To celebrate the upcoming new year Substance released a major update for Substance Designer.

The new version brings an upgraded color management system, improvements to UX, a new curvature baker, and a new Atlas tool.

First of all, there's the new state-of-the-art OpenColorIO-based color management system that lets artists guarantee consistent and high-fidelity color imaging across applications and devices.

You can use your own OpenColorIO configuration, or an existing one, for any material created within Substance Designer. The team provided 2 startup configurations, including an ACES 1.0.3 for easy entry.

There's also a new ray-tracing-based Curvature baker which is a rewrite of the older ‘Curvature from mesh’. It is faster and more flexible.

You can learn more about other improvements here.