Substance Painter vs Quixel Suite 2.0
polycounter lvl 6
Hi. I am looking to purchase either substance painter of quixel suite but I am undecided on which one to go for. I would like to know which one the Polycount community prefers and why?
Cheers
Cheers
Replies
Personally I've got both but have found with the way I work Quixel has been better - with my personal work flow I like its all incorporated into photoshop and there is little jumping back and forth between applications but the biggest bonus for me is I just find it a lot quicker to produce work that is of good enough quality to chuck in the game. As a one man art team dDo is quick and makes good stuff!
As great as substance (people that have used it more then me might have a different opinion on this) its damn complex and it takes a LOT of work to create work of great quality. Over time you will have a library of build materials and things will speed up sure but most studios that use substance have people who's full time job is to substance. And from there you got to think about how big your studio is and value of time/money... If it takes 2 days to make a great rusty metal texture is that value for money? Well if its for one object maybe not? If its for every object in the game then well maybe it is?
Another thing to ask your self is how your mind set works..... I like quixel because its all about "colour" and "visuals" its just how my brain is wired.. If your a bit more into technical stuff, code, lists and nodes they you might be better off with substance..
But yea if your on your own I'd suggest Quixel - unless you see your self as a technical artist then you will enjoy substance.
If your part of a big team where you can dedicate someone to substance then yea substance is a good call.
It's all about how you prefer to work and what works for you at the end of the day, not what others think is better.
They put up a new learning resource with the 2.0 release
I love Quixel for how much Photoshop it is. If you are familiar with Photoshop you can get going in Quixel super easy and fast and the results are pretty cool. Ultimately I feel that Substance Designer (not painter alone) is the more flexible toolset because of Substance integration into several major engines and applications. You can be as bitmap or procedural based in Substance as you want and work non-destructive in most cases.
Substance Painter alone works okay but you can still feel it's the first application from Allegorithmic. Painter for me crashes rather often if the mesh has problems and still doesn't feel as fluent as it could. I am totally convinced that substance Designer is the way to go for everything that has to be flexible, though. And Painter is being developend and refined constantly.
I've settled for the Allegorithmic Combo, myself.
Substance is really great, but it's a production framework for big teams.
You should really use the "presets" as kind of a starting point if you are going to use them. From there jump into the mask editor and you can customize the hell out of it switching which textures are in the masks and the strength, fall off, contrast + layer styles all all of the mask components - it's very powerful. There are lots of similar controls in there that substance uses but of course image based rather then node based.
Secondly you can also jump in and either change all the albedo colours + colour properties of everything that makes up that material - make that blue paint green, change the roughness etc
Thirdly you can add more materials into any preset. Very easy to add extra dirt + rusts on top of any given preset.
Basically on the surface it does look like it's made up of presets but they are only made with the tools that come with dDo - you can use those same tools to work into the presets or create your own from scratch.
At their core they are both doing similar things. Substance has the advantage of nodes giving you that flexibility to change every texture in the game with one slider but is a far more "technical" bit of kit. Quixel is great for speed and simplicity.
Quixel is better at getting your model 80% done texturing very quickly, especially if it fits within the presets. It's good for individual artists and assets, especially if you like texturing in photoshop.
SP will probably get better in 3 to 5 years but as it is now it's a no go for me.
So many artists are quicker with the good old photoshop workflow then the new cluttered piece of software out there.
Scanned materials are good though.
A lot of the off the shelf engines also allow you to plug your substances directly in engine and allow you to tweak them in real time. This allows for textures that are KB in size. Yet can look like 4k textures, with the ability to change them in engine. Huge memory and time saver.
its all about heightmap... that a big minus. no lasso tool, no rectangle selection tool. cant do normal with custom pattern, in ddo u can edit it right on the app. and real time, but in substance painter, u cant, ur life depend on height map that generate from another software.