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Quixel or Substance for environment 3d artist for films

Silverland
Silverland
polycounter lvl 5
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Silverland polycounter lvl 5
Hi, guys. Yesterday i was asking similar question about Quixel vs Photoshop 3d mode. But now I am a bit confused. Because I found that Quixel is mostly used in Games (which I have zero interest for) and not in films. Also I found that Quixel is mostly very handy for the hard surface models texturing, which I am also not interested for because the thing that i am creating is organic flora and fauna models, terrains, plants, animated realistic environments for the feature films or animated films. Just to give you the ideas here is some works that I have done entirely in Blender from scratch including vfx, compositing, texture painting and materials. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlOO7am8qHI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfEeDb4UlU

Some people told me to stay with Blender because the results are also good and don't waste time on learning new software for texturing/materials. But i want to learn new texturing software because I hope to have more flexibilities, control and faster workflow, have a loads of presets to choose from. Since Substance and Quixel are made specifically for the texturing and materials I expect that I will be more happy to use one of them, rather than Blender texturing mode( but time will show, I may stay with Blender if I will be wrong) 

So based on the information I have just given you, what will you recommend: Quixel, Substance or stay with Blender + maybe little help of Zbrush spotlight and photoshop for very specific cases?
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  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    If films are your main interest, you might also consider Mari: https://www.foundry.com/products/mari

    I like Substance Painter+Designer, but haven't tried Quixel since like its first version years ago, so I can't really give an informed comparison. Blenders texture painting was extremely basic and feature poor compared to any of them though last I checked.
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  • PyrZern
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    PyrZern polycounter lvl 12
    Quixel and Substance are great especially, but not limited to hardsurface. I don't really do envo or use Blender, so I can't comment on that. But I have seen ppl use Substance on envo scenes before. The software truly shines when it comes to texturing man-made objects, though.
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  • isshak
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    isshak polycounter lvl 8
    You shouldn't stay with Bender if you want a good result, blender texturing futures is very week comparing to substance painter 
    I'm a Blender and substance painter user and I think substance painter is great for the environment texturing. it's very flexible and it has a lot of futures that give you great results in short time and it keeps your work organized. before I started using it I did ask a lot of professional artists and they did recommend substance painter, otherways it's all about the artist and his creativity 
    Blender is an amazing tool but for texturing you should try substance painter 
    I have some great works with blender and substance painter in my Artstation link down below, I hope it gives you an idea what you could do with both tools :) 
    https://www.artstation.com/isaacsouaci
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  • Silverland
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    Silverland polycounter lvl 5
    Thanks to all of you guys for the comments. I will be watching a few tuts on YouTube and will decide. Very strange that nobody had mentioned here new Quixel Mixer with its nature Megascans library. I have just discovered it today after watching tutorial on YouTube. 
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  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666
    substance painter is goddamn slow on mid range machines, as is Mari
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  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    Quixel might be the way to go. It's has zero learning curve, is pretty much dedicated to nature assets, and would be a great introduction to using a new workflow for texturing. Then if you want a lot more power and flexibility you could go the Substance Designer(Painter/B2M/Sub Sorce) route later on.

    Substance designer is insanely good for environment work. Although you may not need a lot of its features as you can get away with so many texturing/shading/rendering tricks and shortcuts in film/vfx work compared to game dev.
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  • Silverland
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    Silverland polycounter lvl 5
    musashidan said:

    "you can get away with so many texturing/shading/rendering tricks and shortcuts in film/vfx work compared to game dev" 

    True, especially when everything is in motion and the blur is added and other effects

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  • Mink
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    Mink polycounter lvl 6
    I personally wouldn't touch Quixel suite with a 10 foot poll unless you already pay for Photoshop. It's quick but performs like shit and has zero flexibility. Blenders texturing is kind of crappy and I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone despite blender being my go to modeling program. Substance designer are absolutely worth learning and dealing with the learning curve for. They have great performance and are the most versatile texturing programs on the market.
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  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    @mink I bought Quixel suite in beta and have barely touched it since. I think it's a nightmare piece of software. I was more talking about Quixel's Megascans library.
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  • sprunghunt
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    sprunghunt polycounter
    https://www.allegorithmic.com/blog/blade-runner-2049-s-oscar-winning-texturing-workflow-framestore
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  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666
    sprunghunt... i know the article but in the end they used mari... cause substance was to slow...
    but allegorithmic is working on that... 
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  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    @oglu Substance was used on everything showed in the article. But there is a distinction to be made between Substance Designer (used to create tileable materials used either as is or projected onto the Vegas objects using Mari) and Substance Painter (used to create unique textures for smaller buildings in the Solar Farm shots).

    Even though we are indeed working on improving performance, there are currently studios working on projects with 200+ udims assets in Substance Painter and loving it :) 
    We'll have good news to share this summer for VFX look dev artists.

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  • Burpee
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    Burpee polycounter lvl 9
    Jerc sa
    We'll have good news to share this summer for VFX look dev artists.

    oh boy <3 
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  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    Burpee said:
    Jerc sa
    We'll have good news to share this summer for VFX look dev artists.

    oh boy <3 
    When are you people going to bring us some bad news? It's always the same boring old industry-changing good news........
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  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    Jerc said:
    there are currently studios working on projects with 200+ udims assets in Substance Painter and loving it :) 


    Gulp.........are they setting their TDR to 1 million?
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  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666
    Jerc thanks for the insides... im burnign to test the upcoming VFX version...
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