Workflow Substance Designer is a Node-based editor that allows you to build content in many different ways with varying complexities. The workflow is further explained on dedicated pages, but the following are benefits of working with Designer: Non-linear : you can can author a multitude of texture outputs at once. Edit one mask or slider, and automatically any connected output is re-calculated. No more need to separately author maps such as Basecolor, Roughness, Normal, etc.. Non-destructive : you can reverse any action without losing any of your work. It becomes much quicker to iterate and experiment, finding even more efficient workflows. Integrated Baking : Substance Designer provides advanced, blazing-fast mesh baking tools right inside the software. You no longer have to perform baking in a separate software and perform lengthy import and export processes. Parametric : you can set-up to control nearly any aspect of a texture through a single slider or dropdown. This allows you to add endless control and variation to just a single asset. Filetypes Substance Designer and its ecosystem use 3 different filetypes. To be clear: these are filetypes that are exported from Designer and can be imported in to some, or all other Substance applications. Substance File (*.SBS) Substance Files are the main source files for Designer. When you open a Substance File, you can view and edit all nodes in a Graph. They are represented as packages, that can contain any number of resources such as Graphs, Functions, Bitmaps, Meshes, etc... They are harder to share and less fast to calculate. They can only be opened in Substance Designer and Substance Player. Substance Archive (*.SBSAR) Substance Archives are compiled, optimized Substance files. They are much faster to calculate and can easily be shared without reference issues. Parameters can still be tweaked, but editing the graph is locked down.. Substance Archives can be used in all Substance applications and any application that has a Substance Integration (some with an external plugin) such as Autodesk 3DS Max & Maya, Unreal Engine 4 or Unity Engine.