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Carrara Pro is still on sale for $65.
http://www.daz3d.com/carrara-8-5-pro
and don't forget Project Dog waffle for $50
http://www.daz3d.com/pd-howler-9-5-purely-ballistic-powered-by-project-dogwaffle
You can go to youtube and find a bit more info on how well each of these are in respect to the subject.
I'm a total idiot when it comes to 3D paint interfaces, but I love Mudbox. As noted, it's VERY intuitive. Also, for those who qualify, Autodesk offers free software for students and educators. I learned how to use Inventor, 3DS Max and Mudbox for free. :)
SUBSTANCE PAINTER
For creating textures for IRAY
The more recent versions of Photoshop CC have improved the 3D painting options, and I'm finding it a lot easier to work with layers there than with Substance Painter or my Zbrush trial. It doesn't appear to have the ability to paint with advanced materials that apply bump, glossiness, and reflectivity all at the same time like those others, but the familiarity of the program does makes things easier.
Yes - Photoshop is a must.... Mudbox has 3d painitng layers very similar to Photoshop (as many as you want for every channel and maps and you can merge and blend them ... with a click it saves a psd file (layers)... and changes done in photoshop can be loaded back...
...let's say skin pores as example - are done faster in Photoshop - while wrinkels are way more easy in Mudbox.
You can have many mesh parts. You can just apply one material ID to all these parts and Substance Painter will see this as one mesh object for you to paint.
The video explains everything clearly.
One very important thing people are overlooking is that Painter uses the Metalness/Roughness workflow when painting the texture maps.
So its ideal for Daz Studio IRAY as this also uses Metalness/Roughness workflow.
Photoshop doesn't have this.
True, but not everyone wants to paint for PBR using Metallic/Roughness. I still don't know how to get Substance Painter to work with specular and bumps properly (when I add those channels, they don't respond as expected), so it's not very useful for those of us who prefer 3Delight.
I may look into Mudbox a little bit more if it's as good as you guys say. :)
I'll chime in. Substance Painter, or go LIVE and get Bitmap2Material and Substance Designer also. All three packages under $300 or get a monthly subscription.
I also use Corel PhotoPaint to clean up or just paint textures from scratch.
Thanks for the recomendation. Substance Painter looks great.
With any of the 3D painting software programs - after you've created your texture, how do you prepare it for the different render programs? I guess the most common ones would be the Poser Firefly, DAZ Studio 3Dlight, Iray, Reality, Carrera and Vue. Do you have to create an entirely new version of each texture for each one of the render engines? Or can you just do something to adapt them? If so, what?
Thanks!
You should end up with a set of image files...a diffuse color image and whatever others you saved out. They get plugged in to the surface slots, like any other tesxture files.
So you would need to manually plug in the various files from the 3D paint program and tweak the settings for each renderer.
I would add Octane to that list too; it's pretty heavily used. Each of those render engines reads textures and settings differently than the others. The same texture maps can be used with any of them, so that part doesn't change, it's a matter of plugging the texture maps into the shader of the particular render engine and the adjusting the other parts of the shader (hilights, shininess, roughness, glossiness, reflection, etc etc) so that the shader is tuned correctly to provide the best result for that particular render engine. Typically though merchants will sell their products specifically for use in either Studio or Poser or both; those of us who use the other renderers are mostly accustomed to taking the existing poser or Studio shader that loads up and then making the changes manually to make the shader look correct in our render engine of choice. It would be nice though if merchants had shader files ready to go for Carrara, Vue, Lux, Octane, etc, but I've never seen a texture set yet that was prepared so comprehensively for all the render engines mainly used.
When you say "plugging them into the shader of the particular render engine and then adjusting the other parts of the shader.......so that shader is tuned correctly.......for that particular render engine." - do you mean plugging the texture into the shader of the 3D program (like Poser or DAZ Studio), or pluggin the texture into the actual render engine, and adjusting it there?
put the texture into the correct channel in your shader options. Diffuse, Bump, Normal, whatever.
Let me see if I have this correct - if I have a scene with 5 people with different skins, clothes, hair - in a room with furniture and houseplants - I have to change the settings for all the different characteristics of every material in every material zone of every item in the scene? For each different render engine?
Well, normally, you would only be using one render engine. Some products have Iray materials set up, there are even some for Octane. If not, yes, you'll be plugging them in and setting things up. One of the nice things in DAZ Studio is adding the Iray Uber actually works pretty well for many things. We're rather spoiled with programs such as DAZ Studio where DAZ and the PAs set up your shaders for you with presets, but most other programs, you often do all the work unless there are presets to choose from (tweaking can still be required for better results in any of these things). However, we're digressing from recommending 3d paint software.
For the ones you have painted yes. It's going to be a lot quicker than the initial painting.
