# Substance Designer Reviews **Vendor:** Adobe **Category:** [3D Rendering Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/3d-rendering) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 56 ## About Substance Designer Substance Designer is a node-based non-destructive application for creating materials. Edit complete texture sets fast with the non-linear workflow and see your changes apply simultaneously to all your outputs. Unleash the power of Substance Designer and focus on what really matters: your art. ## Substance Designer Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **precision in creating high-quality textures** with Substance Designer, enjoying complete control over materials. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of use** in Substance Designer, enabling them to create complex textures with precision effortlessly. (1 reviews) - Users value the **high-quality material creation** capabilities of Substance Designer, enjoying full control and precision in texture design. (1 reviews) - Users value the **powerful modeling capabilities** of Substance Designer, enabling precise and complex texture creation from scratch. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **powerful open-source capabilities** of Substance Designer, enabling extensive customization and creative freedom in texture design. (1 reviews) - Texturing (1 reviews) ## Substance Designer Reviews ### 1. Incredibly Powerful Procedural Texturing with Full Material Control **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lauren S. | Project Manager, Marketing and Advertising, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2026 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Substance Designer is an incredibly powerful tool for creating high-quality, procedural textures. It gives full control over materials, allowing me to build complex, reusable textures from scratch with precision. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The node-based workflow is flexible and efficient once you get used to it. I especially like how easy it is to iterate, make variations, and maintain consistency across assets. Integration with other Adobe tools and 3D software makes it even more valuable for professional workflows. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** That said, the learning curve can be steep for beginners. The interface feels complex at first, and mastering advanced nodes takes time. Performance can also slow down with very heavy graphs. ### 2. BEST TOOL FOR DESIGN PROCEDURAL MATERIAL **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 08, 2023 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Substance designer helps ne to create endless procedural materials and combinations for my 3D projects . This software made specifically for game artists. This software gives you the freedom to create your own unique materials for your needs **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** For beginners I think it's difficult to understand the complexity of the nodes because this software based on node workflow . And sometime this software feels very laggy I think it's depends on system configuration **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** This software helps me to create procedural materials and seemless textures for my projects ### 3. Best experience in creating texture assets for 3D **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Davron K. | 3d game designer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 22, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** What I admire most about Substance Designer is the ease with which you can create incredible textures with minor discomfort than other applications. The ability to get all the texture maps you need or the finished material for your substance painter at a glance **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The only thing you might not like is the complexity of the nodes in the beginning, but after spending some time inside the app, I can say that this is not a severe disadvantage. The great possibilities of the app outweigh the disadvantages. After a few days of use, the app will blow your mind, and a smile will spread across your face as a result. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Create complex and unique game-ready textures that can be modified using nodes and adjusted to my needs. Export these textures directly to Substance Painter as a material and work with them quickly in another application ### 4. The Houdini of Texture Creation. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael M. | 3D Technical Artist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 22, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** It is incredible how you can build complex structures from simple forms and well-thought steps. The node system is superb. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The only thing I don´t like is when you want to review with iRay it goes full screen and loses the possibility to edit my nodes. I wish it would remain in the preview window as I want to continue to edit the node structure. I do believe the new version at the time of this review in 2021 is a little different. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Read through the documentation. It is well done and beneficial, plus explore the massive tutorials at Adobe and if you really want to dig its power, explore complex functions. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it to create digital food virtually by creating a generator of things, such as bread, muffins, cookies, and such. ### 5. How to create something out of nothing? **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ilya C. | Curator of the course "Super Maya", Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 29, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** As an environment artist, it is essential to get suitable materials for myself, which are found everywhere in our world. But what if you are unable to reach them? Substance Designer will come to the rescue, which will allow you to create all sorts of materials through the node system and flexible settings. As an artist, I say yes to this program, and it occupies one of the places of honor in my collection. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** New and exciting nodes have not appeared in the program for a long time, it is also a pity that there are not enough lessons from the creators of the program themselves. