Substance Painter vs Photoshop or even vs Corel Painter.
sublime tool
Every time I open Substance Painter it amazes me how monstrously inconvenient it is . It has gazillion of useless things and still lacks basic tools that makes an artist life simple and let you focus on art rather than technical stuff.
- Lack of record-able actions makes you do same routine again and again where in Photoshop it takes you one click to build all the necessary layer structure, layer comps for channel packing .
- lack of basic auto masking to instantly paint in cavities or bumps . Again no action or scripts to build necessary ,masking stack in one click . You have to set up anchors for each layer.
- Tweak tools are supper awkward same as in Designer vs simple click touch and drug Photoshop style.
- Brushes are super awkward , especially comparing to old good corel painter or rebelle where you almost feel the touch to surface.
- Material compositing is a pain in your a... No normal click and select turning into an utter puzzle when it comes to gazillion layers especially when you have to inspect other people files. I am able to work only with my own sbsars . Other people ones are always an undecipherable puzzle .
- Non destructiveness is pretty useless without vector splines you could edit ( neither in Photoshop or Painter although)
And nothing seems ever gonna change with all that . When Adobe bought Allegorithmic I hoped someone sane come and tell them what to do but nope , no hope.
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I never want to create textures in photoshop again. Its awful, and it gets worse with every new version.
SP has a different workflow, but far superior IMO. I've been doing 3D for 20 years - I remember what it was like before SP, and I wouldn't want to go back.
I don't mean Photoshop is better for the task . I hardly use it either but I do miss lots of convenient approaches from it. Had a silly hope Adobe would bring them to Substance.
1.Channel packing and exporting from Photoshop had been always same easy with scripting/actions . I used a script that pack layer comps into channels . Just one button hit in action panel.
2.Those generator based masks are static. Nothing like Zbrush or some corel painter brushes which could respond to pressure in how deep you can paint down to crevices or otherwise on corners . I broke my head trying to recreate such mask for SPainter :) Lack of it is what inputs into kind of "robotic" look of many Substance software created materials IMO.
3.I meant those finger pointing buttons in Photoshop curve , HSL tools which could allow you tweak anything on screen while sometimes not even care about masking . Affinity photo has them too. HLS in substance is a torture.
5.Not easier , yeah
I am just tired waiting when the soft I use would become truly convenient finally and not non stop struggle and fight .
I get it - I have my own issues with SP for sure, I've just long given up on the idea of a perfect tool.
Sometimes I think "convenient software is just an oxymoron. Not perfect, just more or less convenient like traditional artist tools.
It always amazes me how convenient simple things may be. Like good kolinsky brush, good easel , a maulstick and a properly made palette with right size and right hole for your thumb. Lots of just right solvents. Walnut oil with a tint of lavender or rose oil and a slowing agent. They may be expensive but they exists at least and it's a pleasure by itself to deal with them whatever art result you got. It took them centuries of evolution although.
Software used for gamedev is a not stop torture usually , an always a pain in your ass. Starting from Intuos driver and Windows file manager.
And while with traditional tools you know you can buy a better thing with money in software it's often opposite , an open source tool could be much more convenient. That is a huge riddle of universe :).
@gnoop
Ever done technical drawing with perspective lines, more rulers and squares than you can keep track of, and pencil smudges all over your hands? Those tools are simple and intuitive, used together in a system that is mind numbingly torturous. In Maya, I don't have to think about how to draw a sphere in 3 point perspective.
There are some crafts than begin artistic and evolve technically, like painting. Others begin technical and evolve artistically, like photography. 3D began as pure code drawing dots and lines on a screen, and now we have Substance Painter. Its an ongoing evolution, but I've been doing this long enough to see it moving in the right direction.
So the TLDR I guess is that its a matter of perspective 😁
Yeah, I had this subject "descriptive geometry and perspective" . Never thought it would be most precious knowledge of all that art education I wasted few years for. Hated it that time, now regret I haven't learned more.
I don't understand your first point. Substance painter automatically packs channels for you using the export settings?
sprunghunt . My point was that Photoshop actions could free you from lots of tedious routine , while in Substance Painter you have to do things again and again. End even when you try to make a sbsar that could be sort of replacement to a Photoshop action it doesn't work properly half the time because you always miss some condition and then waste days to debug it.
Channel packing in SP is not even that much convenient. I do same by just hitting F6 in Photoshop and it saves right packed channels with right set suffixes and prefixes in right output folder.
You could always learn to use the javascript or python scripting in substance painter. It's not a macro type setup though. It requires coding skills.
I don't have a lot of tedious routine in substance painter. I setup smart materials and smart masks for the look I want and I avoid painting anything at all. For many of my textures it can be as simple as opening an existing substance painter file, importing a new lowpoly, and then baking a new set of maps. The substance tools save me a lot of time.
I am accustomed to use Blender that way . Just drop a shader and bake. Not even a hi res model necessary. Its bevel node could do much easier to setup edge wear than gazillion sliders in Painter that never looking realistic anyway and depend on a curvature bake rather than actual geometry and a real scale .
Besides you can really see what happening there by looking at the node flow. I 've never understood why Algorithmic just didn't do same node based approach in Painter as it is in Designer. Or did a hybrid both layers and nodes. I usually couldn't recollect a thing in my own smart materials in Painter couple weeks after.
In Painter you have to maintain steady texel size , no stretches no scale variations since it's UV space based mostly . Otherwise is a pain usually . In Blender you can do textures to whatever efficient UV pack you want since the noises and edge wear is not texture space based mostly.
The reason why painter isn't node based is because they already have substance designer. Why make two node based products? Substance painter is designed for artists who find node based workflows difficult.
You don't have to use the UVs in painter - there's triplanar, spherical, warp, cylindrical, and planar texturing options.
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Yes, you don't but in my experience tri-planar and other projections add more blur to your textures usually and still quite inconvenient to control in Painter while I agree it's a workaround.
Painter is capable indeed. My main complain is excessive complexity where things could be simple like 2x2 . All those anchors and path through. Wish they would just copy Mari approach where you can use layers or nodes , whatever you prefer.
To drop and use packed channels texture in you have to go to Designer and do a special sbsar. If you miss or forgot some condition it doesn't work. You then waste hours to debug. And so on for every small thing. I am trying to do a sbsar that would do per pixel snapping/ accurate move/shift in Painter for a year already and still have no idea why it doesn't work.
I often do special brushes that scatter random details from a long list . It's damn puzzle every time . I instantly know i would waste half of a day and just give up, then go to a vector editor like Xara and do it there in 5 minutes with pixel grid snapping working perfectly.
If some day Corel corp wake up and realized that their Painter have depth /height channel support since ancient times that could be used much more efficient nowadays I would switch in a blink of an eye. They did have a version to paint on 3d objects once.