Texturing Middleware Substance Air Aims To Cut Download Sizes

French 3D tech company Allegorithmic's new texturing middleware, Substance Air, is now available to consumers worldwide, and aims to help cut down download sizes for games. Allegorithmic said Substance Air allows for "high-quality texture generation in a few kilobytes," which is important particularly when considering a game's size for online and digital distribution. While particularly suited for online distributed games, Substance Air is also targeting the retail market, the company said in a statement. Substance Air provides "a procedural base that allows developers to create an infinite number of variations within a given game," Allegorithmic said. Fred Moreau, a Substance Air beta tester from Veloce Interactive vouched for the middleware: "From a technical artist's standpoint, dynamic textures offer a tremendous amount of creativity without the constraint of rewriting shaders every time."