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** I recommend all artists use this to create textures, it's really cool! **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I create procedural materials with a very wide arsenal to create different surfaces. Flexible settings and the ability to do whatever comes to mind, while achieving amazing photo realism. This program is truly a lifesaver for many artists. ### 6. Realistic Material for Archviz **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sherif G. | 3D Visualizer and Animator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** the ready alpha library helps a lot to start with a good base, the nodes are really dynamic and create a variety of material options **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** the unclear connection issue without a tip message, other than that it works perfectly **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** As an arch viz i was able to create old scratchy walls with a lots of details in a single map ### 7. easy to use **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 10, 2022 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** easy to use and easy with wich you can create textures. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** I thing is complexity of the nodes in the beginning. I think you only need some times spent to use app. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I ceate complex texture that can be modified. ### 8. Substance designer is more accessible than ever **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Louis-Philippe D. | Technical Artist/ Level Artist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 15, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** I love that bridges can be done easily between multiple application for artist, game developers and such. Per example I created materials for unreal and could update easily the process without going back and forth by exporting/importing al the time. A great speed up. The fact that they give a free student License for those who are in need to learn or simply to keep an edge back at home is nice but they could be giving this opportunity for free like Unreal does. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** the learning curve is intense. compared to substance painter designer is nodal based and, as easy it becomes after you tried this and that you still need to fail considerably a lot to do something significantly good. Although Substance designer is greatly appreciated it is still a niche programme which is reaching a a small amount of individuals in the development of video games. (mostly one responsible for an average 200 people team) this can be understandable because the package given for game developers is considerably expensive. Lastly tutorials community is small and is not teaching in general the how to but more the end results of many years of experience. It can be challenging for a new time beginner. Online classes are expensive. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** first and foremost is you need to get proper learning. Online tutorials are there and some are free also but there is nothing replacing a teacher to get up to speed quickly and get things done by yourself after. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a developer i will use this program to create fast iterations of the material when asked or after reviews. this is a must since PBR is a science of precision and many trials. ### 9. I was offered a gift card for this review. This is, therefore, my review of said product. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luke D. | Freelancer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Well, I've never used substance designer. The name and the logo look and sound nice, I guess? I've heard of the product prior to this and I've also heard that it's a decent software for creating materials that look nice. I've heard it works well with Unity, but, like all hearsay, I cannot confirm nor deny any of this. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The logo does look like it'd blend into a load of other orange icons that other programs I own have, especially something like blender. I do question why the company behind it outsourced their review collection to what I assume is a third-party company, which then decided that I, a person who's never used the software in question, was a prime candidate for it. But hey, they're offering me a gift card, so, I shall provide my unbiased review of this software I've not used. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** I would heartily recommend finding another review of the product. Additionally, look at the product and deeply review what the problem is that you're trying to solve. You probably will find the solution in this product, but always make sure to factor in time to learn it before you can start using it as a solution. I made that mistake with 3DSMax one time, thinking it would solve problems that Blender was already solving. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I haven't? I genuinely have not used this software. ### 10. Steep learning curve, but so worth it **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 10, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** I like the variety of ways you can achieve certain effects or results in Designer. When I create materials, I already have several ideas in my head about how to produce certain details, but then I look at other artists making similar materials on youtube, and their methods might be completely different, yet we can both achieve similar and high quality results. To me, this is amazing and allows for so much creatice thinking. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** I disliked the steep learning curve, as it took a long time to learn Designer well enough so that I don't have to follow tutorials to create materials anymore. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I think it helped my employability to learn this software, as it's allways attractive to employers (especiallyy game studios) when artists can create their own materials. ### 11. A great product for texturing and painting 3D models, **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Akshit G. | Associate Motion Artist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** it fits in multiple pipelines in in practice, its node based and learning curve was very easy from other software to jumping into it, it is cross platforms ready, once the assets library is designed the materials can be easily be used multiple times and in any platforms without any problems, the plugin saves a lot of time and the free library is very vast, helps a lot **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** for people learning it or for freshers it doesn't provide a free trial, a stripped down version will help a lot **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it for designing photoreal materials, once the materials are designed and packaged it can be used multiple times, and even be sold in market, its supported in multiple platforms, the learning curve was very easy, and can be easily be suggested to anyone who are looking for it, the future is procedural materials having high quality assets ready in the collection helps a lot, and in future it will save a lot of time ### 12. best software for creating procedural material **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dalton L. | Unity Développeur, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Substance Designer is a great software. I am a programmer so I don't normally spend a lot of time on the artistic side of the business. It's something I know how to do but it's just not my strong suit. Nonetheless, I decided to try out Substance Designer. I fell in love with it instantly. Substance Designer makes it incredibly easy and fast to make AAA-quality materials. