You heard about it yesterday: Substance Designer now allows you to script its behavior using Python 3.6.5. Today, we’ll explore precisely what that means, what the possibilities and limits are, and how it compares to the existing Substance Automation Toolkit.

Substance Designer is a tool favored by highly technical artists. While creators will enjoy flexing their creative muscles with the vast number of nodes, the team also wanted to offer greater freedom to those who want a more personalized interaction with the software.

Before we get into the meat of the API, we feel it’s important to make a distinction: today’s scripting possibilities are limited. Python experts might find them frustrating. But it is a door we are opening into the next life-cycle of the software, and you can expect fairly regular updates that will push back the limits of scripting in Substance Designer.