Lite version of 3D softwares

cracked_polygon

Substance painter gots major upgrades and it is more awesome than before but what does it cost, well just buy the latest graphics card and you would be good to go (I know I exaggerate a little bit but still)

And its not only substance but evert major software gets an update, it just gets laggier and laggier unless you upgrade your PC.

I hate to say but I don't think these even care about individuals and only want to be or remain "Industry Standard"

Not everyone is freakin rich but want to learn these softwares and get a job to pay bills.

Only solution remain is that everyone could release a lite verions of their software, which our pc could handle easily and don't die within a year.

oglu

Just dont upgrade. Using "old" software is not uncommon in a studio. You dont need the latest to learn the software and the needed skills.

Neox

yeah in most productions you have pretty old software standards. i mean you are probably right about substance painter. thats the one we keep updating often, zbrush every other year. maya is 2018 at best. 3dsmax goes down to max 2009 for some artists, photoshop is down to cs6 for some. still those people work on the top of the line of games.

rollin

It's something like that:

start -> experimental software -> buggy software -> good software -> great software -> convoluted software -> software with some stuff nobody needs -> slow software -> slow and buggy software -> slow and buggy software which needs a zillion GB on your hard drive for some bullshit material libraries nobody wants and requires literally a day to start ->  A: software nobody uses anymore - or B: go back to start

cracked_polygon

oglu said:

Just dont upgrade. Using "old" software is not uncommon in a studio. You dont need the latest to learn the software and the needed skills.

Neox said:

yeah in most productions you have pretty old software standards. i mean you are probably right about substance painter. thats the one we keep updating often, zbrush every other year. maya is 2018 at best. 3dsmax goes down to max 2009 for some artists, photoshop is down to cs6 for some. still those people work on the top of the line of games.

Yes, I heard about it that most of the studios don't even upgrade software, but what if a new feature could make your workflow 10 times faster and less annoying. What's in that case?

cracked_polygon

rollin said:

It's something like that:

start -> experimental software -> buggy software -> good software -> great software -> convoluted software -> software with some stuff nobody needs -> slow software -> slow and buggy software -> slow and buggy software which needs a zillion GB on your hard drive for some bullshit material libraries nobody wants and requires literally a day to start ->  A: software nobody uses anymore - or B: go back to start

Noice

oglu

cracked_polygon said:

oglu said:

Just dont upgrade. Using "old" software is not uncommon in a studio. You dont need the latest to learn the software and the needed skills.

Neox said:

yeah in most productions you have pretty old software standards. i mean you are probably right about substance painter. thats the one we keep updating often, zbrush every other year. maya is 2018 at best. 3dsmax goes down to max 2009 for some artists, photoshop is down to cs6 for some. still those people work on the top of the line of games.

Yes, I heard about it that most of the studios don't even upgrade software, but what if a new feature could make your workflow 10 times faster and less annoying. What's in that case?

What feature should that be?
I havnt seen much of those magic features. Most of the automatic stuff does not provide the quality we need.

Neox

cracked_polygon said:

oglu said:

Just dont upgrade. Using "old" software is not uncommon in a studio. You dont need the latest to learn the software and the needed skills.

Neox said:

yeah in most productions you have pretty old software standards. i mean you are probably right about substance painter. thats the one we keep updating often, zbrush every other year. maya is 2018 at best. 3dsmax goes down to max 2009 for some artists, photoshop is down to cs6 for some. still those people work on the top of the line of games.

Yes, I heard about it that most of the studios don't even upgrade software, but what if a new feature could make your workflow 10 times faster and less annoying. What's in that case?

in my experience this is a very made up situation. yes technically there are some pretty cool workflows floating around. but as soon as you have tons and tons of dependencies you start sticking to the old - working - workflows.

as an individual freelancer who just pushes out final FBX files and textures, it might not matter how you get to the result. We still have to do classic SubD modelling with chamfered edges on almost any production. Why? Because it works. Opensubdiv or creases are nice and as long as you stay in one software its all fine and dandy, but as soon as you work in different programs stuff might fail on transfer between apps.

All the new UV features, well yeah some of those are not in max versions from 10 years ago. You can get that stuff from blender as well if needed. In the end, if you are deep enough in the pipeline and you handle lods and shit, you will still need to straighten and to some degree puzzle by hand. Lots of the new features help in the process but the annoying work is still around, automeshes, autoUVs etc are not as optimized by a long mile yet. It might happen at one point and then it might make sense to update. But i haven't yet found anything in the newer max versions i really need for my work or which would make me incredibly faster. Not having a ton of old plugins and script might in fact make me slower.