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The subscription model it's not easy to justify if you are a casual artist and solo programmer like me. Unity has a license model that only charges royalties if your game/app sells over a certain threshold. A model like that would make it more accessible to casual artists. The learning curve is a bit steep, but it's doable. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** If you are a casual artist or a programmer this could be a good addition to your workflow. Just be aware of the initial learning curve. If you are just doing some minor quick and dirt prototyping it may not be what you want, but for anything else, I recommend this software. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Create polished and materials that look like AAA ones. You can do some really intricate stuff with this but honestly, it's brilliant even if you need a simple pattern. Also, make it very easy to create tiling patterns. ### 13. I am a Freelance 3d **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Evghenii L. | 3D Artist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Intuitive node based experience without limits. My main work in Substance Designer is in creating fabrics that do not exist or not possible to photo is high resolution. It is great that once the fabric is creating, I am able to produce additional variations from it, creating numerous different variants. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** Сomplete inability to export in vector format! I would be great to have a bridge between Substance Designer and Adobe illustrator. It is easier some things to do in illustrator or vise versa. Bridge between them will resolve a lot of problems, it will laso bring to market graphic designers, because they will be able to create vector images in Substance Designer. Right now there is no ability to export anything from Substance Designer in vector formet (eps, ai, svg), this means, that it only can export raster graphics. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** It is easier to start than you think! **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am creating fabric textures in substance designer, when there is no ability to make a photo of it. Usually client has only low resolution of it, that I am not able to use a bump/displacement map. Before the appearance of Substance Designer I was forced to use Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator to create custom fabrics, but it was a big problem to make variations of it, because of lack in instruments and work with instances. Or I was using Zbrush to sculpt the alpha and then was using it as a main texture, right now I can "draw" generate that in Substance Designer that saves me a lot of time. ### 14. Substance Designer Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** The procedural, node based work flow is extremely powerful once you get your head around it. There's a wealth of content and teaching resources to help with that. The flexible workflow means it's extremely easy to adjust textures you've made, IE, number of bricks in a wall, number of stones in a gravel texture.. Overall it's just the most powerful tool for the job when it comes to creating tiling textures. The workflow between Designer and Painter is also nice, where you can use your procedural materials easily in Painter. Creating variables also allows you to easily adjust parameters that you expose. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The learning curve can be quite steep for people who are new to node based work flows. However, as mentioned, there is a wealth of teaching resources and the Substance Designer community is huge, and always open to answering questions. Sometimes it can be difficult to find the node you need. You know what you need to do, but the node may have a name that is difficult to find. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Complex materials that would take a long time to sculpt by hand can be created in a fraction of the time. Things such as tiling brick walls, gravel materials.. etc. All this while being able to easily go back and adjust the textures super easily. This iterative work flow means it's very easy to react to feedback in the professional environment. ### 15. Amazing material editor for VFX and games **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ryota S. | Animator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** The ease of use and the quality of the end result. I can literally paint right on the screen like painting a clay model. I especially love how I can quickly paint normal map and height map details. It means I don't need to bother with actually sculpting it in Blender and baking it out. It saved me so much time when creating models for my client. I also love smart materials that let me reuse the texture I made for other things. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** I hope that it will be able to natively support Blend file so that I can get started right away from Blender instead of spending time prepping it. I mainly use Blender, so it would be important for me to be able to jump right into texture design in SP to speed up my work flow. Although I only had chance to use it because my client let me use it, I had great time learning and making use of it. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's the total package for material and texturing. It's so easy to paint and edit inside SP, and it's also easy to package up the working file to export the end result to Blender. It's modular nature lets me edit the texture however I see fit without having to repeat the same steps over and over again. It's helping me a lot with hard surface objects as well as organic objects. ### 16. a wonderful and intuitive program that helped significantly optimize the project. