Which software do you love the most to work with (for whatever reason)?
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Just to get some balance here. 
Not which software is objectively the best, or how do they compare, but which 3D or 3D-related software you, personally, love and why.
See the sister topic Which software do you hate the most to work with (for whatever reason)?
Not which software is objectively the best, or how do they compare, but which 3D or 3D-related software you, personally, love and why.
See the sister topic Which software do you hate the most to work with (for whatever reason)?
Replies
*edited, to make more sense
I love 3D-Coat especially for texturing (feels like I'm really free to do whatever I want with a big and smart tool-set in my hands). To me It's really important that it allows the artist being efficient as fast as possible, you don't need to understand all buttons/tools but they are here for latter use, I love messing with its smart-materials system to find the surface look I need, the fact that almost any slider values aren't clamped to dev defaults limits, plus all it can do (I never learnt how sculpting works and started with its retopology panel like 7 years ago, and it still rocks)
I also have the benefit of being new to digital art, so my world is still bright and full of possibilities. Every time I learn how to do something new in photoshop, it's like the coolest thing ever.
p.s.: oh... one thing... C4D never crashes....
-Easy to get into, and highly expandable without needing source code access.
-Excellent api support for emerging tech
-Easy for artists to do things that normally require a programmer or tech artist to assist with in other engines.
Its not perfect and as it evolves the ease of use has declined but of all the tools i use in my daily tasks, unity still gives me results that are consistent, easy to understand and quick to iterate on
Once you are experienced enough and have solid development skills its just amazing what power the engine gives right into your hands. Dont understand me wrong, this will be the same for Unreal and many other engines, but as said its the level of specialized experience with such complex beasts thats important. And that happens to be with Unity for me ..
Houdini because:
- You can make the impossible possible
- Hybrid workflow traditional modeling + procedural
- Most indie friendly price plan out there
- SideFX
And finally Maya because I like the sinergy between the modeling tools, it's fast and it is the software that I learned 3d with ( even though I started with Blender but I ditched it for Maya)
These Toys make me a happy little vegemite.
Substance Designer with its fully procedural approach is simply amazing. I learned just for fun, because it actually IS fun. Compared to the tediousness of other tools. (I also tried Quixel which felt like a cheap photoshop addon compared to SD. its ~3 years ago, Quixel might have become more stable)
imo, Houdini is becoming a very essential tool aswell. Procedural generation is the future and Houdini opens up many doors in that regard. I will go dive into houdini at some point, it might just throw SD off the first place in my favourite software list.
After college I mainly focused on animation and rigging, Maya is amazing for both. Even now years later as I'm delving in to more Environment and props, I still am finding it faster to quickly model in Maya. I believe a beautiful game can be created with just Maya, Photoshop and a game engine.
And even though I don't use it often or with any goal in mind, Verve is just incredibly fun to paint in.
The fact I can import several OBJ, split up meshes and elements of those meshes, make cages, skew maps and all that stuff in a single software is just amazing.
I use to dream about opening that up for work in the morning for years. I love Maya. I looOOove it.
Thanks for mentioning Quadspinner, never heard of this but definitely have to try it out.
I think that there is a free learning version available to download.
I'm one of the earliest "backers" of the software and it's fantastic. Also Dax Pandhi is one of the mind behind it so you can't go wrong for terrains creations.
Some of the landscapes that I made are on my portfolio if you want to check them out, I also have some breakdown videos on my YouTube channel.
Edit: And unity. Mostly because I'm very comfortable with it, but I find it very flexible and fun to work with.
In all seriousness, Zbrush, my first software love. However much like love there are certainly a lot of things we don't like about each other, it's a little unstable, it's not updated it's look in forever, and it has... Scale issues...
But ultimately none of that stops me from looking forward to whenever I get to work with it, love you Zbrush, never change.
- Zbrush - for sculpting
- Rizom Uv - for uvwrapping complex or midpoly stuff (since 3ds max is becoming laggy easily and it's uv tools are outdated)
- 3d Coat + Photoshop - for hand painted texturing
- Marmoset toolbag - for baking from high to low poly
What is in your opinion the most important part of a good user experience for design tools ?
That tends to happen in a multitude of different ways and has to be addressed on a case by case basis but thats the simplest way i can put it.
Max - it's just better than everything else if you want to make models.
Substance designer - it's the bedrock of any sensible material pipeline, its scriptable, extensible and incredibly powerful.
Substance painter - it's just fun.
Oh, and a shout for clip studio. It was there for me when Sketchbook Pro stopped being decent value and I've never looked back.
Renderdoc - Helps make debugging shaders quite pleasant.
Everything - I never have to use windows explorer to search for stuff.....
Agent Ransack - Indexes text based files for easy searching.
I like no button programs