Substance 3D Designer 2026 news & patch notes

• Render resolution is now clamped to 4096 in X and Y
• Updated bake-sdk to 3.22.3
• Updated Substance engine to v9.4.4
• Reduced noise in the specular lobe for high roughness + anisotropy
• UV primvar interpolation mode is now preserved

• USD export no longer stores resource paths as absolute paths
• Fixed a failure when loading of a high poly mesh was cancelled (Windows)
• The list of high poly 3D scenes now includes resources sharing an identifier with low poly ones
• Normal world space now correctly returns a WS normal only when an input normal is present
• Fixed incorrect normals when scaling patterns non-uniformly in Shape Splatter V2
• Fixed black normals for 'Plane' and 'Disc' shapes in Shape Splatter V2
• Fixed incorrect blending of the first shape with the background in Shape Splatter V2
• Fixed a random crash possibly linked to video playback in rich tooltips
• Fixed a crash when pasting a node copied from a new graph with a blank identifier
• Fixed PSD files being loaded too many times

Added

• OpenPBR Support for Base color and AO constants

Bug fixes

• VRAM leak in GPU path tracer when displacement is enabled
• Main thread stays busy while the 3D View is open
• OpenGL Weight widgets appear clamped but accept out-of-range values
• Moving a referenced input more than one place at a time
• Unmaximizing a window
• Writing TARGA or BMP files from the baker
• Random crash when displaying the 3D View
• Incorrect I/O pin order after editing identifiers then moving pins
• "Publish sbsar" and "Send to" dialogs missing file extension

• Add a Material sample dedicated to SDF / Shape Splatter
• 3D viewer: Change the default state
• 3D viewer: Add default environment
• Shape splatter v2 mapper: Add per-axis projection center parameter for triplanar mapping
• Shape splatter v2 mapper: Add tiling parameter
• Shape splatter v2: Enable shape extrude by default
• Support Intel Panther Lake GPUs in the Pathtracer
• Improve formatting 'Displacement' pop-up tooltips
• Update to Substance Engine v9.4.3
• geometry_tangent: add support for constants
• Add an option for TGA/BMP to write the alpha channel if it's fully opaque
• Update to "Adobe Color Engine" (ACE) 7.0
• Make Plugin Manager window always visible (modal)

• Viewport scaling is applied when using fixed resolution
• Freeze when loading a GLTF scene exported from Designer and using an OpenPBR material
• Materials exported from Painter cannot be overridden in Designer
• 3D Viewer: shape.id is not initialized and generates messages in the console
• Shape splatter v2 mapper grayscale: Pattern input 4 is unused in triplanar projection
• Shape splatter v2 mapper: SDF ID is offset by -1 when using the "1 image per material ID" mode
• incorrect result when applying a material on a USD generated by Designer
• Computing a new Levels node Shape splatter V2 main graph scrambled following computations
• Modulo of a variable against its equal value does not return 0 with GPU engine in some cases
• Arc tangent 2 returns 0 or Pi for X-right vectors in a specific case
• Crash when loading specific SBSAR in the graph
• Crash when connecting Value Processor output into bitmap input
• Crash when plugging value into image input in some cases
• Graph is automatically computed on each autosave when using baked maps
• Crash when connecting value output of Atlas Scatter into image input of Atlas Splitter
• Edited file format is ignored in file save dialogs
• Security pop up appears when we start Designer
• OBJ materials are not imported correctly
• PSD importer requests to extract layers from PSD file at every autosave

The latest release of Substance 3D Designer brings a set of targeted updates focused on improving procedural shape workflows, expanding OpenPBR support, and improving access to displacement settings in the 3D view. 

You can consult the full release notes here.   This release introduces the Shape Spatter v2 node, allowing you to scatter raytraced 3D shapes individually in real time, enabling per-instance control over properties such as shape, orientation, and size. Shape Spatter v2 supports atlas inputs, allowing artists to scatter an unrestricted range of shapes from a single atlas without the limitations of the previous workflow. 

  In addition, this version brings significant improvements over the original node, with enhanced controls for scatter randomness, rotation randomness, size variation, and distribution. To complement the new scattering capabilities, the node comes with an expanded Signed Distance Field (SDF) toolkit, introducing a range of new nodes for creating, combining, and manipulating custom 3D SDF shapes. 

  Finally, this release continues to build on OpenPBR support, with a new OpenPBR material model, updated graph templates and shaders, and a button to provide direct access to displacement settings to streamline material authoring for modern pipelines.