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sergij D. | Freelance Character Artist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** in the projects I liked to use the nod system easily and clearly . The intuitiveness of the whole system is for me . . It is easy to integrate the program into various projects, with the ability to train teams in a short time with minimal resources as there is a large base of initial material and an excellent system of assistance documents . . this is the best program for creating tiles and different environments that I have ever seen and it really reduced the time to create assets for our projects . . It was easy to edit customers and art directors . **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** I like everything in the right direction , in which you are moving except for the design and visual content of the program , which is cumbersome and takes up a lot of screen space , I do not like the time it takes to run and the ability to optimize the catalog of textures and presets . **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** increase the quality of the material base, a better and more optimized window, with work in multi-screen mode **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** as I said above . this is the best program for creating tiles and different environments that I have ever seen and it really reduced the time to create assets for our projects . It was easy to edit customers and art directors . the base of materials perfectly helps with acceleration of performance of the set tasks and a possibility of their adjustment ### 17. Great tool that helps safe time **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Volodymyr H. | 3D Modeler, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** I love precision in texturing workflow that gives me that software, thus it helps me to improve time efficiency in my production line. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** Sometime it feels very laggy and overloads my computer a bit, but it's more about how I construct my node setup. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Never stop lerning **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Designer helps me to unify and optimizy process of making textures and combine diferent materials all tofether when I have to create model with 1 material. Most models that I create are dedicated for mobile platforms so count of materials is lemited. Using sbubstance designer helps me to speed up process of combining textures to 1 material. ### 18. Substance Designer Review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bradley H. | Environment Artist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Substance has helped me improve the quality of work and the speed of which it is produced. The workflow is very non-destructive, which is great for working in a large team of artists. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** Substance designer can be a quite intimidating for beginner learners who haven’t used node-based graphs. Luckily, algorithmic has a great selection of free tutorials and guides which can be found online for free. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Worth the purchase, used both professionally and on personal projects. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Substance designer is very flexible and has endless possibility’s when building a library of materials that keeps both consistency in PBR values and quality of work. ### 19. Anything is possible! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Cesar M. | Environment Texture Artist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Having this procedural nodes workflow with Substance Designer has become a game changer in my texturing pipeline. You really can do whatever it's what you need to do. Everything it's endless inside Substance Designer. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** Might get a little time to understand the node workflow but once you get it, you can literally do whatever you want. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating seamless textures with certain art driven look it's why selected Substance Designer as our first software to tackle this tasks. The benefits are that we can export .sbar files and polish or edit them directly on Substance Painter or in Maya. That's a game changer. ### 20. Intuitive and very powerful tool to create procedural content **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Very simple and intuitive tool, easy to use and very flexible. Process is very fast and great preview PBR viewport **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** Adding nodes is sometimes a bit confusing since you can't always see the nodes in the browser but only in the quick menu, would be nice to have a simpler way to quickly add nodes (similar to the visualt scripting features of Unreal Engine 4) **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Have a look at the doc pages as soon as you're not sure how to use a feature https://docs.substance3d.com/sddoc/substance-designer-102400008.html **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Create SDF (Signed Distance Field) textures out of manually baked textures from Phtoshop ### 21. easy node based way of creating materials **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Design | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 15, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** node based way of creating materials because it's very clear to understand and very easy to work with substance designer **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** sometimes I feel if the UI can little bit improved, then that would be better **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** its really good and very supportive tool. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** problems I have used substance designer for fabric material creation process. in that when we assign the texture maps they are not locally imported, they get the global location. so when we move the file for any folder then all the connections are lost. Advantages I used 8k maps with it and it they all work perfectly, I can easily handle the setup with predefined nodes presets s those are very easy. high compatible with Substance painter ### 22. Substance Designer Review, Great for Game Artists **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** The most helpful thing about substance designer is the endless possibilities of material creation. The different options it has for slider settings and how to control your height map is awesome. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The one downside of substance designer is that I feel like you have to go the extra mile with nodes when it comes to color plugins to get the right colors for your materials. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Substance designer is helping me do quick solving when it comes to creating tillable textures and trim sheets. The benefits is that I can use alot of randomization in part of the nodes so everything doesnt look so procedural. ### 23. Having a platform specifically for texturing makes delegating 3D projects wayyy easier **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Design | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Creating textures on the fly with the node editor is so much easier than having to painstakingly make textures manually through photoshop and other means **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** Some more direct integration to 3d toolsets like blender and maya would be helpful. Rather than individually exporting textures and then re loading all of them in the used platform **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Its amazing, but doesnt directly connect to 3d toolsets, working out of more than the one app takes longer **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating textures is alot faster with substance designer over blenders built in cycles node editor. I just wish it could directly integrate as an add on to blender. ### 24. Solid procedural workflow for surfacing **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Motion Pictures and Film | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** The best thing about designer is the realtime feedback. I like being able to iterate so quickly. