--- title: Substance Designer Reviews meta_title: 'Substance Designer Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 56 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Substance Designer works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 56 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-07' parent_category: name: 3D Design url: https://www.g2.com/categories/3d-design --- # 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 and control** offered by Substance Designer for crafting high-quality procedural textures effortlessly. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of use** in Substance Designer, finding it intuitive for creating complex, high-quality textures. (1 reviews) - Users praise the **high-quality material creation** capabilities of Substance Designer, enabling precise and complex texture design. (1 reviews) - Users admire the **powerful modeling capabilities** of Substance Designer, enabling precise creation of complex, reusable textures. (1 reviews) - Users value the **full control over materials** in Substance Designer, enabling the creation of complex, high-quality textures. (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. 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. ### 5. 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 ### 6. 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. ### 7. 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. ### 8. 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. ### 9. 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. ### 10. 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 ## 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/substance-designer-review-5060647?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-08+00%3A11%3A11+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=8a7b5e4e-4e39-4326-a23a-e1078dad0d99&secure%5Btoken%5D=ed6d2c14993f204d4c0cbf1627b1743a7731debeca72b6fded8a6754df35964f&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 (308 reviews) - [3ds Max Design](https://www.g2.com/products/3ds-max-design/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (279 reviews) - [Maya](https://www.g2.com/products/maya/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (259 reviews)