Substance model graphs end of life

[Nicolas3D]

We would like to inform you about a significant change coming to Substance 3D Designer. As indicated in the changelog of the 12.4.1 bugfix, this release of Designer will be the last one to support Substance model graphs. This decision has been made to streamline our focus on Material creation and enhance the user experience.

Our team has closely analyzed user feedback and adoption rates for the feature, and we've come to the conclusion that Designer is not the optimal platform for procedural geometry within the Substance 3D ecosystem. To fully concentrate on delivering cutting-edge features and improvements for Material artists, we have made the pragmatic decision to cease development of Substance model graphs and remove the feature from Designer entirely. This will allow us to move forward without constraints and dedicate our resources to areas that better serve our users.

We sincerely appreciate your understanding and support in this matter. Please stay tuned for future releases, as we continue to innovate and enhance the Designer experience for Material artists.

[Angelo24074030f4c0]

I thought the whole workflow in Designer was to use graphs.

Just how is one meant to create materials and tweak them without a graph?

[Nicolas3D]

Hi Angelo, we are not removing graphs, only the type of graph dedicated to procedural geometry (Substance model graph)
Substance compositing graph (the main one), still remains, like function graphs, MDL graphs, etc. 

[Thibaud.be]

I had very high interest in this feature, that's such a shame to see this die.
It seems to me that the low adoption was on par with the marketing put on this feature.

[rasmus219970622ava]

This is very disappointing. My workflow for several clients is ruined.

[Justine29656262r1r0]

Hi!

I really like this feature, and I'm wondering if there is any plan in the future to have another parametric model generation graph software from you guys.

[Siegfried Baldauf]

This is very bad news. Will the feature be implemented elsewhere or will it die altogether? After all, this kind of modelling is very promising especially for patterns, but not known at all among product designers. It would also require a slightly different workflow to be established.

[samuel_the_hamster]

this inlcudes the nodes like <= && nums bools and all that u know?

[ShelLuser]

No, those are nodes used in so called function graphs and those will remain. Functions are a core feature of Designer and removing that would basically make it impossible to automate anything. 

This is specifically about model graphs, so 3D models within Designer.

[ShelLuser]

A bit late but I'd still like to express my disappointment about this decision, IMO this is a serious step backwards because it severely impacts Designers overal functionality, and not for the better I think. With all due respect but I cannot help but notice that the price for Designer effectively went up, while it now basically provides less functionality than before. That's kinda peculiar I think.

I also don't quite understand this decision because from what I can see the 3D View pane still remains. So core support for 3D is still a thing within Designer yet for some - in my opinion - vague reasons we're no longer given the option to control any specific parts of it anymore? And from what I understand this functionality also doesn't get picked up by any of the other Substance environments either. While you say that not too many people use it...  I cannot help but notice that the ones who do use this quite often and very in-depth. Could it be that the main reason not too many people have picked up on this is because your documentation on the matter was rather poor? That's not a sneer, that's a conclusion that has also been shared by some of your own staff. I know how difficult it is to write such documentation, I'm a vivid writer myself.

But I really think you highly underestimate the importance model graphs had for several of us. Still using Painter & Designer 2022 myself so nothing changed for me, but I heavily rely on these models to bring information about my mesh into my substance graph where I work on texture presets (unfortunately not with direct connections); these values (or rather: value differences) can then help me to apply specific automated changes to the texture in order to compensate for some deformation when some parts of the mesh get changed. Think about the use of morphs for instance.

I once even took this one step further by "abusing" the substance graph base base parameters: I exposed some of those in order to get input nodes for the SBS graph in my model graph, only to undo the actual changes within the SBS graph itself (through use of functions and static variables). Resulting in me getting automated measurements from my mesh within the SBS graph.

It's a shame that we'll have to continue to rely on hacks to make all of this work, but c'est la vie I guess.