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** It can be a little hard to get into at first. It is complex by nature. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Building a library of smart materials is a game changer. Also now people are making procedural modelling with displacement, it's getting so powerful! ### 25. Excellent **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in E-Learning | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** User Interface is fantastic, clean and simple **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** Doesn't have much in the way of introductory tutorial. Better tooltips that explain how to use different tools. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Use online tutorials first **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Has developed my understanding of PBR workflow. ### 26. lots of great features for both individual and professional use **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** I really love the easy to learn design and endless features to create great materials **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** i wouldn't really say there is much to dislike about the program, anything i dont understand i can find tutorials for **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** as someone who only really focussed on diffuse texturing alone, substance designer and it's counterpart programs have really helped me gain a grasp of the different maps i can use in making a great material ### 27. Substance Designer is an amazing tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Designer gives you the freedom to create your own unique material of any sort. It really is a powerful tool! **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The negative part is that it takes some time to learn and comprehend fully. And I could not upload the screenshot to show I am a current user of Substance Designer in this review... **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I can create my own environmental tileable material with a node-based workflow. ### 28. I Recommended for all the substance Designer is a best software to make all kinds of materials **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** I say the one word i like substance designer for the make own Textures for Using any objects **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** When i creat heavy material,i am facing my pc going to slow down **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** The substance Designer is very usefull and help for create own material **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I realized that i can make easily Material if i want to make. ### 29. very good program! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** I like how easy it is for unreal to take it from substance and work with models **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** It sometimes can take a little too long to open **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** models look amazing in unreal and being able to have materials I have made saved to it so I can reuse them at a moments notice ### 30. easy to use and very powerful **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 23, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** nodes and the learning curve is very easy **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** I find the program runs slow when the nodes get extremely large **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating interesting surface designs and the ability to change them on the fly ### 31. my 10cents **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Quick fluent easy to use. great workflow over to substance painter. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** crashes sometimes but might be my pc related. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Its a great tool, and i would gladly recommend it. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Crreating uniqe and fast materials for the game i am working on at the moment. ### 32. Substance designer review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** that it makes crazy procedural textures which can be very helpful for vfx **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** node system breaks when im implementing heavy textures **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** use it if you want procedural texture making **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** visual effecs needs procedural textures and thats where i need this ### 33. A Modern way to improve your Work Quality. Total complete package for all your Texturing needs. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** The complete package for all your Texturing, and material needs. i love using it! **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The user interface can be improved more. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Texturing was never so easy with any other available tool out there ### 34. Getting to know Substance Designer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Motion Pictures and Film | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2021 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** I like best the way how the nodes can be procedurally used **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** I find that the interface of nodes is not very clear and organised **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** None ### 35. Powerful and Versatile Material Authoring Software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mateo V. | 3d Generalist, Animation, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2019 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** What I liked the most of substance designer, was the ease you have to create textures and patterns, and the possibility to easily edit what you have already created later down the process depending on the needs of the surface you are creating. The node based creation system makes it very intuitive and easy to make different versions or ramifications of any image, texture or pattern allowing you to experiment and be creative when designing any surface. Plus the best of it all is theat the PBR based preview allows you to see any tweaks you make in real time, letting you work seamlessly without loosing any time waiting for a render preview. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** What I liked the less was that the way to export the maps wasn't as intuitive as I thought it was going to be, it tooke me a while to understand the resolution options in the graph creation window and the resolution when you export, it is made adaptive so you dont have to work with very large images, nevertheless it has good documentation online, so I managed solve it. