So why would someone buy Designer Heavy over Designer Lite ?
Sorry if this is off-topic but I was just wondering if we can use the free substances provided by Allegorithmic in commercial games. Can you please let me know which of the following we can use in commercial games:
- The pack of 18 free substances on the asset store
- The substances used in the Airstream demo on the asset store
- The 3 free substance downloadable from Turbosquid
- The substances provided in Maya
- The substances provided in 3ds Max
Thank you,
Scott
You can use all of them for commercial projects.
Thank you, that is very good news. 
We will post a detailed feature comparison chart soon, but in a few words,Designer “Heavy” allows you to work on multiple substances at once and gives you access to all the sources of our filters, mathematical functions and procedural noises for you to modify.
Pricey product, at least unless you don’t have a concrete project to justify the expenses.
After all the discounts are over, what do you charge for updates and how long do you normally or intend to support a product cycle?
As i wrote somewhere else it’s kind of dissapointing that not at least a lite version is integrated directly into Unity.
On the other side i doubt that too many people would define substances, at least in a way how designer 1.2 works.
How am I going to get this one past the wife? :\
tell her that this has a much smaller footprint on the graphics ram, so new shoes are needed, no matter what
This is parallel to the Autodesk deal, where only Subscription-owners could apply for the discount. It’s a hard nut to swallow, but it’s a deal that works for both Allegorithmic and the target platform holder (who wants to encourage people to upgrade). I wouldn’t be entirely suprised if these deals are subsidised by the platform holders.
I know what Samual L. Jackson would have to say about that…
I try to use Substance Designer 1.2.1, and got the pacakage file *SBS, but in Unity 3.4, it is *SBSAR.
How can I get the SBSAR file?
rightclick on it in substance designer and then publish
Well basically I’m selling my PS3 now, and 4 controllers, 4 move controllers, games etc 
Maybe so, I have no idea.
All I do know is, no amount of providing me arguments about “value” and examples of what they think I’m missing by making it mostly only useful to the “Pro” license, simply because they don’t want to make it available to the “free” license, is going to motivate me to upgrade before I’m damn good and ready to do so, if at all.
Yet each time there’s something I would like but I can’t take advantage of because I’m not “Pro”, even though I’m a paying customer, is just more data for the back of my mind to motivate me to jump to another ship when the opportunity presents itself.
I’m not a big fan of middleware to start with, but all this “salesmanship garbage” does nothing more than sour my appetite for the product and the company itself.
Sorry to say.
I don’t think its an incentive to get anyone to update to pro.
More a thing where only pro licensees payed enough to be subsidised, as the mobile non-pro licenses get large parts of mobile Pro without paying the other $2600 USD for mobile pro (single mobile platform) already.
Not what one might want but if its really subsidised then understandable as 400 <<< 1500 - 4500
And I wouldn’t call it salesman garbage, as salesman garbage are engines that have features that work in exactly the very 1 way in the future list, but are totally useless for real applications (there are quite some of these)
After all UT made it available to all, not only to Pro licensees (would have saved them this discussion ;))
Whatever, it’s a “business decision” that works contrary to gaining more paying customers.
If Allegorithmic can’t foot the bill for a discount on a piece of software that is over $900, then that is pretty sad, quite frankly, and if the combined financial power of Allegorithmic and Unity can’t afford to give me a discount on said product, then that’s even worse.
Let alone, I’m not sure why I’m having this conversation.
Here I am, with my money, asking for people to take it from me.
All I’m saying is “I won’t pay the full price, BUT I’ll give you the discounted amount” (in other words FAR more than the ZERO I’m giving with no discount).
Instead I’m told I’m not eligible for the discount, but they’d be happy to take LESS money from me in the future when the “lite” version comes out, which may have a feature delta I’m not happy with, and thus I may end up buying NOTHING.
It’s mind boggling to me that I even have to say this, but it must be my inability to grasp the “vast complexities” of a business model that prefers to offer me a lower priced, lesser product, at a later date, which I may not want when I get to see what is offered at that lower price. Particularly considering that they no doubt have to invest development time to make the lite software “from” the code of the more expensive product, where development time pretty much “is” the cost of software products these days.
Instead they could get “more” money from myself and others up front, and more users at the higher “discounted” price, and thus have me and others as customers in the upgrade cycle for some 3.0 version in a year or so, on what will undoubtedly be a higher upgrade price for the “full” version than the “lite” version.
It seems to me that making $594 now is far better than “maybe” making $300 at some later date, in pretty much all cases.
Plus, let me be clear, there is “no way in hell” that I’ll see the $300 price and the feature limitations and then decide to pay the “full price” at that later date because I don’t like what $300 gets me. That’s a guarantee, considering the way this has all gone on. So “at best” they may end up with a purchase of a few substances here and there, and maybe the $149 filter that’s available.
So the only way I see an up side, is if the “lite” version has all the features I feel I’d need, and thus Allegorithmic will have done me a favor and saved me $294. If and when that happens, I’ll be sure to say thank you.
Let’s try a different approach: Instead of saying “people who own Pro get a discount”, let’s say instead, “People who’ve shelled out more money already get a discount”.
The reality is, there are no free lunches and all giveaways are balanced on a profit and loss spreadsheet somewhere. If you want more, you have to pay more. That’s just life mate.
From what I’ve read, it sounds like the Lite version will be more applicable to the vast majority of users. Designer is a terrific piece of software, well worth the full asking price imo; a very deep application, but unless you’re making incredibly complex materials it’s probably overkill.
Anyway, everyone has 3 months to get a game out, make some moolah and then quickly upgrade to Unity Pro and take advantage of the discount.
Okie dokie. So you paid more for more features AND for discounts on third party software?
Hmm, that’s quite interesting.
So how about the people who bought the Pro version at discount, are they “less customers” than you?
How about those that have consistently bought upgrades to the iphone license over a few years, are they “lesser” as well?
Whatever, this is all semantics, I’m glad you have Pro, enjoy it.
I’m not trying to make comparisons, just stating my personal opinion as “also” a paying customer that all this putting people in arbitrary categories isn’t giving me a “bright and shiny impression” of Unity as a whole and will do nothing but drive me away rather than get me to upgrade because I flat out refuse to play the “dangle this and that in front of me” game.
Unity is a convenience, not a necessity.
I can’t really comment on the pricing issue because I have no idea what kind of deal Unity made with Allegorithmic. But I can see it is somewhat of a complicated issue. The could reduce the price on Designer and possibly make up profits via bulk sales. Getting the extra exposure from the Unity integration would help a lot with this. The problem with this is that right now they control the Substance market due to the license terms. That’s going to be disrupted when they allow people to sell their own Substances. Will it be offset by the increased number of Substance users? I don’t know. I don’t know what their revenue split between Substance sales and Designer sales was. Is Unity subsidizing the price reduction? Is Allegorithmic getting a cut of the potential increased Pro sales due to this? Did Unity have to pay to include the technology, or was it given to Unity in exchange for the exposure?
I have no idea about any of this, but I’m assuming both companies have crunched the numbers and come up with a solution that works for them. One thing I do know is that this is going to be good for both companies. Allegorithmic gets a lot of exposure and attention from a new market segment. Unity users get access to cool new tech that will allow them to make better games. Lots of win to go around.
Furthermore I don’t care much. The tech is there, I get to play with it and I’m loving the new capabilities. Full of win for me too 
I have good news for you all !
I just talked with our VP Sales and I can confirm that the discount is actually open to all Unity PAYING customers, including Pro, Android and IOs licensees.