Adobe at SIGGRAPH 2025: Smarter tools, smoother pipelines, and the future of creative tech

Project Lepidora by Louise Melin, created using the latest version of Substance 3D Designer.

At SIGGRAPH 2025, the Adobe Substance 3D team shared the latest innovations to help creators work faster, collaborate more easily, and push the boundaries of visual quality. During the annual Substance Days keynote, the team unveiled powerful new features in Substance 3D Designer and Sampler including tools for greater control and creative flexibility — while showcasing some of the most powerful recent additions to Substance 3D Painter, and a preview of upcoming features.

Adobe joined industry leaders from Autodesk, Epic Games, Maxon, and Disney for a panel on OpenPBR, the emerging open shading model that promises more seamless, predictable material workflows across tools and pipelines. This work on OpenPBR — and Adobe’s participation in initiatives such as the Alliance for OpenUSD — is all part of the company’s broader commitment to eliminating friction for artists and studios working across platforms.

Also, Adobe Head of Research Nathan Carr gave a deep dive into three of the team’s most exciting new research papers — just a sample of the 25 research contributions Adobe brought to this year’s conference, advances which are all about enabling better creative outcomes at every level of the pipeline.

Smarter tools, faster feedback: What’s new in the Substance 3D apps

In Substance 3D Painter, the latest updates are making a big impact on everyday workflows. Asset Auto-Update keeps your scenes synced when source assets change — no more manual re-imports. The Path tool is easier to use, and with Filled Paths, you can now fill closed shapes directly in-app. The result: faster iteration and more intuitive control. This release also includes a range of new content, notably including a Stylization filter to give your assets a hand-painted feel.

The most recent version of Substance 3D Designer saw some significant upgrades. Artists can now import full 3D scenes — complete with lights, cameras, and geometry — directly into the viewport, making it easy to fine-tune materials in full context. A new real-time renderer delivers accurate shadows, translucency, and support for effects like sheen. And with high-quality built-in post effects like Bloom, tone mapping, and real-time depth of field, what you see is much closer to your final render — without needing to switch tools.

In Substance 3D Sampler, Auto-tiling, developed in collaboration with Adobe Research, makes your structured or patterned textures seamless in one click, the layer stack now supports renaming, duplicating, and flattening, giving you faster, cleaner control over complex materials. Sampler now also features enhanced HP Z Captis support, allowing you to create a more accurate physical twin than ever before.

All these updates share a common goal: giving you better visibility, better context, and better creative results — with fewer steps and greater control.

From foundational theory to future tools, Adobe’s Nathan Carr took the stage to highlight three standout papers that reflect the depth and scope of Adobe’s research contributions.

• MonetGPT explores how puzzle-solving strategies can improve multimodal large language models for image retouching.
• IntrinsicEdit introduces a new method for more intuitive generative image editing, based on intrinsic image decomposition.
• RigAnything introduces an autoregressive approach to character rigging that works across a wide variety of 3D assets, without relying on predefined templates, helping automate one of the most time-consuming steps in animation production.

These were just three of the 25 research papers Adobe presented this year, spanning breakthroughs in generative AI, material modeling, video editing, 3D reconstruction, animation, simulation, and graphics infrastructure. This research is all part of a long-term investment in helping artists, designers, and developers go further, faster.

Open standards, better workflows

The panel discussion on the latest OpenPBR work reflected the importance of this initiative in advancing more predictable, streamlined workflows from lookdev to final render.

Support for this standardized, open shading model designed to simplify material exchange across tools and platforms is coming soon to the Substance 3D ecosystem. Ahead of SIGGRAPH, Adobe joined Autodesk and others at DigiPro to share progress and discuss continued collaboration. And at SIGGRAPH itself, Adobe delivered two technical talks as part of the Physically Based Shading in Theory and Practice course. The format continues to evolve, and is steadily moving toward real-world adoption – and real creative impact.

Looking ahead

From powerful new features in the Substance 3D toolset to open standards and forward-looking research, Adobe’s work at SIGGRAPH 2025 reflects a single goal: helping creators work more efficiently, express ideas more clearly, and stay focused on what matters most — their craft.

As these innovations roll out, the Substance 3D team remains committed to building tools and technologies that support artists at every stage of the creative process.