Is 3d Coat worth it?
vertex
In couple of weeks I will do a big project that will last for a year or more, making a game all by myself. I've been learning 3D for 5 years on and off with Blender. It's my only 3D software I ever used, and I know that there's way better softwares than this one, because Blender is basically a mix of everything but not really good at something, except maybe modeling because of his shortcuts.
I will have around $1800 and I need softwares that won't cost me too much and that will do the job, For texturing, UV mapping, retopology, animation, and modeling. What I had in mind was to buy 3d Coat and Substance Designer, I tried 3d Coat's trial and I do like it so far. When I looked on youtube for timelapses or tutorials, or simply renders on google, there's barely something, why? When I go check on forums and do research about the software what people think about it, I don't find anything. So now I'm not as confident and fear to do a mistake to buy it. The game will run on Unreal Engine 4 and I thought that Substance Designer would be a good choice to tweak my textures.
What do you guys think?
I will have around $1800 and I need softwares that won't cost me too much and that will do the job, For texturing, UV mapping, retopology, animation, and modeling. What I had in mind was to buy 3d Coat and Substance Designer, I tried 3d Coat's trial and I do like it so far. When I looked on youtube for timelapses or tutorials, or simply renders on google, there's barely something, why? When I go check on forums and do research about the software what people think about it, I don't find anything. So now I'm not as confident and fear to do a mistake to buy it. The game will run on Unreal Engine 4 and I thought that Substance Designer would be a good choice to tweak my textures.
What do you guys think?
Replies
For that budget, you might look into either an Indie version of Modo or Maya LT. Both are fairly affordable, and have more documentation readily available.
Modo I would like to give it a try , but for Maya, eh I tried and I'm used to shortcuts because of Blender and to me it slows me down a lot to select things with a mouse. I didn't know there was a indie version for Modo, just hope that I can still make some money to sell my game after that. Thanks a lot for your suggestion!
3D coat for me is a secondary tool, ive tended to go to it for the odd thing here and there like retopology. There's barely any information/videos/etc because it isn't (that) widely adopted by professionals like Max and Maya are.
All of them have their faults. Personally I'm a Max user and can tell you about how its straining under the weight of it's legacy stuff whilst receiving minimal love from Autodesk - usually in the form of stuff that went to Maya first. I'd probably suggest Maya as it's widely adopted and you therefore get the benefit of immediately being prepared for jobs if you learn it. There's also the most freely available support and information (although that applies to max too, theyre about on par)
Modo is interesting but it's got a smaller user base, so less information out there. Go with Max or Maya, and get both the substance apps, instead of the designer/3dcoat mix you suggest.
It's not to say that alternatives don't cut it, but the path of least resistance is most important for most, and with the wealth of info out there on these because they're used by the most people, you have the most chance of solving anything. Also millions of plugins, and direct support in engines. I like the little guys though, of course, its where the innovation and fun happens. but when you're on a budget and you want to work professionally, dont get something with a lot of barriers to work.
This looks like something I'd here more about
In the interest of history though, here's my anecdotal summary: In short, it was a case of somebody leaking their personal life out into work. It started with a religiously-worded section of the EULA that prohibited any nudity or anything that could be considered lewd, progressed to him refusing sale of the software to people on the grounds that their art was a demonstration of their corrupt souls etc. The end of it was a life-story he wrote about his corrupt beginnings and how he found god and left it behind.
If you want to look it up though, Google for '3D Coat EULA'. As i say, most of the interesting stuff has been removed from his site. Nobody cared that much until he started contacting artists publicly and privately and telling them to cease and desist (with a lot of religious damnation language, calling other professionals corrupted, calling their work disgusting etc etc), as well as refusing purchases of the software on the those grounds. You can probably find peoples' reactions, closed threads etc.
As you can imagine it spiralled into discussions about religion, sexuality etc. In summary though it was just someone who forgot the personal/professional boundary. The worry was that he could come after your game and sue because you used his software in violation of the EULA just because you had a nipple bump under a shirt or something (or an overt, giant cock lol) - and his attitude indicated he would come after you.
