would have been MORE transparent to have shared the plans for the switch to Substance from Dimension back when it occurred (a couple of years gap) rather than the radio silence when folks asked for updated features to Dimension and then a surprise announcement that basically renders the Dimension users without any option but to pay more for "new" apps. Can we agree on that @JMathews ?

Has Adobe considered our frustrations? It's been over a month since you've announced these changes and plans, and I, admittedly, would love to try out the features/apps, but as I've stated before, I'm not moving forward without some more transparency and perhaps, as others have requested, the ability to simply use Substance Stager in place of Dimension as part of Adobe Creative Cloud. To completely just plan to dissolve an existing app doesn't seem right at all. Project Felix was sort of a BETA, I guess, but was then rebranded to Dimension. Adobe removed the ability to use the BETA and traded Dimension for paying customers who helped test your app (sort of like Muse), but to just hide Dimension as an "Older App" as if it was never part of the paid package is not cool. 

If Adobe needs to be able to cover the cost of the acquisition of the software from Allegorithmic and continued development with the OTHER Substance apps (Painter, Sampler, Designer, Modeler and other plugins) I suppose I can understand a slight increase to the subscription cost. May I suggest adding a "+" to the end of Creative Cloud, ie. 'Adobe Creative Cloud +' ? That seems to be a popular thing these days, no? Maybe Adobe Creative Cloud + adds additional professional features and add-ons (in app purchase style)?

I digress, but please put Substance Stager back into the All Apps plan in place of Dimension so that users can continue to use a fully supported software that we've spent a lot of time with and were highly anticipating new features to arrive to. 

[bryanua]

Also, since I mentioned Muse...from a consistency standpoint Adobe, shouldn't Muse be considered an "Older App" since you gave it an official End of Service date of March 26, 2020 which is now over a year ago?

[bryanua]

ADOBE...are you here on YOUR community boards? Can you hear us? Please respond...

[JMathews]

I read every post on the forums. ❤️ I am here and listening and communicating feedback with leadership.

[bryanua]

Hi @JMathews, I just wanted follow up with you to see if you could share any news on if Adobe is planning to respond to any of our requests to either bringing Stager to our Creative Cloud All Apps plans or bring more features/support to the Dimension we are already paying for? My short free trial of Stager is up and I have no interest in another subscription based off of the little time I was able to spend with that trial. However, I would like to continue using Dimension as I was, but with the added features/support we were hoping to see arrive. 

Either way, it would be nice if we could have a definitive response from Adobe addressing the numerous requests from this valuable and important community of users on this thread.

Thank you.

[Ussnorway]

Muse was killed for different reasons which have not been made public however the option to pay extra for another app effectively doing the same job isn't available with Muse... Despite the current marketing campaign claim

[Ian Dack]

I totally agree. Adobe, if you are removing an app (Dimensions) I expect to either have a reduction in the subscription cost, or a replacement app (Stager).

[Ciellchan]

I second this. Stager should replace Dimension, we shouldn't be expected to pay extra if Dimension is retired to favor Stager deveolpment. It's just not fair from customer perspective.

[bryanua]

UPDATE! As of now this post has been seen by 10.1K viewers and has now 3 Likes. Adobe, I don't think the frustration is isolated to a small number of niche customers. Any updates on incorporating Stager into our Creative Cloud All Apps plans?? That's what we are expecting. 

[swaecosmetics]

I for one love the whole Substance family approach to things. It is immensely powerful, and in many ways the future for Adobe and 3D.

Even though I have loved Dimension for product packaging, and agree with other users that Stager probably should be included in plans where Dimension exists (because it targes the same users and is effectively a replacement), I understand why Adobe has to eventually put Dimension out to pasture. Dimension seems to technically have been hitting a glass ceiling for a while, hard pressed to compete with e.g. Keyshot. Stager (with it s hopefully future deep ties into the other substance concepts such as substance .sbs/.sbsar materials etc.) might very well turn that around.

So keep it up guys. I, for one will keep an eye out for frequent Substance Stager updates and new features that could eventually replace our current tools for product visualization.

IMPORTANT Feature Request: Please support Vector Decals (labels). A seamless workflow between Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Substance Stager for making e.g. product packaging labels would be every product packaging designers hot dream come true (which we don't have in e.g. Keyshot). 

Thanks

C.

[JMathews]

Thanks C.!

You can request features for Stager here and get updates when they're available.  
https://feedback.substance3d.adobe.com/forums/936174-substance-3d-stager

A note that stager already supports .ai and .svg format decals for import and placement.  And you can use "Edit In" or CC Libraries to get updates in Illustrator to reflect in Stager immediately.  The only limitation is that we do rasterize the vector on import - could use new controls to re-rasterize at new sizes when you scale the vector so it's more 'vector' experience.

[m.ART]

Its says for me that Dimensions isnt downloadable anymore and on my all apps plan i dont find it anymore.

I liked to use Dimensions for simple Mockups or just to get my first steps into 3D. So is that a just a "Bug" for me or isnt Dimensions part of the all apps plan anymore?

[JMathews]

Dimension is still available for the All Apps plan.

- Dimension is not avilable on M1 devices at this time and won't show up in CC if your'e on one
- If you don't see it then go to Creative Cloud app > Preferences > Apps > "Show Older Apps" option enabled

[Hyncharas]

Dimension isn't showing up on Windows 10 systems, either, unless you toggle the "show older apps" option.

Is the app being retired in favour of Substance Stager, or simply being reworked?

[Ciellchan]

Stager is beautiful, I just tried and I love. But I need to adress the elephant in the room: 
Stager IS Dimension with updates. 

Stager is not a different product, it is the same product with updates and a different name, it should be included on the CC Cloud, please this if far from being okey. We cannot be asked to pay extra to have the updates of a program we are already paying.

I know this isn't on the developer deparment but please, Adobe needs to start considering their subscribers, this is not okay. 

[ahazen1419]

Thank you. The backlash is growing and wth good reason. Hopefully Adobe will come to tis senses and revise the price.

[Jamain5E58]

The Dimensions doesn't work on the M1 Macbook, why is that?

And...

The 'show older apps' doesn't show up in Enterprise account

[JMathews]

Dimension and Stager are not supported on M1 devices yet.  This is something that is a high priority for the team, but no release time yet.

[duck9000]

It seems that Dimension is no longer available.  When trying to go to download I either get a 404 page or the message below. I just got a new computer today, I need to finish some work I've started with Adobe, and now I can't do it.

I'm hoping this is just a glitch ...