Free Substance Painter Alternatives - Armor Paint vs Quixel Mixer

if there's one thing we had cg boost like it's definitely blender of course but also free preferably open source tools which is of course not the case of substance painter a 3d texturing software that i made a course for at cg boost some time ago and i gradually noticed that in the comments a lot of you were asking the very same question is there an alternative maybe a free software with the same capabilities as substance painter well that's what i decided to find out i went in and tried to texture the same asset this awesome backpack i got from blendswap use various material editing and masking techniques add decals and generally try to achieve the same results using three different software packages substance painter quixle mixer and armor paint based on what i've learned through the process i hadn't gathered the pros and cons of all these and tried to resolve the question is one of these two tools actually as good or even better than painter one thing i will clarify right of the bat i did not include mari or 3d code and other paid solutions since these are well paid it's not that they are not worth the money both are amazing pieces of software alas expensive which would kinda ruin the original idea of this video many of you may even ask why have i not included blender into the mix is blender capable of doing the same things substance painter does well to that i can only tell you a definite maybe not really it's safe to say though you can expect a lot of info coming in the near future at cgboost concerning cg texturing because there is a huge texturing update coming to blender launchpad course by zac [Music] first off let's have a look at substance painter this tool has of course become an industry standard quite some time ago and if you've tried my substance painter launchpad course you probably know how very versatile it is what i love about it is how many different parts of the workflow you can do without ever leaving it so here you can see me painting some normal and height map details this is a process i constantly keep using and it often even replaces the need to sculpt anything i even made a free lesson about this so you can definitely check it out link is of course in the description of this video after the bake process which of course happens in painter as well you can apply a large library of materials you can then use awesome smart masks which save a lot of time and make use of some good working particle brushes and then pack everything into reusable smart materials also everything is procedurally generated so you can upscale or downscale your textures at any time in other words you can do pretty much anything in painter these days and i've come to rely on it extensively in my workflow which i guess is clear since i've made a course for it but i know that the reason you decided to watch the video was not to learn about how great painter is to list a few negatives i have to say that after trying out some other texturing solutions painter may not be the most easy to use it's not that it is user unfriendly it's more like it has become a bit difficult with all the features it now provides and so it may not be as intuitive at first also one very problematic aspect is of course that now it is owned by adobe i will not go into the controversy of it all and how hurt all the fans of the original developer algorithmic feel about the move to sell the company me included still we all know how adobe treats its software and how very much they like the money they earn so let's hope substance can become the bright exception here with the model done and textured i exported the textures to blender and rendered the model there and i got this result and set out to achieve something similar with a different software but this time for free first of those two there was armor paint and i chose it specifically because it is so darn close to blender it actually comes out of the blender software code and integrates many features you may already know from there mainly the shader nodes beside other nice things about this tool it is also free you can get it from github or you can of course decide to pay for it a small price at gumroad which is what i've done because i think it's more than fair if you want to support the development immediately one of the great things you will find out is that armor paint actually imports blend files among others and it is as easy as dragging your file into the viewport bang here you go as opposed to substance you don't really have to deal with too many things before you export you just sort out your meshes name them and do the uvs in blender and then throw the model into armor paint i also very much like the idea of the layer system unlike in painter where all depends on what materials you export from lender here we can just directly assign various textures to various meshes other than that it all functions like you are used to from any other layer-based software even with different blending modes quite rudimentary but still useful baking option also exists here in armor paint and though the result can't really compare to substance it can definitely find its uses you can bake ambient occlusion curvature normal maps and others very quickly and then of course use them as masks so smart masking based on these geometry information is available here though i must admit in the end i used some of the maps i baked in blender and painter in the texturing process instead of the ones from armor paint unfortunately painting your own normals and height details is not really that possible here at least not in a fast and reliable way so that's one thing i was missing and had to resort to sculpting in blender on the other hand masking is as easy as dragging your masked image onto the mesh with a layer selected so if you have a curvature or ambient occlusion mask ready you can simply use the baked image to mask out your result or you can always resort to painting masks by hand of course when it comes to materials your options are either to paint your own with a variety of classic painting tools like brush blur eraser clone and even some particle brushes based on blender particles or you can add texture materials by just downloading some pbr texture i for example use this great site cc0 textures and was able to achieve fine results what i experienced though was a lot of slowing down when i started layering too many 4k textures which is of course quite normal and occurs in substance in a limited amount as well but not this much an armor paint actually started crashing on me in the later stages quite regularly so in the end i went in and had to flatten all the textures which kind of ruined the layer approach for me oh and due to its image texture based nature you can't really upscale your results the way you can in painter where it is all procedural of course as mentioned when setting up materials you will be right at home if you know blender system in this area it has many very similar nodes like you know from shader editor one thing i missed though was some sort of right mouse button pop-up menu and the ability to automatically connect new notes like in blender but it's a minor detail really one thing i would like to emphasize are decals which are very