Which 3D Texture Program Is Best?

Affordable GPU Rendering: render.gradedblue.com
Are you tired of doing your texture painting and materials in Blender? In this video I cover all of the best options for texturing painting including 3DCoat, Mari, Armour Paint, Substance Painter, Quixel Mixer, Marmoset Toolbag 4 and Mudbox.
Most of the options in this video have monthly subscriptions but if you're against the rise of subscriptions a few of these options are available with one off purchases.
By the end of this video you will know if you need a free program, an industry standard program or if you should just stick with using blender for you texturing and materials.
I have used blender for texturing for the first few years I was learning and then I started using Substance Painter back when it was still owned by Algorithmic. I then left the subscription expire when Adobe purchased the Substance line of programs. I have been looking at reacting my subscription or using Marmoset Toolbag.
3DCoat looks like it could make my life easier however it would take much more work to integrate it into my workflow as it has a lot of other sculpting detail and retopoligy tools that look very interesting in addition to the texturing facilities.
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[@1InVader1]

Texture PAINTING is absolutely horrible in Blender. Procedural textures using the node system in Blender are cool and you can do everything in it that you can in Substance Painter, but as soon as you need to hand-paint anything it's a nightmare. Like you don't even get layering support in Blender (unless you set it up yourself, or you use an addon, but both are hacky ways of doing it). That's where 3D Coat wins.

[@NickEnchev]

What do you mean you shouldn't be be looking at 3D Coat as a Blender user. The sculpting in 3D Coat is far better than Blender, the UV mapping is better, the texturing is WAAAY better, the retopo tools are better. The boolean workflow is super cool and can yield some really cool things you can't easily do in Blender. I'll still use Blender for a lot of things personally, but 3D Coat is becoming a super important tool for me now, especially in character sculpting/retopo/painting.

[@dougwarner59]

Yeah, I am doing the trial version of 3D Coat right now; I am only focusing on the sculpting and it blows Blender away! The only thing I like about Blender(as far as sculpting goes) is that I can select different viewports on the fly (front, left, top..etc.)

[@marsmotion]

It's coat for the win. Then mixer , then inside blender fluent materializer, honestly I'm an envy artist and do another of different tasks and for me node's such, take too long to learn and you forget how to use them. Nodes are great if you do the nodes all the time.

[@devilichus]

I am a Concept designer and slowly entering the world of 3D to speed up my workflow. I want to work with high poly presentational 3d pieces which I just want to use for showcasing my artistic full capacity as a high poly sculptor character concept artist. So looks like free version of Mari suits me well. Since I want to show off to the potential studios to hire me with some acknowledged and accepted software without breaking the bank. And since I never work over complex just straight up sculpt and paint methodology. Why not blender, because I am just using it to create environmental renders for now, which I find blender so powerful in that topic combined with the tutorials here and there and creating cinematic things with it just a breeze. But when it comes to my characters I want a dedicated program because of dedicated interface and ease of use and ability to focus that way. For instance Zbrush is cooler in sculpting than blender but for hard surface precision, blender seems more on point and direct. I don't know if hard surface modeling is an easy task with Zbrush either though since I just started to use it. I love how large of a 3D workflow can be and how small it can get either. One modeler works with just blender and calls it a day, and the other combines whole set of 10 programs mixing their dedicated powerful topics. Amazing world of 3D... If Mari still is not compatible with the m1 I might go for Quixel too I will chase jobs for the game industry already...

[@MrHadane]

Wdym you can't get substance painter as a standalone program anymore? It's sold separately on Steam.

[@da_drood-digitalart]

Exactly, and it's a perpetual license (as long as you're not bothered about not getting any more updates after 1 year)

[@Patxi__]

I bought 3D coat some months ago after the trial version and I love it so much. Is an awesome piece of software and you can make almost everything with it. I bought it for sculpting and it is very good for that. Also is great for texturing, is easy to use and very complete and precise, I don't know much about texturing but I don't miss anything when I use it for that, I don't think other software can be much better that this to be honest. It have a very fast and good auto decimation function wich is great if you don't need a good topology wich is my case. But you can make proper retopology also, I've seen many people uses 3Dcoat for this, it have pretty good tools for retopo. The texture baking works fine BUT the only thing is that is pretty slow somethimes, specially the cavity/curvature, but I don't know how much time it takes in other softwares. And is a software with a growing comunity, nowadays there are many good tutorials for learning the software on youtube, arrtstation and gumroad, and of course in their oficial channel on youtube. I think in terms of pricing and quality is perfect and the people who want it for texturing, there is 3D coat texture, wich is the same but without the other functions, like sculpt etc, only the texture part of the software, and is way cheaper.

