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3DC and Substance Painter, good companions


digman
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I just started testing out Substance painter and already see a healthy companion friendship between the two...  :friends:

 

This is not one is better than the other thread post... Just having SP for one day, I already see how they can work together very well. More tools / paint brushes, paint for us to get all messy with...

 

The amount of artistic software and faster computers we have today is what we dream of 10 years to 15 years ago...

Edited by digman
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I guess there is no way back when you started to paint once... "Unfortunately" The only argument for 3DC is: You have more possibilities overall. But it needs more development time to raise to the painting level of SP.

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They fixed it now at version 1.6

 

Before that it was impossible to paint with out a monster pc at 2k + .

 

Tested on Dual Xeon E5430 8 giga ram and Gtx 470

 

and 

 

Dual Xeon E5430 32 giga ram and Gtx 970 on same rig i tested a couple times with a gtx 980.

 

Second rig eats everything you give it , but the first one i had hard time with SP at 2k +.

 

 

Live paint not up scaling after painting.

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They fixed it now at version 1.6

 

Before that it was impossible to paint with out a monster pc at 2k + .

 

Tested on Dual Xeon E5430 8 giga ram and Gtx 470

 

and 

 

Dual Xeon E5430 32 giga ram and Gtx 970 on same rig i tested a couple times with a gtx 980.

 

Second rig eats everything you give it , but the first one i had hard time with SP at 2k +.

 

 

Live paint not up scaling after painting.

This is really interesting. So they seem to compense the problems with a "smart" marketing team like all others but pilgway... ;)

 

I love the paint speed in 3DC. I plan to show the great paint features in the future. Currently I have a professional project where I am painting on a 400.000 polys model with a single 8k texture without any bigger problems. The new PBR mats in 3DC are real timesavers here. The client pc I am working on is a i7 with 16 GB and a geforce 660. So, not a killer maschine actually.

 

3DC is currently one of the fastest 3D painters in the market. Even mari use a lot of tricks to be good in painting. But a lot of people don't realise it, because pilgway is not searching for the very best professionals who are already working with 3D Coat. pilgway should use their results for marketing purposes more like other companies do.

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Remember guys, this is not a comparison thread of the two pieces of software... We all know the strengths of 3DC, heck it is the most use piece of software on my computer. I see how the two can work together, thus as artists increasing our available tools, no different than having a greater selection of tools and brushes in tactile work...  :)

Edited by digman
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How about creating materials? In substance you would have to learn all the node thing, and then creating some substance is probably day of work, right? And in 3d coat you could just use photo as a base. In 15-30 minutes I could have made new material from scratch. And procedural substances tend to have the 'procedural look'. It is hard to beat the photo base - it is quicker and gives ofter better results. Or is there something I'm missing?

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@Jose

Your confusing Substance designer with Substance painter. Substance painter uses images or color and is not node based... It can use procedural generators, that were made in Substance Designer but you do not have to... It is a very much hands on manual approach, like 3DC in creating smart materials. I think that is one reason they created it, not everyone likes node based procedural work... 

 

Again this is not a one or the other but they can be good companions. Doing some things in 3DC and other things in SP..

We use Photoshop and 3DC... or Blender and 3DC etc.. etc...

 

I used Bitmap2material to create the images I used for the metal pbr I posted...

 

I Imported a photo of some metal for a base to start from, then created the albedo map, normal, roughness plus metallic maps. Plus created the seamless texture. I then used 3DC to create the metal pbr material from those materials. Now you can do more work on the metal using the PBR editor's layers system in 3DC...

Edited by digman
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I am slowly working on 3 pro pieces outside of work. 

 

Pure 3D Coat used only.

 

They have nothing to fear from TOP QUALITY work you can find on the net this period.

 

I will post them here to show my appreciation to the team and forum users and Andrew can use them on any adv material he likes. 

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digman - I understand the difference. But lets say you need brick material, with some dirt,  worn edges effect. In 3dc coat you can make smart material form texture, save it and use it from now on forward.

But how about substance painter? Can you make 'smart material' in SP? Or you have to go through SD nodes to make substance, and then import into SP? 

Bitmap2Material seems like nice tool, but, If I understand correctly, it creates just one layer material - no effects like cavity masking, ao masking etc. So it seems workflow in substance suite would be:

- bitmat2mat - create base material - single layer  -from texture

- go to to SD, to add effects like dirt, edge wear -> create substance

- import substance to SP and use it from now on. 