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** I would say that Substance Designer if not the best, one of the best Material Authoring and Texture Creation software, that allows both Quality and ease of creation. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Substance Designer just made Material Authoring a painless and enjoyable process, It let's you unleash your creativity, and be very productive. Because once you get a grasp of the node system and acknowledge the tools and nodes the software has to offer, there is simply no limit to what you can create. ### 36. Versatile for Complete Texture and Material Creation **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lazar B. | Graphic Designer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 29, 2019 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Possibilities are created by the quantity for an artist to make nearly anything within reach of the maps you're currently producing for. Displacement and standard Map nodes permit some mad depth in a feel, but it could only do this much, but it aids in creating some persuasive and realistic textures if you understand how to use them properly with the procedurally created routines that you get by default, although the capability to produce your structures and designs adds to everything you could do. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The process is intuitive using a learning curve in my case. I found myself at first a little lost as to exactly what each node the way to utilize it for effect and you'd at your disposal failed. However, there's a great deal of documentation and online help you could conquer this quickly. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** It is a tool that is fantastic, and that I had decided to pick up this from word of mouth, hearing which it's being used more and more from the business and viewing presentations of what it might perform. I have noticed some work completed by other people, including some bits shared in an Artist in Ubisoft on LinkedIn. The nodes program is more complicated and persuasive though to achieve that degree of detail requires some work; trial and error and hence it takes some studying on to determine how to utilize it and what everything does. Though so you should not be stumped for long, You will find a wealth of Tutorials on the internet. An Indie license (less than $100k in yearly earnings ) can also be reasonably priced at $150 for one license so for amateurs, small studios and people searching for their permit you can not conquer that compared to prices of other specialist packages for substance authoring. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm producing textures to get a 3D design which creates the maps that are appropriate to get a composition that is persuasive when applied to a model and are seamless. It may satisfy some requirements which could not. Coupled with Substance Painter, you get a fantastic set of resources for creating virtually anything at a fair period of time and that said it saves me a time once I want to make some quick and great looking base textures for baking on my 3D versions, then incorporating more unique detail and producing all of my significant foundation maps all at precisely the same moment. ### 37. Versatility in depth **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Isaac P. | Creative dIrector, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 11, 2019 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** The vast array of nodes and modifiers available in substance allows you to make anything. In our production pipeline, we have managed to massively reduce total scene polycounts using procedural architecture substances that spoof structural details to such an extent as to allow us to basically replace hero scale structures with flat surfaces. The amount of control is truly staggering and the support on offer from algorithmic is extensive, to say the least. There is a reason it has become the defacto standard for texture and material design. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** There isn't much to dislike about substance. The only critique I would give is the UI can be somewhat unintuitive at first but that's an issue that gets better over time. It is, after all, a ridiculously deep visual scripting system for shaders. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** As I stated earlier we have massively reduced our poly budgets for anything that can be procedurally built. The responsiveness in substance allows for rapid iteration and thus has caused a marked improvement in our final materials. Substance materials are also very memory efficient and can be modified in engine granting us greater flexibility in any given scene. ### 38. Powerful Design Tool for Procedural Material Authoring **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matt A. | Owner/Game Designer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** The vast amount of nodes you can use creates nearly limitless possibilities for an artist to create just about anything within the scope of the maps you are creating for. Displacement and Normal Map nodes allow for some crazy depth in a texture but it can only do so much but it helps in creating some convincing and realistic textures if you know how to use them correctly with the procedurally generated generated patterns you get by default, though the ability to create your own nodes and patterns further adds to what you can do. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** Node system isn't as intuitive with a some what steep learning curve at least in my case. I found myself at first quite a bit lost as to what each and every node you had at your disposal did and how to use it for best effect. But there is a lot of documentation and online help that you can overcome this fairly easily with practice. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Its a great tool and I had decided to pick it up from word or mouth, seeing demonstrations of what it could do as well as hearing that it is being used more and more in the industry. I've seen some mind blowing work done by others including some pieces shared on LinkedIn from an Artist at Ubisoft showing just how much detail you can get using it. Though to get that level of detail takes some work, the nodes system is complex and powerful, thus it requires some reading up on and trial and error to figure out what everything does and how best to use it. There are a wealth of Tutorials online though so you shouldn't be stumped for long. An Indie license (less then $100k in annual revenue) is also reasonably priced at $150 for a single license so for hobbyists, small studios and those looking for their own personal license you can't really beat that compared to the prices of other professional packages for material authoring. