Substance Painter or Quixel Mixer? Marvelous Designer or Blender Cloth Add on?

Broadcast

Double trouble!
I've found summer sales for Marvelous Designer which is normally $500 for perpetual license. It is now ~$250 on steam sale for slightly less perpetual... perpetual license. In that you get to keep the software but you don't receive major updates. There is also a sale on Substance Painter and Designer. I've been out of the loop for a while on Mixer and Painter so I was wondering what exactly is the difference between Mixer and Painter? Am I justified in purchasing Painter even if I'm going to use Mixer? Also there are a lot of good looking cloth add ons for Blender? Does Marvelous Designer have some stregnths that justify the price tag if I'm using it for game development?

Thank you for your reply!

sprunghunt

Substance painter and designer are something you can use every day and on every project. I use them all the time and use them more than photoshop. 

Marvelous designer is a fairly specialised tool that would be useful if you plan on making lots of characters. 

Broadcast

thank you for the reply but I guess what I'm asking is how much overlap is there between the functionality of Substance Painter and Quixel Mixer? I know there is a lot of overlap between Substance Designer and Mixer but I'm not sure about Painter.  And I was also asking any Blender users whether they think the current available selection of cloth add ons in blender are in the same league as Marvelous Designer

oglu

Read here about Mixer.
https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2729517

Broadcast

Well thanks for the link I read through and it didnt answer my question. I'm not asking which software is good. I'm asking if I'm already using Quixel Mixer do I have much to gain in terms of features by also buying Substance Painter.  Like if someone asked me how much overlap there is between blender and Max I would have said about 97% as a ball park figure - not because its empirically correct but because it could give them the general impression of my personal experiences with them. So is there 10% overlap or 50% or 100% between Substance Painter and Quixel Mixer, do you think?

I usually work more than 12 hours a day and I have other matters I have to attend to which is why I can't just grab a smoothie and research all the Painter features for the next few days before the sale ends. Though I would love it if I could.  I'm actually at my place of work right now ;3

I mean I have done some research which was fruitless because most videos and forum posts I've found are too indirect and they cover the same information over the course of a hundred different videos by a hundred different people without answering this question.

Deforges

To answer your question, I'd say there is a large overlap between substance and mixer. As good as substance is, in my opinion, Mixer definitely isn't lacking and has the backing of Epic Games. They're both capable tools and tools are just a means to an end. Some of the best artists today still use XSI and can make things other artists with more "advanced" tools cannot.

Is the price tag a lot for you? Then don't get it. You're fine with mixer. If it isn't a big deal, then why not get it? It's a great and fun tool. But neither will make you a better artist. 

Broadcast

Thanks for the straightforward answer. I know the tools aren't everything. But not everybody can learn them all in order to discern which they prefer. We have to make a choice beforehand. A leap of faith. That's why I'm asking questions ahead of time. And $100 dollars for this, $100 dollars for that, $300 for the other thing. It'd be a shame if at the end of the day half the programs I invested money in all were all sharing the same features.

Like if I bought Marvelous Designer only to find out that a blender add on can do the exact same thing. I can't test them out before these sales end. I'm actually at work right now ;3

Alex_J

if you dont have attention to research yourself and you need to take a leap of faith, just go with industry standard software. you can't lose that way. pretty much no matter the situation I say just stick with industry standard. you dont want to waste time and effort learning something that isn't likely to be around in 5-10 years and has lots of weird idiosyncracies.

it's like choosing cookware. you got no stick teflon or whatever and it seems neat, but actually once you start using it you find a million fucking pesky issues. Just get cast iron. it will last the rest of your lifetime and it works in all scenarios. All the major softwares used by the big studios that have been around forever are the cast iron.

unless...if you are counting pennies go with whatever is free.

keep it simple.

and there is a lot more to software than what features it has. maybe on paper some plugin can do what marvelous designer can, but what you gain with industry standard is wealth of troubleshooting support, community, regular updates to fix problem issues, and ergonomics (more important than fancy features IMO).

Basically, if you using industry standard software and you have a problem, you can usually solve it yourself in a few hours max just via internet search, because lots of others using it and they already ran into same issue.That may not sound exciting like a new zbrush update but this is what daily work in 3d comes down to. You run into some problem, you have to troubleshoot to fix it. If troubleshooting becomes a huge task, it's all over.

Ergonomics - this means the software is mature and has been developed to accomodate people who use it all day everyday. It's really important - you dont want to fight with software for hours on end. you want work to be smooth and effortless.

Broadcast

Ah I see that's very insightful. I've been using blender since back in the days when the screen was split horizontally. I also used to use Hexagon 3d. So I have a little bit of troubleshooting experience.

Alex_J

i didnt mean to suggest you don't know this. i am making the case that because these are things i think are important, it's part of the reason i say just to stick with industry standard software in a lot of cases