Or maybe there is ability, in  SP, to create presets of material, like 3dc SmartMaterial?  

Anyway substance way seems more complicated, possibly more flexible, but not that much of a visual difference compared to 3dc SmartMaterials IMO. And your metal test is nice example of that. No need to go into SD nodes then.

Btw. Maybe you heard about Awesome Bump - nice free alternative to B2M.

Edited by JoseConseco
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Or maybe there is ability, in  SP, to create presets of material, like 3dc SmartMaterial?  

 

Any group of layers could be converted to smart material, and to be easily used on another model.

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Yes you can create materials , and smart materials that are saved and can be re applied to other materials as well.

 

Software is fully non destructible.  

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Substance Painter, Creates reusable smart materials with dirt, grunge, worn edges etc all in inside of SP... like I said before and Michael too now.

 

Bitmap2material use to create your basic maps as mention before and then use the layer system in 3DC or SP to create all the other stuff...

 

I got the indie version for 20 bucks a month till is it paid for, then it is mine... no year after year subscription.

Indie version gives you all three, for me the SD will be less used. It is great for game development as you can export the substance material straight into the game through a plugin plus once in the game you have lots of different tools to adjust the material right inside the game engine...

 

watch this video... to understand major parts of the nuts and bots of SP

 

P.S. I am not trying to draw users away from 3DC, as artist we use many tools to help get our artwork done for business or hobby... 3DC and SP make good friends, one for the left hand the other for the right hand...

Edited by digman
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Well said well done.

 

You grasp new software very easily e (e = Greek word for ha / hey ) David!!!

Edited by Michaelgdrs
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Sorry. I did not wanted to compare 3DC with SP.

 

I think principally two software packages can only work together as long as there are tools, that can only be found in one of them. So as long as you have great timesavers or quality vendors in form of special tools in a software, then you will use them.

 

I am using a lot of different software too. Mostly to save time or get better quality. But as soon as I get a way to solve something in one tool, then I will do it there.

 

I love to work with nodes for example. They are a great easy and more understandable way to open the door to complex materials and workflows to artists then shader coding. So I hope it will find its way sometime to 3DC too.

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I agree with Taros.

 

For nodes , i used to hate them , but for the last 1 and a half years with my intense Houdini workflow i loved them .

 

In SD they work really really nice and its a lot easier indeed to work with them.

 

Best combination and talking from a 15 + years of experience in the pro field is nodes + sliders , there is nothing that can beat this combo.

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watch this video... to understand major parts of the nuts and bots of SP

 

After watching  this video I know again why I not use  SP  :D
I have it,  but  for me it is no fun to use. Also I see not for what I should it use  with 3D coat  :unknw:
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3D Coat is a lot easier to use and straight forward in everything i don't see someone argue on this.

 

 

Using it with other software just makes it better.

 

 

For example , 3D Coat has not real smart materials (compinations) that can be re used (make them one time again i say combined materials) and then import another 3d model and just apply them on it.

 

SP does that with a single click. 

 

So a workflow is , create the smart materials on SP , apply to several models , then import on 3dc and hand paint details etc.

 

 

Also it works great with the pbr workflow as well , some problems with normals etc.

 

In general 3dc needs some good attention to details , automation for working with other softwares , export presets for textures , one for each known pro software , sculpt layers , faster sculpting brushes , details that will bring it to the top very easily.

 

Once those are done then THERE IS NO COMPETITION AT ALL , nothing 0.

 

 

All you need after that  is a good animation software for rigging , skinning animating and rendering  , VFX if you work at VFX as well.

 

So 2 software's that rules them all 3D COAT and the animation package of your choice.

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My thoughts as well, bring models after you run them through SP then finish up hand painting in 3DC. I will test the other way around too...

The layer stacks in SP can be confusing at first but really in a lot of ways no different than 3DC's use of conditional mask and layer stacking. You just have more indepth layer stacking with adjustments like effects etc etc plus folders in SP. A longer chain so to speak, meaning a longer learning curve which I am very much in the process of learning. To say I know the software after driving it for two days would be silly but nothing wrong with the car just the driver...

Sculpt layers in 3DC... Yeah baby!

Edited by digman
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