2D and 3D Materials Confusion.

noekk

Hey guys,

I'm having a hard time differentiating between 2d and 3d textures/materials/substances/shaders. It all seems so complicated.

My goal is to render semi-complex scenes with walls made of individual stone blocks, rock piles, carved columns and other carved objects, maybe like a high-poly Dark Souls. I am *not* rendering in real-time so all the game-centered stuff is not applicable.

I'd really like to model my stuff in 3dx max, which I'm doing now, and (probably) bring it into another program to apply 3d textures/materials/whatever that do *not* require uv maps, and then do the render using the same software.

I'd also like to be able to buy pre-made materials if I can. I see Substance has a huge assortment but I can't tell if they all need uv maps and I'm not sure how difficult they are to implement.

Are 3d materials (that don't require uv maps) still something out of reach? Is what I want to do so specialized that it's not really doable?

Thanks a lot.

PS - I can get the latest version of Max (mine is 2015) or Maya or anything else so long as there is a subscription and I don't have to buy it outright.

poopipe

Using standard shaders you can't do  anything in substance without uvs. Despite appearances all the apps rely on 2d texture coordinates. 

If you want to work fully without UVs you need to work in an offline renderer or start writing shaders for a real-time one.