I have this question for a while. What would be better for me as a beginner in texturing:
Straight away pay for a subscription to Substance Painter / Designer / B2M,
or pay for something of the likes of Poliigon or Textures.com and learn texturing the hard way in Blender?
I hear a lot of good things about Substance, but could it harm me learning to shading and texturing? I've only done some basic texturing fundamentals until now.
Though I have never used Substance (I want to, though), I do not think that using it is cheating any more than using Houdini for physics simulations is cheating.
substance is great and aimed precisely to that end. Learning substance doesn't take away from learning texturing in blender, i'd say its quite opposite, substance will help you with blender texturing.
If I were you, I'd get an educational license for Painter (free) and get some free textures of textures.com. I think it's important to learn how Blender's node editor works, that's just one of the Blender fundamentals. Substance Painter works very differently and will be a fine addition to Blenders "material system".
Thanks for your replies. The educational license is a good one. Maybe I'll try that one. Is all the software included in the educational license, or just Painter?
baukepost Thanks Bauke. Certainly gonna have a look at it. Bedankt :)
Substance Painter is definitely my recommended texturing program. I love using it for texturing and while I'm not amazing at it yet, it's much easier to get results quickly with it. I would first start off by learning how to use it with basic textures. Textures.com will give you everything you need to get started. Once you feel like you've progressed enough I would invest in some high quality textures from paid sites like Poliigon, or one of my favorites, GameTextures.
I bought the entire substance package last year after ending my Masters Degree. It looked like an awesome program for texture design, and it did not disappoint. To the date it is THE BEST MONEY I have EVER spent. It have gotten me very far in understanding texture creation and realism within textures.
I would highly recommend it. I was just a novice
metallicm I bought the entire Substance Package myself when Substance Painter was still a beta program. Unfortunately I never really got into any of the other programs, as powerful as they are. Someday I'll jump back into them, Susbtance Designer is incredibly powerful as well.
Thanks for your informative reactions. I think I'm gonna do the monthly subscription to Substance some time later. I think when I'm done with the modeling workflow, unless I really need it sooner.
Can you use the educational version if your not in some kind of school? Then maybe I'm gonna use that for a while. I'm still learning after all :). I cant find information on that on their.
ccarrotnl I think you can download a trial version of the Allegorithmic Software, with all the features included, except it is watermarked. Of course I recommend trying before buying. It is very clear to me though that the reusability of textures created with designer and the time saved using painter, creates a much smoother and faster workflow.
I don't know which of the software fits your needs the most. For my part it was understanding texture creation, and how to create super realistic textures.
Here is one of my earliest (and ugliest) Substance Designer renders:
And here is a work in progress of one of my most recent creations:
In total I haven't spent much time on learning how to create more realistic textures. There is still a lot for me to learn, but SD makes it a breeze ;)
EDIT:
I can see there is a 30 days free trial. If you can find the time, look at some of the tutorials on youtube from allegorithmic. You are also more than welcome to ask me for help.