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating more realistic textures for 3D design that are seamless and generate all the proper maps for a more convincing texture when applied to a prepared 3D model. It can meet some demands that other software I have used couldn't. Coupled with Substance Painter, you have a great set of tools for creating just about anything in a reasonable amount of time and with that said it saves me some time when I need to create some fast and good looking base textures for baking onto my 3D models, then adding finer detail and generating all my important base maps all at the same time. ### 39. A wonderful tool to use! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anika M. | Administrative Office Assistant, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2018 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** I love that you can take items and change the texture and image in one spot. You can make something look however you want with the ease of just your computer. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** I wasn't someone who was hired on at my job to work with design elements, but every once and a while I was asked to help create graphics and videos. When that happened I loved using the Substance Designer. We also had the whole texturing suite with the designer, painter, b2m, and source. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** So there are a few options for purchasing Substance Designer. Always start by using the free trial to see if it truly is something you want to use. After that, you can purchase the designer by itself for a few different prices yearly. The first is an Indie License at $149, next is the Pro License at $990. You can also purchase the Texturing Suite like we did for a monthly and yearly option. For the Indie License suite package, it is $19.90 monthly or $239 a year, the package price for the Pro License is $99 a month or $990 a year. So they have a great deal for all levels you need! **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helped us make even the smallest detail perfect in all of our marketing materials and videos. It was a great tool to make sure that our products stood out! ### 40. Substance designer has changed the game **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2018 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** What I like best about this program is how non destructive it's workflow can be. Using substance designer has changed the game for me. I can create endless materials and combinations for my 3D projects. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** If anything I dislike, is that it may crash every once in a while. The program is fairly stable now, but ir can sometimes crash when using heavy nodes. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** This program is a game changer along with it's brother Substance Painter. The videos provided on youtube by them will help you get started on your journey. It will however take some practice to master it(just like any other program). **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** With substance designer I don't have to go and download pictures from the web to create my own tileables. By using this software I have control of what I want to create including the size. Software designer saves you the pain of using images that may not work for your texture, it will save you the resolution headaches. ### 41. Excellent tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ariana Jose V. | Community Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** I like that you can take items and change the texture and image in one spot. Learning how to make textures from scratch is a phenomenal tool when you may not be best at photo manipulation, but can learn procedural textures quickly. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** There's not much documentation about the more technical features but that's all i really like the program. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** He can nearly make everything you can imagine, you just need patience to learn to use the tool. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Substance designer provide us the capacity to create from scratch differents materials and textures , that wee need for our different projects. ### 42. Substance Designer , the ultimate material creator **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Julien M. | Numeric director , Computer Games, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2017 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** The Node-based system for the creation of material . His procedural and non destructive workflow. I'm liking his limitless capabilities , we can create everything. I also like , the reactivity of the support , and the very often upadates of the software. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** It's a very complicated software for the new learners . It's required many many time to understand his functioning. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Despite the time it's required to understand , Substance Designer is a very great tools . He can nearly make everything you can imagine . Enjoy it ! **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Substance designer provide us the capacity to create from scratch differents materials and textures , that wee need for our different projects. ### 43. Could be more user friendly **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** April M. | Scheduling Coordinator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2018 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Ability to crop and customize a design any way you like to. Ability to filter images. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The system is not as user friendly as it seems. The instructions are a bit difficult to understand. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Wanting to give your clients a better experience and the next level of great for the future.ï **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ability to give our clients a enjoyable experience in a 3d manner when filling in their applications. Making them want to go through the process in a fun way. ### 44. Substance Designer is a great For your texturing needs **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** H N. | Interior Designer, Architecture & Planning, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** The program is great for everyone including no experienced professionals. It is simple to use and learn. The outcome is wonderful a great tool to have. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** I only have 1 screen and think that 2 screens would be beneficial for ultimate sucess to view and work in a productive way . **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** A great tool to have with simplicity and ease **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** The way you can create realistic textures is the most valuable aspect ### 45. step in substance designer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alejandro F. | Technical Artist, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2018 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** I really enjoyed the node graph editor during my first experience. