August 2nd was my last day on Adobe Substance 3D Modeller.
There is an FREE Open Beta and you should go try it: Open Beta
Why? I’m starting an indie VR game dev studio. Could not be more excited!
I can’t talk much about that yet BUT after working on PlayStation Dreams and then Modeller I think my time working on creative tools is at an end and I want to brain dump before this stuff fades from memory. So I’m going to write a series of weekly articles to share some learnings and thoughts as I forget a lot as my brain moves on.
Nothing here has been approved by Adobe and only the first article will mention some public Adobe stuff for context, but this is a generic learning series to unload some knowledge from doing Senior Online Consultant gig at Sony then Dreams and finally being primary OpenXR/AI person on Modeller.
Why Leave?
TLDR; I love making games and I’m not built for corporate long term products.
The thing I love about working in a creative field which is project based everything is about the launch. Showtime the time you step on stage. Then there are maybe some DLC or other bits but you have a season and then you move on. Yes sometimes seasons overlap as you look for the new thing while the old thing wraps but your life has a cadence. This was great for launching and early days of Modeller but now I’m the wrong person in the wrong place.
I want to be clear, Modeller is the best tool to make primary and secondary forms or models in my opinion. Is it as powerful as Dreams, yes and no. It is more focused and does less but is built for a professional audience. Also its newer Dreams took 10 years to make. Modeller while built on top of Medium is mostly a new product with a new direction and is still relatively new. It takes a long time to build up a 3d modelling software.
What did you do?
Initially I had to pick up a lot of VR UX work with our original ui system which was hand built. That system is no longer in place as there was a huge rewrite to a very cool system. But that initial iteration on our original system let us rework a lot of concepts and nail down the structure so the rewrite had a hard target to aim for.
The biggest thing I am most proud of is being the OpenXR expert on the team. Porting the tech from OculusVR onto OpenXR because I wanted it to run on every headset it could. Also it was a great chance to work directly with hardware providers. I went from being a passionate amateur of OpenXR with deep knowledge of early VR and console VR to becoming one of the few people who has written and deployed a widely used OpenXR application. Something I want to talk about because not enough people engage with what has become the modern base layer of VR instead hiding it behind a game engine.
Cool to see Md shouted out at Siggraph as one of the OpenXR implementations. Big win.
Finally working with the London Lab folks on various AI projects has been really interesting. I want to write up some stuff that is public domain and my thoughts on that. Honestly though most of the cool stuff isn’t public, it's a hot topic and I don’t want a lawyer/assassin in my house. Just know cool people are working on things, the research is interesting and I’m excited for the future and believe enough people of good integrity will speak their mind internally. Good vibes.
What do you think of the future?
Without breaking any NDA I will say I am excited.
The challenge is they are building an innovative new product inside a big company. Adobe in recent years has acquired more than it has built and I hope with the failure to acquire Figma they learn how to build, support and market new products. Substance clearly knows how to do this and all the Substance talent is still there so I’m confident they will figure it out. But that is the only real concern I have.
The team is very skilled and the product is full with potential. I’m obviously bias to the VR side of things but I believe the real value of the product is unlocked through the VR controllers.
The introduction of non destructive edits like Dreams is a big deal which is a really exciting addition. You can see Joshua showing them off here. Substance 3D Modeler - Boba Tea Tank
The product has seen a lot of love recently and I’m excited for the VR future.