I remember one that was just a crocadile-man with big muscles, there was no genitalia and the context wasn't at all sexual, but he attacked it nonetheless.
A lot of it happened on their forums though, where they had the ability to brush it away after consulting lawyers and iterating on the clause in question to make it a bit less vague and religious.
Don't really want to turn this thread into a discussion on it though, I regret the cheeky stab i made in my post :P
1. you can paint with different brush dabs/pictures alternating randomly , kind of "image Hose" of Corel Painter
2. you can always work in final resolution up to 16384 and see what you actually paint
4. you have better control over edge detection , edge rust distribution etc with easier and much simpler adjusting while in SP you have to go through gazillion settings and still it looks unpredictably, especially once you switch to higher resolution.
5. better projective painting , but Photoshop does it even better than 3d coat imo , in some respect.
Substance Painter has a huge advantage of being resolution independent and has better and logical layer structure that allows to replace materials and masks very quickly.
I personally use 3dCoat when I have to do something unique and visually critical in true realistic style and use Substance Painter when I need to do quickly a lot of not so important props.
So in short if you prefer to work more as a traditional artist in hi-res file to be then downscaled to final resolution , go 3d coat. If you want to work quicker in a kind of automated way in low res and then upscale the file to final resolution, go SP . Sometimes it's totally ok, sometimes the procedural system would screw and give you something unexpected. Imo everything done in SP is pretty much recognizable by having a kind of "robotic" and "procedural" artificial look.
Hope someday somebody would collect all the best features from Coat, SP and Mari and do a truly convenient soft . Would not be surprised if it will be Blender since it have very nice painting system too that could be interactively combined with Cycles procedural nodes and super cool realtime Pointiness edge detection. It misses just a few things actually.
Regarding your 5 points: I'm not sure a brush constitutes a good primary reason to choose between programs. The resolution stuff is nice, I cant fault it although when working at those resolutions people tend to go to UDIM, which substance supports. Not sure what you mean regarding edge detection, seems fine to me - there's about 6 different methods you can use (and unlimited more considering you can build your own, as people have done and published to the Share) and as for projection painting, yeah I suppose - I don't use that much.
As for realism, I'll point at Rolegio Olguin, Josh Lynch and a list of AAA productions as long as my arm. There is a reason that most big studios have adopted it. Not sure what you mean about unreliability either, they're pretty reliable so far as I can see?
Not sure why you've picked just painter to compare though, he was thinking about Designer+3Dcoat, and I suggested the combination of Designer+Painter. The cohesion of the two allego packages > the mix of 3dcoat and painter.
I think you've missed the main benefit of the substance pair though which is that they constitute an entirely non-destructive, non-linear workflow that is production-tested and heavily supported which is a godsend to people doing pro work on big projects. If a change needs to be made, you don't need to re-author. You just update the graph and re-export. Not to mention that any parameters can be exposed in-engine.
That, and the fact their support is unparalleled - I can talk directly to their team at almost any time of day and get a response straight away - they've added things to the program at the request of users non stop over the lat year and continued to stay up to date with what the industry needs in terms of tools and technologies.
There are libraries of graphs available to use, people are constantly making guides, tutorials etc and in general the wealth of materials and resources available is night and day. The same cant be said for 3DCoat as the OP confirms.
So far as I can tell, the procedural material capabilities are miles apart. 3D Coat essentially offers what painter offers - some generators, some mask systems etc, but if you bring designer into the discussion it is blown away completely and utterly - and I'm suggesting that one buys both, not just painter.
Every program has its advantages and disadvantages, 3D coat is a fine package but I think both substance packages together blow it out of the water, and choosing them over it for _texturing_ is a no-brainer for sure. Compare the work out there from 3D coat users, and from Substance users.
I do suggest getting 3D coat for what it excels at i.e retopo, we all need varied tools in our toolboxes, but for a first purchase of primary software specifically for texturing - I say go with the business that has made texturing its only goal - not the one who has texturing as one peripheral feature of many.
I read the "our voice" page
I respect a man who actually practices his religion more than the people merely preaching it on Sundays/Fridays or a certain month then proceeding to violate it behind everyone's back
I recognize that a business has a right to sell / not sell to anyone for any reason.
