HOW TO USE GPU
Substance Designer (v.2019 and newer)
Substance Designer allows users to accelerate performance by enabling GPU and RTX acceleration for tasks such as baking and rendering. This boosts speed and efficiency, particularly for complex workflows like ray tracing and rendering physically accurate materials.
How to Enable GPU and RTX Acceleration in Substance Designer
Launch Substance Designer
Open the application from the default path:C:\Program Files\Allegorithmic\Substance Designer\Substance Designer.exe
Activate Direct3D 11 Rendering
Upon launch, select Direct3D 11 as the substance engine.
Navigate to Edit > Preferences and select the Bakers tab.
Check Enable GPU Raytracing to use NVIDIA RTX for faster baking processes.
Optimize Iray Settings
In the IRAY tab, deselect CPU to ensure only the NVIDIA GPU is used for rendering.
For project-specific tasks, select IRay Renderer in the viewport to accelerate rendering.
Top Tips to Speed Up Substance Designer
Update GPU Drivers
Ensure your NVIDIA RTX or GTX drivers are up to date for maximum compatibility and performance. Updates often include optimizations for baking and rendering tasks in Substance Designer.Simplify Substance Graphs
Complex substance graphs can slow down rendering. Try simplifying nodes and minimizing the number of exposed parameters early in the graph, as these increase processing time. By organizing nodes efficiently, Substance Designer can better manage real-time processing.Leverage RTX for Baking
If you're working on resource-heavy baking tasks, switching to RTX-powered bakers can give you up to 20x faster speeds compared to traditional CPU-based baking. This is particularly useful for reducing rendering times in highly detailed scenes.Optimize Viewport Settings
Lower the viewport resolution when working with large materials, switching to lower settings until final rendering to conserve GPU resources and improve interactivity during edits.
Top Recommended GPUs for Substance Designer
NVIDIA RTX 3080
This GPU delivers excellent performance for RTX-based tasks in Substance Designer, allowing fast baking and smooth real-time rendering, even with complex materials.NVIDIA RTX 3090
For users handling extremely large projects or high-resolution textures, the RTX 3090 offers 24GB of VRAM, making it perfect for advanced baking tasks and real-time ray tracing.NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti
A cost-effective option that provides strong performance for most users, this GPU can handle real-time ray tracing and GPU-accelerated tasks effectively, especially in smaller to mid-sized projects.
By enabling GPU and RTX acceleration in Substance Designer and optimizing your workflow, you can significantly speed up baking and rendering processes, ensuring smooth performance even with demanding tasks.
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