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** I think that the import settings takes too many steps. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** improves the surfacing process in 3D development. ### 46. Great baker **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 28, 2017 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** I tried a lot of texture/bake soft and this one can bake really heavy meshes, all maps in one pass. Without cage! Also, non-destructive workflows became real with great help tools like this. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** Be more perfect?... WHERE GOD DAMN MY "BEAUTIFY" BUTTON?!! **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Improve automatization **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** No problems, we have now a non-destructive texturing workflow and keep our materials fully procedural. It means we can tweak everything to death (I mean the project end) and share our materials with other! ### 47. Amazing piece of software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bruno A. | VFX Artist, Computer Games, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2016 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Fast, responsive, made specifically for game development, fits perfectly into the game dev pipeline. Replaces several more expensive tools. Support is very responsive and they quickly address the issues brought up by the users. Very easy to use, but the tool is also incredibly deep. The user interface is a great example for others to follow. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** If you want to dive very, very deep into the tool you'll see there's not much documentation about the more technical features, but that hasn't stopped me at all. If you're savvy and like to tinker around, you'll be just fine. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Download materials created by experienced users to understand their process. This will help you! **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** The tool is perfect to bring consistency to the art pipeline. Empowers people to create good work. ### 48. Substance Designer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Carlos D. | Freelance Concept Artist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2017 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Substance Designer is the best option to create procedural textures/maps from scratch in a non destructive workflow, a must have for any texture artist. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** The UI can be a little annoying at the beginning. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Substance Designer and Substance painter is the standard in PBR texturing solution for videogames and film without being super expensive. Also you can buy the software from Allegorithmic website or from steam, the license is really flexible offering subscription and permanent license. There's a lot of free resources from tutorials to amazing materials and masks and other amazing stuff for the software. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** Texture creation and maps baking. ### 49. 3D fiber design **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adamzy L. | Computer and Web Designing, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** The 3D integrated functionality and user friendly with point straight animation. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** Just the fact that I can not really say I dislike this app yet. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** I highly recommend substance Designer to all the 3D lovers. To embrace this marvelous app for there projects. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** 3D render and animation. Modeling agency designs ### 50. Substance Makes Texturing A Breeze **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 30, 2017 **What do you like best about Substance Designer?** Substance makes real time texture editing a breeze. It's a great program that has simplicity in mind and makes it a great program for everyone from beginners to professionals in the industry. Learning how to make textures from scratch is a phenomenal tool when you may not be best at photo manipulation, but can learn procedural textures quickly. **What do you dislike about Substance Designer?** I would like to see some consolidation in the interface, it's a great program but unless you are working with 2+ screens the interface and different menu's that are key to success can sometimes hinder your view/work size. **Recommendations to others considering Substance Designer:** Substance Painter is another sister fantastic program that you can switch between from. If you are using photos to create textures, CrazyBump also makes normals an ease. **What problems is Substance Designer solving and how is that benefiting you?** The ability to make realistic textures in a short time has drastically improved work flow and timelines. ## Substance Designer Discussions - [What is the latest version of Substance Designer?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-the-latest-version-of-substance-designer) - [What can Substance painter do?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-can-substance-painter-do) - [Is it any good?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/37692-is-it-any-good) - 1 upvote - [Is there any plan to link Unreal Engine 4 material node graph to Substance Designer graphs?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/36328-is-there-any-plan-to-link-unreal-engine-4-material-node-graph-to-substance-designer-graphs) - 1 upvote - [is there any live link in between substance painter and designer](https://www.g2.com/discussions/36179-is-there-any-live-link-in-between-substance-painter-and-designer) - 1 upvote - [View Substance Designer pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/substance-designer/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-14+00%3A56%3A25+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=0c68645c-12c6-47a5-acbd-5b2dd5f1033b&secure%5Btoken%5D=8207be05ef7d6d1a56a571478ac11dcf65d7528c64aae50d07cbcfabb4a06662&format=llm_user) ## Substance Designer Features **Design** - Sculpting - Topology - Drawing - Brush Variety - Effects **Generative AI** - AI Text-to-Image - AI Text-to-Video - AI Text-to-3D **Move** - Animate - Render - Views **Store & Manage** - Pipeline - Controls - Template library **Generative AI** - AI Text-to-Image - AI Text-to-3D ## Top Substance Designer Alternatives - [Blender](https://www.g2.com/products/blender/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (305 reviews) - [3ds Max Design](https://www.g2.com/products/3ds-max-design/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (275 reviews) - [Maya](https://www.g2.com/products/maya/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (259 reviews)