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Activation and licenses | Substance 3D Sampler

Activation and licenses

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

Activation process per application type

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

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 the Steam library.
Substance 3D standaloneSee the activation process described below.

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 Sampler as an administrator and temporarily disable your anti-virus.

Manual activation

It is possible to manually activate Sampler by putting the license.key file in the following folder:

PlatformVersionPath
Windows3.0 or newerApp Data (local)C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Adobe\Adobe Substance 3D Sampler
App Data (roaming)C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Substance 3D Sampler
LegacyApp Data (local)C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Allegorithmic\Substance Alchemist
App Data (roaming)C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Allegorithmic\Substance Alchemist
Mac3.0 or newer/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Substance 3D Sampler
Legacy/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Allegorithmic/Substance Alchemist
Linux3.0 or newer/home/[username]/.local/share/Adobe/Adobe Substance 3D Sampler
Legacy/home/[username]/.local/share/Allegorithmic/Substance Alchemist
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 Sampler checks for the license.key file with an Environment Variable.

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