- Substance 3D home
- Home
- Getting Started
- Getting Started overview
- Activation and licenses
- System requirements
- Project creation
- Export
- Export overview
- Export window
- Export presets
- Export overview
- Glossary
- Performance
- Getting Started overview
- Interface
- Assets
- Substance 3D Assets
- Color picker
- Display settings
- History
- Layer stack
- Main menu
- Project configuration
- Properties
- Settings
- Shader settings
- Texture Set
- Toolbars
- Viewport
- Miscellaneous
- Assets
- Painting
- Painting overview
- Tool list
- Straight line
- Lazy mouse
- Symmetry
- Fill projections
- Presets
- Presets overview
- Creating and saving presets
- Creating particles presets
- Photoshop brush presets (ABR)
- Dynamic strokes
- Advanced channel painting
- Vector graphic (.svg & .ai)
- Text resource
- Effects
- Baking
- Content
- Creating custom effects
- Importing assets
- Creating custom effects
- Features
- Automatic UV Unwrapping
- Physical size
- Smart Materials and Masks
- Subsurface Scattering
- Dynamic Material Layering
- UV Reprojection
- UV Tiles
- Color Management
- Post Processing
- Iray Renderer
- Plugins
- Sparse Virtual Textures
- Custom Shaders
- SpaceMouse® by 3Dconnexion
- Universal Scene Description (USD)
- Send to
- Technical Support
- Performance Guidelines
- Configuring Pens and Tablets
- Exporting the log file
- Exporting a DXDiag
- Technical issues
- GPU Issues
- Crash when working with overclocked GPU
- Forcing the external GPU on Mac OS
- GPU drivers compatibility
- GPU drivers crash with long computations (TDR crash)
- GPU has outdated drivers
- GPU is not recognized
- GPU is not recognized and is mentionned as GDI Generic
- Issues with Nvidia GPUs on recent Mac OS versions
- Multi/Bi-GPU
- Running on integrated GPU
- Painter doesn't start on the right GPU
- Startup Issues
- Rendering Issues
- Stability Issues
- Miscellaneous Issues
- GPU Issues
- Workflow Issues
- Export Issues
- Tools Issues
- Project Issues
- Library Issues
- Viewport Issues
- Plugins Issues
- License Issues
- Pipeline and integration
- Installation and preferences
- Configuration
- Resource management
- Scripting and development
- Scripts and plugins
- Shader API Reference
- Shader API overview
- Changelog - Shader API
- Libraries - Shader API
- Lib Alpha - Shader API
- Lib Bayer - Shader API
- Lib Defines - Shader API
- Lib Emissive - Shader API
- Lib Env - Shader API
- Lib Normal - Shader API
- Lib PBR - Shader API
- Lib PBR Aniso - Shader API
- Lib Pom - Shader API
- Lib Random - Shader API
- Lib Sampler - Shader API
- Lib Sparse - Shader API
- Lib SSS - Shader API
- Lib Utils - Shader API
- Lib Vectors - Shader API
- Parameters - Shader API
- Shaders - Shader API
- Release notes
- Release notes overview
- All Changes
- Version 10.1
- Version 10.0
- Version 9.1
- Old versions
- Version 9.0
- Version 8.3
- Version 8.2
- Version 8.1
- Version 7.4
- Version 7.3
- Version 7.2
- Version 2021.1 (7.1.0)
- Version 2020.2 (6.2.0)
- Version 2020.1 (6.1.0)
- Version 2019.3
- Version 2019.2
- Version 2019.1
- Version 2018.3
- Version 2018.2
- Version 2018.1
- Version 2017.4
- Version 2017.3
- Version 2017.2
- Version 2017.1
- Version 2.6
- Version 2.5
- Version 2.4
- Version 2.3
- Version 2.2
Activation and licenses
This page has information on how to activate and manage your licenses so you can start using Painter.
Activation process per application type
The activation process depends on where you purchased or have access to Painter:
Application Type | Activation process |
---|---|
Creative Cloud Desktop | See the dedicated page in the HelpX documentation. In case there are any issues the Creative Cloud documentation may provide additional answers. |
Steam | Launch the product directly from your Steam library. |
Substance 3D standalone | See the activation process described below. |
Standalone Activation steps
The activation wizard
Three choices are available:
- Evaluate this product: Legacy trials are no longer available. Instead, you can start a 30 day trial for each Substance 3D application here or with Creative Cloud Desktop. Each trial is independent of the other Substance 3D applications, so you can try them one at a time or all at once.
- Activate using a license file: activate the product with a license file (*.key) downloaded from your account page on the Substance 3D website before 30 Sep 2022.
- Activate using your account: Legacy substance accounts can no longer be used for activation. More information about Substance accounts is available here.
Manual activation
You can manually activate Substance Painter by putting the license.key file in the following folder:
Platform | Version | Path | |
---|---|---|---|
Windows | 7.2 or newer | App Data (local) | C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Adobe\Adobe Substance 3D Painter |
App Data (roaming) | C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Substance 3D Painter | ||
Legacy | App Data (local) | C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Allegorithmic\Substance Painter | |
App Data (roaming) | C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Allegorithmic\Substance Painter | ||
Mac | 7.2 or newer | /Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Substance 3D Painter | |
Legacy | /Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Allegorithmic/Substance Painter | ||
Linux | 7.2 or newer | /home/[username]/.local/share/Adobe/Adobe Substance 3D Painter | |
Legacy | /home/[username]/.local/share/Allegorithmic/Substance Painter |
Make sure that the file is called license.key otherwise the application will not be able to find it.
Environment variable
You can override the location that Painter checks for the license.key file with an Environment Variable.