In the case of “Blade Runner 2049,” it’s the opposite idea. With “Frozen 2,” for example, they’re looking for something that is more stylized and you can do that with Substance Designer. All this is how Substance Designer has been very widely used to create textures more efficiently that look as real as possible or look as unreal as possible. You’re also able to use shaders so that can reflect the light in such a way that it has the right color and color variations.

You want to make sure that skin looks like skin or wood looks like wood or metal looks like metal. It’s having the most impact on textures, and textures are really the digital materials that you want to represent when you do computer graphics imagery. Story continues How has the ability to create complex clouds and textures been used and where has it had the biggest impact? It was like it was a hammer looking for a nail. So I decided to create a company and build tools around that very idea of this like, the complex amount of simulation programs I wrote during my PhD. I realized I want to actually apply what I’ve been working on during my PhD to the world of effects and animation, which I’m very passionate about. There is maybe a connection between my research and the world of visual effects and animation that I didn’t see at first. On the textured side of things, I thought there could be a lot of benefits from what I was doing during my PhD. The textures, I thought, actually became more interesting. I was trying to use modern technologies at the time to come up with something that was complex but was accurately representing these complex things like clouds or textures on objects.

I did my PhD in applied math and random processes and I tried to simulate complex phenomena, like clouds. What needs in the film industry inspired you and your team to create Substance 3D Designer?

Deguy spoke with Variety about the unique 3D software that was used on “Blade Runner 2049” and “First Man.” It’s also currently in use at VFX houses ILM, MPS, Method Studios, Cinesite and Digital Domain, among others. Only Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects have also received SciTech Awards. Deguy’s team joins an elite group at Adobe.

Substance 3d designer