[@antoniomarchante457]

I have the free version installed and play with the program from time to time, is in my list of programs I would like to learn but there is so much to learn in the 3d world that I have no time. The manual and auto retopo tools are very good, it has a lot of very good uv features as well a great program that deserves more attention for sure, I hope soon or later I find time and willpower to learn it

[@TimV777]

How many polys can it support per subtools? 🤔 Zbrush can get to 60-70 mil on my mid level pc n still works smooth

[@Patxi__]

@@TimV777 I don't know but zbrush can handle much more milions of polygons and do it easy on the same pc in my experience.

[@fkdump]

3d coat is great, it has much better sculpting, retopo, texture painting than blender, there is an add on for sending 3d coat textured model to blender with all material nodes set up. I am very interested in armor paint too.

[@EricBarthDev]

the guy in this video is beyond uninformed

[@kidgoldenarm]

Left out Armor Paint's biggest PLUS for Blender users: DIRECTLY IMPORT BLENDER FILES

[@AlwaysCinematic]

Ah wow, that’s very impressive!

[@beanbeater]

you can do that in 3d coat as well

[@rajendrameena150]

Armor paint also import blend file directly...

[@astronomicaltalk5708]

Graded Blue render farm sounds very cheap but how fast and reliable is it?

[@AlwaysCinematic]

As we use GPUs to render it is very fast and we’ve done thorough testing to ensure maximum reliability! Should you have any problems you can get in touch via the website dashboard!

[@mr_don_key]

@@AlwaysCinematic which means you where/are sponsored by them.

[@AlwaysCinematic]

@@mr_don_key I own the company

[@mr_don_key]

@@AlwaysCinematic ooh my bad.. still it's an advert underneath. gradedblue != always cinematic

[@gregorydixon2810]

Its funny from your video i gathered marmoset toolbag 4 being the better program

[@mr_don_key]

toolbag is indeed getting quite good for texturing.. but it's not there yet, compared to the more experienced players. (mari, substance painters/designer, 3d coat e.g.) toolbag is fantastic for rendering though.

[@retainingwall]

There is also a free one called "Agama Materials", I have not used it, just want to provide an example here Very useful video, thank you very much :⁠-⁠)

[@AlwaysCinematic]

Glad you found it useful! Haven’t heard of that program, I’ll have a look!

[@Tsunami3k]

A good summary of the major players save the inexplicable and frustrating dismissal of 3DCoat's texturing features because it's modeling functionality overlaps with Blender. A missed opportunity to share some very relevant insights on its compelling texturing features.

[@theshadow6273]

I agree 3d coat is amazing for the auto retopo tools alone. Sucks how this guy basically dismisses it as just another 3d program.

[@theshadow6273]

I really think you shouldn't have glossed over 3DCoat so quickly it felt like you kind of "painted ;)" the wrong impression of it. I've found texture painting in blender to be completely unintuitive. 3DCoat on the other hand uses a layer system similar to most texture paint software but where it differs from say substance painter is the fact that you pretty much only have 1 layer type; you then have a tool bar where you can fill the entire layer or simply paint and then adjust various channels. Personally I've found it much more intuitive. 3dcoat has extremely competent auto/manual retopo which is extremely useful for both organic and hard suface topology. The closest thing in blender to auto retopo is quad remesher which is a paid addon and honestly pales in comparison. Blender versions ship with a built-in addon that allows you to exchange object and texture changes between 3DC and blender with a couple button clicks making the integration between the two programs pretty apparent and also adding to the ease of use. The big difference that separates 3DCoat from other sculpting programs is that instead of using only polygonal meshes, it can also use voxels.Which allows sculpting to operate over volume and allows you to sculpt without any topological constraints and make complex details from nothing instead of just piling on more geometry.

[@Jaboli86]

I mean, looking from any perspective you choose, try to be fair at least ;) Blender can do lot of the things ZBrush can, and it can do lot of the things Maya can, and it can do some stuff Nuke can... Does the fact, that Blender does some of that stuff worse, matter? You said nothing really about 3DCoat's features, what it can do when it comes to texturing, and so on. I literally learned nothing, about the first soft, mostly nothing about the second one... And then bam. Advertising your own render farm. Stopped watching then. How can you title your video like that, when saying nothing significant about soft your video should be about? And, I'm not really 3DC or Armor Paint user, used them once each ;)

[@beanbeater]

really bad representation of 3d coat

[@Tinyflower1]

what do you expect, he also claims substance painter can't be bought individually anymore and is subscription only but a quick look online showed that you can actually buy it individually and without subscription via steam

[@nubnubbud]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/mXqTpqGhbK6ljKM tell that to a group of people who didn't get a feature to add colored borders to keyframes with an update that broke h264 import and tanked UI to 1FPS when moving keyframes or clips. Adobe uses gimmicks to impress shareholders and hide their lack of development while banking off someone else's work by making it a subscription, and riding that revenue into the ground with no investment in updating it on their part. There's a reason AE has nearly 500 mandatory built in addons, but is now 25% slower rendering and 50% slower playback than in 2012.