So I guess since we are making video games here, most of them are violent, some of them REALLY violent.
Our values clearly don't mesh very well with his
The most respectful thing to do is to not buy them
Substance Painter 2 and Zbrush 4r7 are better anyway.
At least until he learns that you have to separate business from personal life.
@Chimp
Well..
too late
I haven't used all the new fancy pbr stuff in 3d coat, tbh I am not that interested in it but it seems decent enough. If you are into hand painted stuff (like I am) its pretty great and I enjoy the projection options it offers etc.
I know some artist also love the sculpting inside of it, how easy it is when working with boolean from what I've heard.
Yeah sorry about that, I over exaggerated, it was late and I was tired. But you have to admit it is weird when you see this. You buy a tool, but you can't do everything with it because of team's belief. It's like I would buy a mature game, but I can't kill anything in the game, if I do, then I will be punished and lose my game (license). When you make a software you know that people could use it to do fan arts of Game Of Thrones or God of War, and things like that. If they did share their view but not limit us, that would had been fine.
I still have things to check, Retopo I was thinking for topogun or Blender, texturing part is a hard one, I will try 3d Coat and Substance Painter and see which one I like best. The modeling in Blender is pretty solid, I almost have everything I need. Do you have something you would recommend me? Like softwares you use daily and good to have at all time.
I can't say if 3d coat is better or worst than substance painter since i've yet to really try the later, I believe I would use them for different reason tho.
I mostly use 3d coat for painting more painterly-looking things and albedo, I would use painter for working on stuff a bit more realistic, to work with metal and roughness etc.
I don't personally use blender but its a good package, especially since you can use it for free, unlike the others.
I use Zbrush a whole lot so I would recommend that but it really depends if you do a lot of sculpting in your work, which I don't know. But it's a great software to know.
Otherwise I would also recommend marmoset toolbag 3 if you want to do quick and easy presentation that look kickass, can't beat that but I think you said to be using UE4 which really make sens too. The new toolbag 3 has awesome news features tho, since as baking so that makes it even more interesting for the price.
Otherwise I would also recommend Knald if you are looking for a baker. The price is pretty decent, the bakes are super easy to setup, super quick and saved me tons of time compared to Xnormal.
Goodluck
@Tits, I thought there was a Topogun 3 coming? I know they've said it for years but... has it been officially canceled now? If so -
Substance Painter is a fairly new program and I find that a lot of people are not taking advantage of interesting new workflows that can open up when working with a mix of custom .sbsars and textures brought in from outside of the program.
Most of the procedural look comes when people use MG Metal Edge Wear, MG Dirt, Grunge Scratches Rough, and Clouds 01 on all of their materials regardless if it's actually an appropriate wear for the surface.
I would gladly use SP with my own textures and work style with a kind of procedural icing over my own work if it has all the very simple conveniences of a regular painting program. A convenient projective mode at least. Contrary to what they say SP forces you to work within certain paradigm only.
Imo Algorithmic should look very closely to other Painter, a Corel one.
Not alternating, single square brush alpha is such a damn heresy . Even Zbrush have "Roll" brushes with long alphas. But try Corel Painter pattern brushes to see where the beauty is. BTW it also one of the advantages of 3d coat. it has long alphas too.
I do agree that the painting could be improved and that they should closely look at other competitors.
Anyways, to get back on point. I think a good freelance software layout would be..
Blender - I have not actually used it though.. Can someone weigh in on if you can actually export good animations for in-engine out of it?
Zbrush - Lots of resources/tutorials online for sculpting ($800 now?)
Substance Designer + Painter - For texturing ($300)
Photoshop - Probably will need to use it at some point ($60 a year?)
Should come out to about $1200. If you can swing the extra cash down the road, maybe going from Blender to Modo since it is a bit more established.
TLDR: If you are concerned with saving money then pick 3D-coat, it's quite a jack of all trades. If you want the best out of every aspect then pick the individual softwares highlighted by others. Also take note of the times when the developers give discounts, they pop up every year like cyber monday etc. I got the substance pack for half price which was totally worth it.
Alright thanks a lot! That's what I will do.