Adobe's new 3D tool is more powerful than you might think

Last week's Adobe MAX 2024 creative conference saw the announcement of so many new features in Creative Cloud apps that inevitably some of them slipped by with less attention. Headline news included the launch of Firefly Video AI-powered Generative Extend in Premiere Pro and Enhanced Image Trace in Illustrator.

But as well as flashy new AI features, Adobe announced the launch of an entirely new free stand-alone desktop app for viewing and editing 3D files. Adobe Substance 3D Viewer (beta) works with Photoshop (beta) to bring 3D content into traditional design workflows by allowing 3D models to be easily added to 2D Photoshop designs as editable Smart Objects. And that has more potential than you might have considered.

Introducing Substance 3D Viewer (beta) - YouTube

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As the freelance illustrator and Creative Bloq contributor Martin Nebelong pointed out on X, Substance 3D Viewer supports the viewing of a huge list of 3D formats, but also supports the generation of 3D models as gaussian splats, a relatively new technology for creating 3D representations of real-world scenes.

"Combine that with the built-in 3D to image functionality and you basically have at least a few of the steps I've been doing for the last year or so using multiple tools. Exciting stuff!," Martin says.

He notes that since the latest Photoshop Beta supports the 3D viewer, you can import 3D files directly into Photoshop as smart objects linked to the viewer. Any elements you prompt in based on your models, can be easily exported to the clipboard without backgrounds making it a straightforward part of normal image editing workflows.

"I have a suspicion that we'll see much more of this in other Adobe tools and I'm very curious to see this used for things like this in more 3D tools than "just" Adobe Neo," Martin adds.

You can find a tutorial on how to add 3D models to Photoshop beta with Substance 3D Viewer at the Adobe help site. See below for the best Photoshop, Creative Cloud and Substance 3D prices in your region.

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What is Substance 3D Viewer?

Now available in beta, Substance 3D Viewer is available as a free public desktop app that's intended to simplifies 3D workflows for graphic designers using Adobe's Creative Cloud suite of apps. It allows users to to open, view, and work with 3D models by adjusting the camera angle, changing the lighting and editing the materials.

To use it in Photoshop (beta), you simply drag-and-drop a 3D model into a Photoshop canvas to open and view it as a new Smart Object. You can then iterate on the position, size, and light of your 3D model in Substance 3D Viewer and send the updates back to your Photoshop design. You can also generate images using 3D models and export or copy snapshots of 3D images for use in other applications.

What are Gaussian Splats?

Gaussian splatting is a new technique in 3D design for representing real-life scenes. It's a blend of rasterization and optimisation that can be used to model the real world with incredible detail and fidelity, accurately capturing geometry, lighting and reflections . The technique involves representing 3D data using gaussians which are each defined by a position, covariance, colour and an alpha channel.

While triangle-based meshes have traditionally been the way to represent objects in 3D via photogrammetry , splats are based on volume. And gaussian splats can be created automatically from just a few smartphone photos or videos using machine learning.