Cheapest way to get into environment modeling/texturing?

nategarber

I'm broke, I could spend a few bucks here and there.
But as an artist with lots of Photoshop experience painting and drawing in the past.
What would you suggest they use to get there hands dirty in environment art?

I have a decent computer, blender. I'll either go with UE or Unity for real-time rendering.
I've been looking at Quixel, I find it interesting that it's integrated into photoshop.

Can't afford ZBrush. Could Scuptris be used to some degree for those details?

Kwramm

ZBrush is definitely the king of the hill, but I heard 3D Coat isn't too shabby for sculpting, given its price point. And you get a lot of useful extras with it, such as great retopo and painting tools. There's a free trial on Steam. If you can afford it, pick up the indie versions of the Allegorthmic tools - they're the next gen in texturing. Everyone who is currently learning 3D should give them a try! Quixel is a great tool, but it's definitely down in popularity - while the Quixel guys were working on Megascans Allegorithmic was hard at work pushing their own products, and the way it looks like they'll be the big winners.

AtticusMars

For enviro art I think you could get away with just using Blender for sculpting. You may want to keep an eye on ZBrushCore which Pixologic is revealing at the end of the month. Depending on what they decide it might be functional/cheap enough for your needs.

Depending on the kind of environment art you're interested in though you may not need to sculpt much, if at all. Substance Designer can be used to generate convincing normal maps for a lot of things you might normally rely on sculpting for.

poly_bob

What AtticusMars said is right. You don't really need sculpting if your focus is in environment art. Low poly modeling and tillable texturing is where you wanna focus. Learn Substance Designer. They offer a free license now for students.

Synaesthesia

Hey Nate!

If you'd like some assistance with SUITE, feel free to reach out! I've done environment work in the past using DDO and NDO. A lot of things are significantly easier to do now with Megascans and the Megascans Studio tool being out there in the ether. Regardless of the software you decide on, I hope you enjoy the journey - we're in a fantastic time for making digital art!

RaptorCWS

you can get a student version of max, maya and/or mudbox. you do not need a student email address (unless they have changed it recently).

Add3r

RaptorCWS said:

you can get a student version of max, maya and/or mudbox. you do not need a student email address (unless they have changed it recently).

This.  If it is purely for learning and building your skillset, I say go with the student versions of Maya/Mudbox.  Mudbox might not be widely used, but it's definitely capable of just about everything in zBrush and IMO way more intuitive than zBrush in almost all aspects lol (granted, zBrush's tools and capabilities do out stretch Mudbox when you start diving into more complicated techniques, nothing an env artist will use often however).  

Kevin Albers

You can go far just using Photoshop and Blender. For the game engine, if you want to create any actual gameplay/code, then Unity is probably your best bet. If you just want to create levels and assets that look nice, UE4 would probably be best.

Eventually, Zbrush and Substance Designer/Painter would be great additions, but for now, they are totally not needed and would probably just slow down your learning of the basics.

The specific styles you are interested in help dictate tools and required skills. For example, if you want to focus on AAA style assets in a realistic style, Substance Designer would be very helpful. I'd recommend starting a bit more stylized, and leveraging your existing photoshop skills more, however. Maybe using hand-painted textures without normal maps, for example.