easy to use definitely more intuitive although admittedly less advanced than in painter or mixer just set a material for them and left mouse button click and paint them in the same way function the text capabilities and you can even change the text anytime finally i would like to mention that the ui is very clear and good looking so i felt very comfortable working in armor paint on smaller tests it was easy to get into there is also quite a bit of free tutorials at youtube plus a good enough manual you can follow on the home page unfortunately i was missing some better normal painting capabilities advanced masking functions and the further i went and the more textures i added the more painful to work and the more unexpected the behavior of the software got the result i was able to achieve something very similar like i did in substance painter but it definitely took me more time i had to use other software to prepare necessary maps and it did cost me a few grey hair in the process especially in their later stages armor paint is a bit rough around the edges and it sometimes does not execute operations as you would expect it to including the undo option and moving layers up and down the layer stack still what it offers for free is great and there is also one thing i haven't mentioned yet it was just recently funded by epic games so i do really hope that the enthusiastic author luber schlenko will be able to improve this promising piece of software the second alternative is another super promising tool which coincidentally was actually funded by epic games as well way to go epic maybe i will install your game store after all mixer is of course part of the qixel family originally a clunky add-on for photoshop nowadays known mostly for its amazing mega scans library and yes more and more even for mixer i actually really love what the developers are doing with the tool what started out as just a way to mix various mega scans textures gradually got functionality to add displacement intelligent masking and finally ability to add your own models with each new update it is growing rapidly and i would not be surprised at all that if you will watch this video sometime in the future many of the issues i will list here will have disappeared also it might be clear but let me mention it again it is free there is a little catch though mixer is actually very closely connected to megascan's libraries similarly to painter which has its own substance source collection from mega scans libraries you can draw a lot of materials decals imperfections etc and you have to pay for those so in the end you will do best to pay subscription to megascan's assets which i would recommend anyway because they are awesome but it of course removes the free label from it fortunately if you download quicksort bridge you will be able to import your own textures and assets and then use them in mixer as well so that mostly eliminates this issue but what about the actual process well immediately at the start you will meet limitations first off you cannot use multiple uvs or udims instead mixer supports only one uv map for the whole model you will import so that's not that great but if you get over this fact prepare your uvs and export your model in a format like obj or fpx you will be able to simply load it in and very quickly start working another drawback you will find is that there is not an option to bake your mesh maps not to mention paint normals so we will still need to use other tools for that in my case it was kinda ironically substance painter i must say i enjoyed the texturing process very much in mixer at times it even felt more quick and fluid than its substance the ui is slick and easy to orient yourself in and if you have mega scans using materials is as easy as searching for them and then dropping them in onto layers the best way to mask out and assign your materials to different parts of the model proved to be the id method assigning different vertex paint colors to your model in blender and then just very quickly choosing between them in pixel that was working as great as i know it from painter there is also quite a lot of options for more advanced masking like direct possibility to use generated cavity and ambient occlusion masks and much more it is still not as far as painter in this aspect but i fully expect this will be one of the areas where mixer will improve a lot very soon you can easily work with your layers blend them together and actually even group your materials and mask layers and create smart materials from them that function the same way as they do in painter and even here it works as an amazing time saver mixer does not really offer too many advanced brushes but you can definitely make your own and also it does not provide particle brushes unlike painter and armor paint furthermore i did not really like the way it handles painting decals it is definitely less intuitive than in case of the previous two tools curiously it does not even have a mirroring tool yet and you are not able to add various channels most notably opacity all of this i expect to change soon though the original nature of mixer being just a texture mixing tool instead of a full 3d texturing package is still very apparent after all it's in the title but it's great to see it growing and improving with each new version i'd say though that if you're not overly demanding for masking options and don't mind preparing your models with just one uv map you're certainly good to go to try a mixer out and will probably love it if you work in unreal engine it's actually very good to combine it with it if i were to guess mixer will become substance painter's most fierce competitor quite soon it only needs to add several vital options like baking better masking and painting and better uv handling capabilities after that substance painter might be in big trouble in the end all three texturing tools did the job and each worked great in some aspects and lacked in others i definitely love the way armor paint handles the files how fast it imports blend projects and this you can draw three more knowledge in blender when it comes to shaders pixel surprised me with how fast it is how easy to understand it is also great how seamlessly it uses scanned mega scans assets and most of all how fast it develops to be completely honest i would not trade substance painter for these tools just yet it is still the fastest and most advanced tool of them all especially with the new udim painting capabilities still i very much hope armor paint and mixer will be able to rival substance in a big way because such a competition in the end is always best for us the users [Music] you

Channel: CG Boost

Views: 293,630

Rating: 4.9599099 out of 5

Keywords: quixel mixer, quixel, megascans, armor paint free, armor paint, free texture painting tool, free texture painting app, texture painting, blender, blender 2.8, substance painter, substance painter alternative free, substance painter alternative, substance painter course, substance painter vs quixel mixer, substance painter vs armor paint, blender texturing tutorial, blender tutorial, texture painting free, best free texture painting software, texturing, armorpaint, quixel mixer 2020

Id: FeJFg5uIIrc

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020