So if you wanna be on the edge and not pay a shitton of money, get into blender. but also then, production reality might "slow" you down in direct comparison.

pior

"Only solution remain is that everyone could release a lite versions of their software, which our pc could handle easily and don't die within a year."

Unfortunately that won't ever happen as software doesn't get slower directly because of the number of features - it gets slower and more bloated because of the codebase getting messier each time a new dependency is added. That's why MayaLT is not running any faster than regular Maya despite having less features - the codebase is the same.

So your best bet is indeed to carefully audit different versions of software and pick the one that has an acceptable responsiveness for your needs. Ironically enough a lot of users seem to be okay with software not performing too well as they are thrilled to always try out "the next cool feature". Just like people who get genuinely excited at the idea of wasting a whole weekend (or rather a few months really) to install a new OS that just came out. But after a while it becomes very easy to see through that, because the more aware you are of your own workflow the easier it is to identify what is actually useful and what is a literal waste of time.

As far as I am concerned I've always considered that a team always updating their software to the latest version without any in-depth testing (or even a mandatory wait period of, say, 6 months to a year) to be a bit of a red flag, as to me it is a sign of a lack of experience. But hey, to each their own.

rollin

pior said:

(...). Ironically enough a lot of users seem to be okay with software not performing too well as they are thrilled to always try out "the next cool feature". (...)

I guess this falls into the same category as "fan-users who tell you that you can very easily fix the issue you have if you would just do these 500 very simple steps"  and who are absolutely convinced that their solution is just it, - the solution - , despite it's totally impractical for production.

I guess we all know how it makes a difference if you just do something sometimes or if you have to push through a big work load as quickly and efficiently as possible. Because this is the moment, as @oglu already said, when you realize that this sweet new feature is just not sweet enough yet.

And as @pior said... Whenever I hear someone talk about "this cool automatic thing which just makes all the work totally easy" I get cautious. Esp. if it's your boss / the one with the money..

cracked_polygon

Neox said:

in my experience this is a very made up situation. yes technically there are some pretty cool workflows floating around. but as soon as you have tons and tons of dependencies you start sticking to the old - working - workflows.

as an individual freelancer who just pushes out final FBX files and textures, it might not matter how you get to the result. We still have to do classic SubD modelling with chamfered edges on almost any production. Why? Because it works. Opensubdiv or creases are nice and as long as you stay in one software its all fine and dandy, but as soon as you work in different programs stuff might fail on transfer between apps.

All the new UV features, well yeah some of those are not in max versions from 10 years ago. You can get that stuff from blender as well if needed. In the end, if you are deep enough in the pipeline and you handle lods and shit, you will still need to straighten and to some degree puzzle by hand. Lots of the new features help in the process but the annoying work is still around, automeshes, autoUVs etc are not as optimized by a long mile yet. It might happen at one point and then it might make sense to update. But i haven't yet found anything in the newer max versions i really need for my work or which would make me incredibly faster. Not having a ton of old plugins and script might in fact make me slower.

So if you wanna be on the edge and not pay a shitton of money, get into blender. but also then, production reality might "slow" you down in direct comparison.

Thanks for the detailed explanation

I does use blender for modeling but was worrying about other stuff like UV, Retopo and texturing which I think is not that great and was thinking about using substance painter  but I think I would go for 3D Coat now (i heard that it could handle high poly pretty smoothly just like zbrush). Had you tried 3D coat before, it's pretty underrated in my opinion, I could only be able to find just handful of tutorials about this, I wonder why?

cracked_polygon

pior said:

"Only solution remain is that everyone could release a lite versions of their software, which our pc could handle easily and don't die within a year."

Unfortunately that won't ever happen as software doesn't get slower directly because of the number of features - it gets slower and more bloated because of the codebase getting messier each time a new dependency is added. That's why MayaLT is not running any faster than regular Maya despite having less features - the codebase is the same.

So your best bet is indeed to carefully audit different versions of software and pick the one that has an acceptable responsiveness for your needs. Ironically enough a lot of users seem to be okay with software not performing too well as they are thrilled to always try out "the next cool feature". Just like people who get genuinely excited at the idea of wasting a whole weekend (or rather a few months really) to install a new OS that just came out. But after a while it becomes very easy to see through that, because the more aware you are of your own workflow the easier it is to identify what is actually useful and what is a literal waste of time.

As far as I am concerned I've always considered that a team always updating their software to the latest version without any in-depth testing (or even a mandatory wait period of, say, 6 months to a year) to be a bit of a red flag, as to me it is a sign of a lack of experience. But hey, to each their own.

Thanks a lot dude, I think this solves my concern

Neox

I use 3dcoat on a regular basis, but mostly for retopo, instant unwrapping for said retopo and painting gradients for later use. the gradienttool to me just feels better than working in substance painter to me.

