User Guide Cancel

Activation and licenses | Substance 3D Painter

Activation and licenses

This page has information on how to activate and manage your licenses so you can start using Painter.

Activation process per application type

The activation process depends on where you purchased or have access to Painter:

Application TypeActivation process
Creative Cloud Desktop

See the dedicated page in the HelpX documentation.

In case there are any issues the Creative Cloud documentation may provide additional answers.

SteamLaunch the product directly from your Steam library.
Substance 3D standaloneSee the activation process described below.

Standalone Activation steps

The activation wizard

Three choices are available:

  • Evaluate this product: Legacy trials are no longer available. Instead, you can start a 30 day trial for each Substance 3D application here or with Creative Cloud Desktop. Each trial is independent of the other Substance 3D applications, so you can try them one at a time or all at once.
  • Activate using a license file: activate the product with a license file (*.key) downloaded from your account page on the Substance 3D website before 30 Sep 2022.
  • Activate using your account: Legacy substance accounts can no longer be used for activation. More information about Substance accounts is available here.
Alert:
To install the license file with the Activation Wizard, make sure you run Painter as an administrator and temporarily disable your anti-virus.

Manual activation

You can manually activate Substance Painter by putting the license.key file in the following folder:

PlatformVersionPath
Windows7.2 or newerApp Data (local)C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Adobe\Adobe Substance 3D Painter
App Data (roaming)C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Substance 3D Painter
LegacyApp Data (local)C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Allegorithmic\Substance Painter
App Data (roaming)C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Allegorithmic\Substance Painter
Mac7.2 or newer/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Substance 3D Painter
Legacy/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Allegorithmic/Substance Painter
Linux7.2 or newer/home/[username]/.local/share/Adobe/Adobe Substance 3D Painter
Legacy/home/[username]/.local/share/Allegorithmic/Substance Painter
Note:
Some of the directories in the paths mentioned above may be hidden by default. Type the path manually in the file explorer or display hidden files to view them.
Note:

Make sure that the file is called license.key otherwise the application will not be able to find it.

Environment variable

You can override the location that Painter checks for the license.key file with an Environment Variable.

Get help faster and easier

New user?