For me high resultion sculpting AND texture painting go hand in hand!
Discplacment maps, Bump.... undercuts, overhangs .... microdetails -> this is a process while painting textures on a mesh... i cant imgagine to leave a 3d painting solution for every change in the topology and reimport... that ends in mess usally :-)
I've never done 3D painting before, but tried it out in Photoshop CC today and wasn't really happy with the results. As a tool for figuring out where the UV maps went or editing in normal 2D it's fine, but I didn't feel like I'd be able to really make much comfortably.
I looked through all the programs mentioned in this thread and Blacksmith and Mudbox stood out to me the most, though from the looks of things it seems like Blacksmith is the one most designed to deal with working with Genesis etc figures, which is the main point for me. Unfortunately I currently have no money to actually get any of them (thanks, Daz sales >.>)
I should mention I looked at Carrara too, and it's on sale (but might not be by the time I get paid) but Daz's seeming lack of interest in the program concerns me, and while it appears to do painting and even proper hair, the idea that they don't seem to care much about it any more makes me think to pass on it.
Substance Painter looks very interesting...BUT..
How do i paint realistic on a low poly mesh (which has usally details and microdetails mapped out from a high res mesh)....
how do i work on a low poly G2 model.. and add all the details... which i normaly have to sculpt first ?
Can Substance Painter now handle real displacment maps ?
How good are the exctracted maps if they dont have the low poly mesh as difference?
Substance doesn't do displacement. Because Games don't use displacement. Substance can be used for non-realtime targets, but it's strength and primary purpose is for games.
Yes, substance can save out height maps, but you won't see displacement in the editor.(that is probably why they purposely don't call them displacement maps)
I use substance sometimes, mostly for non-realtime application.
Though I have not tried myself I did see Substance does have some tools to apply existing painting to updated topology. Saw it in a video somewhere...
@larsmidnatt... thx... that was my toughts too - i think substance is great as a full package for native supported engines/render suits... but just as a texture painter overkill, while missing some features...
So migth i ask you (or anybody else) : What is your workflow on Daz characters to end with perfect textures AND more or less clean and acurate displacment/bump maps.... ?
EDIT: because some 3d starters reading here, a full material (skin) is not just the painted image / diffuse texture) you will need also specular, glossy, bump, maps.. some of the listed solutions in this thread can NOT do this standalone.
I use substance for bumps, normals, diffuse and sometimes specularity and opacity maps. But I treat them as raw textures and don't worry about the results I see in substance too much.
I paint in substance, knowing what I see in viewport is just approximation. Go into daz/octane render and plug in all the textures(or unity or unreal). I make my real material at that point using the substance created textures as a base.
I am interested in Mudbox, but have little time at the moment...
I am also interested in Mudbox, but would like to know first,
how it compare to 3D Coat. Any users of both programs here?
@larsmidnatt i am interrested to see and hear more about substance designer - we can continue this disccusion another time ... i know mudbox and i am biased... but looking in PBR material software sooner or later
.
@ Artini... i test 3d coat trial right now - compearing to mudbox/zbrush (detail, microsurface sculpting and texture map painting/baking)....
What i known so far... 3d coat is a great allround solution - but i did not try a whole gen2 workflow circle yet - loading a gen2 mesh, with pre grouped UV's did work smooth.
I use the Height maps as displcement maps. They are pretty much the same.
You can avoid the fixing if you check "Collapse UV Tiles" when exporting the object from Daz.
Personally, I use Blender and/or Blacksmith for 3D painting. They're cheap and do the job. Blender has some weird quirks and a stiff learning curve, so Blacksmith is my favorite, but Blender is certainly growing on me.
i did some reading and the recommended workflow with substance painter is to bake the displacment map in the modeller/sculpting software... then import the high res mesh and paint on it.... bump and texture from substance, displacment and low res mesh from the modeller.... a displacment map is used to show bigger details in high resolution (real geometry, leveling up from the base mesh) and can't be done in substance..
substance's height map can only include painted distance informations which are allready in high resolution (the resolution of the mesh used for painting)....
This workflow - specially for artists which develop the texture while modelling (adding texture layers to sub div meshes and blend - another topic) is - a mess :-)..... but i can see susbtance painter as the last tool for giving a close to ready textured model the final PBR finish.
Andy, when you have a moment, could you help me with a Mudbox issue in this thread?
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/61206/genesis-2-to-mudbox-uvs
I don't want to hijack this one, but it is 3D painting-related. :) Thanks in advance.
I have moved over to 3D Coat after learning Substance Painter for a few weeks.
3D Coat is great for modeling and PBR painting.
I use Blender + mcjTeleblender Daz Plugin for cross seam painting. It is good from my needs since blender is free and has clone stamp.