Substance painter is mandatory to most of our projects. Photoshop as well. Nobody is usuing 3dcoat for this - tho the PS productions usually use 3dcoat in combination, 3d painting and working across seams is just something you can't do with Photoshop or at least not in a usuable state.

cracked_polygon

Neox said:

cracked_polygon said:

oglu said:

Just dont upgrade. Using "old" software is not uncommon in a studio. You dont need the latest to learn the software and the needed skills.

Neox said:

yeah in most productions you have pretty old software standards. i mean you are probably right about substance painter. thats the one we keep updating often, zbrush every other year. maya is 2018 at best. 3dsmax goes down to max 2009 for some artists, photoshop is down to cs6 for some. still those people work on the top of the line of games.

Yes, I heard about it that most of the studios don't even upgrade software, but what if a new feature could make your workflow 10 times faster and less annoying. What's in that case?

in my experience this is a very made up situation. yes technically there are some pretty cool workflows floating around. but as soon as you have tons and tons of dependencies you start sticking to the old - working - workflows.

as an individual freelancer who just pushes out final FBX files and textures, it might not matter how you get to the result. We still have to do classic SubD modelling with chamfered edges on almost any production. Why? Because it works. Opensubdiv or creases are nice and as long as you stay in one software its all fine and dandy, but as soon as you work in different programs stuff might fail on transfer between apps.

All the new UV features, well yeah some of those are not in max versions from 10 years ago. You can get that stuff from blender as well if needed. In the end, if you are deep enough in the pipeline and you handle lods and shit, you will still need to straighten and to some degree puzzle by hand. Lots of the new features help in the process but the annoying work is still around, automeshes, autoUVs etc are not as optimized by a long mile yet. It might happen at one point and then it might make sense to update. But i haven't yet found anything in the newer max versions i really need for my work or which would make me incredibly faster. Not having a ton of old plugins and script might in fact make me slower.

So if you wanna be on the edge and not pay a shitton of money, get into blender. but also then, production reality might "slow" you down in direct comparison.

Thanks for the detailed explanation

I does use blender for modeling but was worrying about other stuff like UV, Retopo and texturing which I think is not that great and was thinking about using substance painter  but I think I would go for 3D Coat now (i heard that it could handle high poly pretty smoothly just like zbrush). Had you tried 3D coat before, it's pretty underrated in my opinion, I could only be able to find just handful of tutorials about this, I wonder why?

cracked_polygon

Neox said:

cracked_polygon said:

oglu said:

Just dont upgrade. Using "old" software is not uncommon in a studio. You dont need the latest to learn the software and the needed skills.

Neox said:

yeah in most productions you have pretty old software standards. i mean you are probably right about substance painter. thats the one we keep updating often, zbrush every other year. maya is 2018 at best. 3dsmax goes down to max 2009 for some artists, photoshop is down to cs6 for some. still those people work on the top of the line of games.

Yes, I heard about it that most of the studios don't even upgrade software, but what if a new feature could make your workflow 10 times faster and less annoying. What's in that case?

in my experience this is a very made up situation. yes technically there are some pretty cool workflows floating around. but as soon as you have tons and tons of dependencies you start sticking to the old - working - workflows.

as an individual freelancer who just pushes out final FBX files and textures, it might not matter how you get to the result. We still have to do classic SubD modelling with chamfered edges on almost any production. Why? Because it works. Opensubdiv or creases are nice and as long as you stay in one software its all fine and dandy, but as soon as you work in different programs stuff might fail on transfer between apps.

All the new UV features, well yeah some of those are not in max versions from 10 years ago. You can get that stuff from blender as well if needed. In the end, if you are deep enough in the pipeline and you handle lods and shit, you will still need to straighten and to some degree puzzle by hand. Lots of the new features help in the process but the annoying work is still around, automeshes, autoUVs etc are not as optimized by a long mile yet. It might happen at one point and then it might make sense to update. But i haven't yet found anything in the newer max versions i really need for my work or which would make me incredibly faster. Not having a ton of old plugins and script might in fact make me slower.

So if you wanna be on the edge and not pay a shitton of money, get into blender. but also then, production reality might "slow" you down in direct comparison.

Thanks for the detailed explanation

I does use blender for modeling but was worrying about other stuff like UV, Retopo and texturing which I think is not that great and was thinking about using substance painter  but I think I would go for 3D Coat now (i heard that it could handle high poly pretty smoothly just like zbrush). Had you tried 3D coat before, it's pretty underrated in my opinion, I could only be able to find just handful of tutorials about this, I wonder why?