Substance VS Quxiel

1813

I'm thinking of buying Quxiel sometime this week as its on sale and I'm just wondering if Substances should be given some through? as I've heard both are good but I'm just wondering if its good for handpainting objects?

If it isn't is substance something i should be looking at?

Burpee

I think Painter whould be better for hand painted stuff, Quixel is great but it's really only about his big material library 

Mr Whippy

I've used Quixel and I'm not really sure it's designed too much as a painting tool, more a texture generation tool after the fact.

The Allegorithmic stuff in comparison looks much more NLE focussed, so working start to finish in one place. Doing that in Quixel is more of a faff as you'd be re-painting your ID map and reloading and waiting for maps to be regenerated for seconds on end each change?!

I've not been a super heavy user of either but from my experience that is what I've seen.

Others may offer much better advice

1813

Burpee said:

I think Painter whould be better for hand painted stuff, Quixel is great but it's really only about his big material library 

Alright. Thanks. I guess i'll have to wait for more to comment and see what else they say.

throttlekitty

Quixel's strong point is mask generation, ease of surface/material separation and relies on pre-made textures made from scan data. It runs in Photoshop so it's easy to break away from the workflow when you need to, and it's very easy to build up textures from the library. I haven't done any serious hand-3d painting in Quixel, so I can't answer that definitively, but it certainly feels good.

Substance Designer feels less "artistic" and straightforward in comparsion, it's all about building up powerful procedural textures from very small pieces. It's very powerful, but personally I've found it too tedious to use for making simple generation and monumental for any serious texture work that can be re-used via paramaterization. I think you have to have the right kind of brain to be really successful in using SD alone.

I've never used Substance Painter, but I know they offer a large library + user content of substances which makes it look OP. go look at youtube videos or something.

Indik

Substance Painter is awesome and versatile texturing software, I use it all the time nowadays. Lots of materials and community content, powerful and useful bakers, filters and generators are great. Development speed is also very very quick and the price is fair.
I have some experience with Quixel, it`s also great, but not for me.

Add3r

Once setup, the painting in DDO/3DO through Quixel is really awesome.  Not trying to shameless plug, but this was textured entirely through the smart materials in DDO and hand painting on the model itself in DDO/3DO (aside from the screen on the canister, that was done completely from scratch in PS).  It has a ton of flexibility.  Clearly my example isnt your standard WoW style handpainted, but all the edgewear, decals, and masks used for the model were painted directly onto the model using the paint function. 

That being said, I have also used Substance Painter extensively, and it also is quite powerful.  IMO it's painting functionality is a bit more powerful and intuitive since it is the primary function of the software.

Looking at both in an unbiased way, and comparing JUST the direct model painting toolset, I say Painter would be a more intuitive program to pick up.  But both programs are heavily PBR and realistic tuned tools, so you would have to build a brush library and do some tweaks to the default project setups to get the stereotypical handpainted workspace.

I would also look into 3D Coat, as that would be my recommendation, hands down, if you are looking for a program to handle painting directly onto the model.  Its the painting software of choice for most Blizzard devs that work on this style.  The new updates for 3D Coat also give it the functionality of both Painter and Quixel with smart materials and PBR support.  3D Coat is my vote for handpainted style.  

illbleed

for hand painting i second the 3d coat recommendation. 

http://img05.deviantart.net/674c/i/2015/068/b/5/golem_bust___part_2___texturing_in_3dcoat_by_turpedo-d8l2e3b.jpg

Pizdos

big NO for Quixel
- is not a stand alone tool, you require Photoshop license to run it
- is full of bugs, and have to many problems, feels made by amateurs
- Quxiel megascans? lol...

big YES for Substances Designer + Painter
- stand alone tool
- pro in all ways
- lots of features
- no limits in creating textures and painting
- have actually a solid company behind to run the business

FourtyNights

The biggest reason for me to choose Allegorithmic's Substance Designer (and probably getting Painter in the future as well) was the stability compared to Quixel's products.

musashidan

I bought QS2 back when it was in beta, but never used it because Dev avtivety seemed completely dead: no chatter, no dev updates, no teasers, no info generally. This was disappointing so I ended up getting SP - which I now love - and using that in lieu of the still beta QS.

Since then QS2 final was released and I installed it just to check it out. Instantly it didn't feel great to use. SP I picked up and was up and running in about an hour due to the brilliant Allegorithmic  YT channel - Wes Mcdermot covers both SP & SD in great detail. The QS learning resources were very lacklustre in comparison.

On a technical note SP is a much better baker.(QS doesn't bake NM and doesn't use MikkT) Is far more intuitive(for me at least) has very few bugs and is very stable(it's never crashed on me)

QS immediately drove me mad with its loading......click a button and the whole screen blurs and loads.........add a layer.........load/blur.......delete a layer......load/blur.......open mask channel..............load/blur.......etc.........AAArgghh!!
Plus it freezes, crashes, and requires a bugfix patch seemingly every time you load the software.

I haven't used it[QS2] near enough to be any kind of authority on it, but my initial impressions are to steer clear and stick with Painter. Allegorithmic Dev team are much more on the ball and seem to be progressing at a very steady and consistent pace.

Not to mention the fact that SD opens up a whole new world and the substance file type is standard now in the likes of UE4(with a plugin) and Unity.