Toolbag 4 painting - high end only?

PolyHertz

So I saw a few months ago that Toolbag 4 got its own painting feature to compete with Substance Painter. I haven't tried it yet but wanted to ask how flexible it was? Like is it only designed for high end texturing (procedural auto-mask materials and such), or does it also support basic features for hand painted textures like blend and smudge tools? Can you project paint from Photoshop, or switch brush direction between normals and screen space projection for strokes? What about retro themed 3D texturing (pixel painting, pixel grid, dither blending tools, etc.)? If none of this is in there, are there any plans for said features to be added in the future?

Anyhow, that's all I had to say. Good luck on the project, and have a great weekend.

EarthQuake

We've tried to design the texturing tools to be flexible and not limit you to a specific style or workflow. There's a free 30-day trial so by all means, give it a go and see how well it works for your needs.

To answer some of your more specific questions:

"is it only designed for high end texturing (procedural auto-mask materials and such)"

Toolbag has a comprehensive layering and masking system, as well as smart materials & smart masks, but I wouldn't say these features limit its use. You could certainly use these features to build content meant for stylized, hand-painted, or low resolution/low poly art styles. 

does it also support basic features for hand painted textures like blend and smudge tools?

There are no tools for smudging or blending colors at the moment, but we plan to add new tools in the future for sure. Our brush system supports most of the common attributes you would generally expect to find, including pressure and tilt support for most of the settings.

There are also a few different texture projection modes for the brush's material properties, for instance you can load a material reference or texture set and have it fit to the brush's shapes (ie: for nuts and bolts), or you can have the material project in UV or tri-plannar space to more generally throw texture detail on a mesh.

Can you project paint from Photoshop

I'm not sure if I fully understand this question, but we do not have direct integration to create brush strokes with Photoshop or other art apps.

or switch between normals and screen projection of strokes?

Yes, there are advanced projection settings including a screen space mode and various modes that align to the mesh normals and wrap around the mesh. The sticker projection mode is particularly neat; it will attempt to conform around the surface of the mesh, much like applying a sticker to a three-dimensional object.

We've got some interesting features for culling as well, including the ability to take the normal map into account for culling purposes, which you can set up to get a drawing-within-the-lines sort of behavior.

What about retro themed 3D texturing (pixel painting, pixel grid, dither blending tools, etc.)?

There are no pixel grids or guides, or dithering features available at the moment, but you can set up a project to create pixel-art-style content fairly easily. For instance, by turning off texture filtering and setting up an unlit material.

PolyHertz

Thanks EQ for such a detailed response! Clears up a lot of the questions I had about TB4. Being able to change the brush projection angle is great news, and is definitely something I'll be checking out once I get around to messing with the trial version.

Going back to 'project paint from Photoshop', what I meant by that was something like 3D-Coats "Edit Projections in Ext. Editor". Basically it takes a screenshot of the viewport and lets you paint over it on a separate layer in a 2D painting app, then once you save the file the 3D painting app reads the file and projects the paint onto the model.