An honest question as a new person
interpolator
Hi. I am 23 and am working on getting into the 3D digital art industry for games and possibly advertising and films. I have noticed over the few years that these products that people use, such as Maya, 3DS Max, zBrush, now 3DCoat and Substance Painter, hell even Photoshop, are UNBELIEVABLY expensive! How is anyone able to get into this type of industry if the tools required to learn it cost upwards of a hundreds and hundreds, possibly even into the thousand dollar range?? I am looking at 3D Coat now and I want to get it, but I just don't have that kind of money lying around at 23. I have done what many others do and use serials for other products so that I can at least learn how to use these programs so that I can one day find a job, but looking at these prices, I just cant seem to wrap my head around how this would even be possible. It's almost as if the companies are attempting to dissuade young people from learning these tools and getting into this career field.
Now here is another question. I know zBrush is a sculpting program that also had modeling capabilities, I know that maya and 3DS max are modeling programs as I have been using them for years now. I also understand that Maya excels in animation, whereas Max excels in modeling (to the best of my knowledge). My question is, how exactly does 3DCoat and Substance Painter differentiate from one another, and how do they differentiate from zBrush if the also have sculpting tools? I am very much interested in a stylized type of game design/art if that helps. I am also wondering which ones I should learn the most of and which ones I can put on the backburner for now. My two main interests are stylized game art and also animation. Not necessarily hi-poly modelling, mainly on the lower side, kind of like the art seen in League of Legends, DOTA, or some of those other games with that similar style of art.
Any advice/help would be appreciated on these subjects, as it all is a lot of information to take in and there are so many EXPENSIVE products that I'm just not sure which ones should be underlined and which are optional.
Thanks for reading
Now here is another question. I know zBrush is a sculpting program that also had modeling capabilities, I know that maya and 3DS max are modeling programs as I have been using them for years now. I also understand that Maya excels in animation, whereas Max excels in modeling (to the best of my knowledge). My question is, how exactly does 3DCoat and Substance Painter differentiate from one another, and how do they differentiate from zBrush if the also have sculpting tools? I am very much interested in a stylized type of game design/art if that helps. I am also wondering which ones I should learn the most of and which ones I can put on the backburner for now. My two main interests are stylized game art and also animation. Not necessarily hi-poly modelling, mainly on the lower side, kind of like the art seen in League of Legends, DOTA, or some of those other games with that similar style of art.
Any advice/help would be appreciated on these subjects, as it all is a lot of information to take in and there are so many EXPENSIVE products that I'm just not sure which ones should be underlined and which are optional.
Thanks for reading
Replies
Zbrush is good to know, but thats icing on the cake, especially for a lot of environment work these days given how powerful substance is.
You can keep an eye out for Steam sales for Substance Painter/3D coat.I prefer 3D coat to SP for stylized stuff. The lighting is flatter and the interface is simpler. It also gives you the ability to blend colors together, though that can kind of get smudgey if you're not careful.
Zbrush is expensive, but a one time purchase. Zbrush is king for sculpting, with features like Dynamesh, Zremesh (auto retop) and a ton of useful brushes. It still sucks for modeling, especially since you can't have multiple top/side/front/custom views open at the same time and lacks Maya's snapping tools.
Photoshop is a must.
For every part of game asset production there is free software. Blender for 3d asset creation, sculpting, animation and texture tools, gimp for image processing, Inkscape for vector graphics, XNormal for map creation. Ive used them all and they are pretty damn good.
Cheerio
2)
3D Coat Features:
> On-3D-Model Painting
> Retopology
> UV Unwrapping
> Voxel Sculpting
Substance Painter Features:
> On-3D-Model Painting with way better brush feel
> Use of Substance Designer Substances (procedural materials)
> Bake maps
> IRay rendering (CGI quality rendering)
Zbrush has more documentation and a larger experienced userbase than 3D Coat does. Imagine googling for information.
Substance Painter, dare I say it, has become an industry standard. Almost the whole studio at InXile uses it if they're texturing, if not only the younger artists. I can get multiple assets done very quickly if they're in the same material family via Substances, and we can share Substances across different team members.
Substance Painter doesn't REPLACE Photoshop, but it's possible that you could just stay in Substance Painter a long time. That being said, I use Photoshop for multiple image editing tasks, like adjusting an alpha, or cropping down an image before I send it into the Substance pipeline.
* you may not need to purchase all those programs at once. Get proficient in one before you add more
* good art is good art. if you made it with blender or MS Paint doesn't matter. It's still good art and that's what counts most
* you don't need Max AND Maya. If your art is good, then you can even use Blender
* Subscriptions & Indie versions on Steam are your friend
* The more you do in painter, the less powerful your 2D package has to be
* Look for special offers and sales (Substance has them)
Personally, I would get Painter Indie (texturing), Blender (modeling), ZBrush (sculpt), Gimp or a PS subscription (texture), UE4 (presentation) and then augment this with free tools, plugins and scripts. If you're starting out, this will already give you plenty to learn and plenty of room to grow.
@Brian "Panda" Choi I saw you mention that substance is an industry standard now, however my art style is more on the stylized hand-painted side. I read that 3DCoat excels in that type of art and that it's not as easily replicated in Substance. Is that true?
I should mention that I do currently have Maya and Photoshop, which are my two primary programs so I am doing more oldschool techniques with UV Mapping and painting textures in PS.
A main issue I'm having with that is seams and I am wondering what type of workflow others use to get around them? Surely 3DCoat/Substance painter arent the only two answers for seams
What's stopping you from getting Painter?
Gradually, things have been moving in a better direction. Autodesk has Maya LT, and many companies offer Indie licenses and/or learning editions of software. Now that there is more legit, affordable software, presumably the rate of people stealing the software is going down. However, this transition is not complete yet, so some stuff is still stupidly expensive (e.g. Max).
@Kevin Albers I had a hunch that most companies knew this was happening. In my opinion though, Maya LT lacks some important features. I can't remember off the top of my head which ones, but I remember reading the comparisons.
I'm learning zBrush somewhat as well, although the interface seems quite daunting at first. Still getting used to the feel of it. From what Ive been told, most companies don't push vertices around anymore and go straight to the sculpting in zbrush, then retopologize and then paint/texture.
We stiill push verts if we're hard surface modeling, which I don't know how much you do. As someone right now who's building a frack ton of organic AND hard surface items, I'm using a variety of modeling methods to get stuff done, including hacking and reforming bought assets.
With subD modeling, imagine just having to delete edge loops to get your low poly. There's an attractiveness there, especially that deep into an asset's completion.
When that's said, I do all my work in Substance Painter, but thats because I do NOT work with handpainted textures
2) retopology: 3Dcoat + Maya OR Modo
3) UV Unwrapping: 3DCoat + Maya OR Modo
4) Baking Textures: Substance Painter (Knald/ Toolbag 3 for support bakes)
5) Texturing: Substance Painter (Substance Designer for support)
6) Rendering: Marmoset Toolbag 3
7) Rigging and Animation: Maya
Are there any additonal details I can go into?