Both are great! I love 3D Coat and definitely think it has it's place - I find it's actual painting tools are far better than Substance Painter, and on top of that it's good for retopo and UVs. Also interesting that they now have a smart material system similar to Substance, although from what I can tell creating those materials doesn't come close to Designer.
3Dcoat cannot build procedual materials like the Substance Suite can.
The sheer lateral changes and art direction possibilities that Substances provides is insanely useful for not just individual artists, but whole game dev teams.
3DCoat I just bought a month or two ago...I have yet to actually "use it". Mostly got it to see the differences between it and ZBrush as far as working it into my every-changing pipeline. 3DCoat has a couple cool things that feel 'nice' that ZBrush doesn't (from what I remember; I remember one or two "Oh! Hey, that's pretty cool!" moments when I first sparked it up and fiddled). But overall, Pixologic is just the most AMAZING company out there! Bought ZBrush v3 back when it was new...haven't paid for an upgrade yet. And Pixologic is one of the most helpful companies when it comes to user stupidity. Trust me!
Substance isn't just Painter. If you get the 'suite', which I HIGHLY recommend, you get the whole 9-meters. Painter, Designer, Bitmap2Material3, Substance Automation Tool, Substance Player, and even their new (in beta) tool called Alchemist (?). Not to mention direct plugins for MODO, Max, Maya, Houdini and for both Unreal Engine 4 and Unity. Substance is just "all around cool and easy". Can't go wrong with picking up a year license.
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If someone knows otherwise, please let us know.
The sheer lateral changes and art direction possibilities that Substances provides is insanely useful for not just individual artists, but whole game dev teams.
3DCoat I just bought a month or two ago...I have yet to actually "use it". Mostly got it to see the differences between it and ZBrush as far as working it into my every-changing pipeline. 3DCoat has a couple cool things that feel 'nice' that ZBrush doesn't (from what I remember; I remember one or two "Oh! Hey, that's pretty cool!" moments when I first sparked it up and fiddled). But overall, Pixologic is just the most AMAZING company out there! Bought ZBrush v3 back when it was new...haven't paid for an upgrade yet. And Pixologic is one of the most helpful companies when it comes to user stupidity. Trust me!
Substance isn't just Painter. If you get the 'suite', which I HIGHLY recommend, you get the whole 9-meters. Painter, Designer, Bitmap2Material3, Substance Automation Tool, Substance Player, and even their new (in beta) tool called Alchemist (?). Not to mention direct plugins for MODO, Max, Maya, Houdini and for both Unreal Engine 4 and Unity. Substance is just "all around cool and easy". Can't go wrong with picking up a year license.