Should I learn Substance Painter or Quixel Mixer?

substance painter and qixel mixer are procedural texturing software that are often compared to one another in this video we're going to go over the pros and cons of each and tell you which one you should be using depending on your goals artistic style and skill level let's cover substance painter first much like photoshop substance painter is the industry standard the software is very mature and adobe has done a great job making the feature set both comprehensive and reliable with painter the workflow is pretty straightforward you give it a low resolution mesh that will be used in your scene and a high resolution mesh to extract detail from with a simple three click process substance painter can bake the details down to a series of maps that capture nearly all the detail of the original immediately the low poly mesh will look better because the ambient occlusion will be putting shadows in the cracks where light is naturally occluded and the normal map will be faking the lighting for bumps and crevices from here we could draw upon a vast library of materials and textures from adobe's online library called substance source by simply clicking and dragging we could put a metallic material on your mesh or make it look like leather then you can use a procedural mask to do anything from altering the color in certain areas to using displacement to make it look like the object has been worn away quite often texture artists will have combined many of these effects already creating something we call a smart material a material that can utilize the various bait maps to dynamically adjust to the mesh it's been applied to these are incredibly handy and can serve as a great base for your project for example a worn metal smart material might have scratches on the hard edges polished flat surfaces and dirt gathered in the nooks and crannies and all these factors can be adjusted with a simple slider with no drawing involved the beauty of procedural texturing if you want to learn more about smart materials or just substance painter in general consider joining my substance painter course which is filled with easy to understand tutorials tons of smart materials and a large library of ready-to-texture models i'll leave a link in the description for you to check it out now procedural stuff aside this doesn't mean you can't use it as a more conventional painting software either rather some of the best works are the combination of procedural and hand-drawn efforts it's easy to start with a procedurally generated mask dictating where the dirt should go then manually touching it up with a paint layer to break up that uniform look whether your goal is to produce something stylized or to aim for a more realistic looking piece of art substance painter can make it happen but nothing is perfect if you were paying attention you would have heard me mention earlier that substance painter has recently been acquired by adobe even though adobe's products are generally great their pricing plans aren't though adobe's sole ambition in the world seems to be locking their entire suite behind a 500 per month paywall you can still buy the software on steam for roughly the cost of renting it for one year personally i don't like paying recurring bills so that's what i did and perhaps blender has spoiled me with its breakneck development speed but it seems like functionality is added to substance at a snail's pace and the software has a lot of small quirks that i find can add up to be moderately frustrating it's the little things like not having a hotkey dedicated to sampling only the color channel not the whole material seriously guys it's been five years and finally it definitely isn't the most intuitive software sure 3d software and unintuitive definitely go hand in hand but substance painter feels to me like it's trying to bury its features rather than put them on display as a texture artist who wants to use software to its full potential this can be pretty frustrating [Music] on the flip side of this we have qxel mixer if there is one thing about it i can say with confidence it's that it's intuitive kwixel does a wonderful job of making sure all the information is on screen and all its tools are clearly labeled having worked with substance painter for two years now going into qixel mixer for the first time was extraordinarily easy granted i didn't know what to look for but the interface did a wonderful job of conveying where each of those critical tools were and i can say that if i were to switch to using mixer full time the jump would be extremely easy another huge point to mixer is its price or lack of it as much as the internet likes to clown on epic games they've been nothing but a boon to the artistic community like unreal engine qixel mixer is entirely free for non-commercial use making it the perfect tool for a beginner or someone who might not be ready to commit to the craft yet it shares a lot of functionality with substance painter and any experienced artist shouldn't have any issue producing near identical results in either software and because it's part of the epic game suite it hooks in really nicely with unreal engine and the mega scans library but this video isn't just called why you should use qixel mixer so what's the catch despite the fact that mixer is being developed at a healthy pace and is built upon a solid foundation mixer simply isn't mature as a product yet it lacks several critical features that i expect from texturing software remember all that praise i heaped on substance painter for its simple three-click baking process mixer can't compete because it simply doesn't have a baker at all if this doesn't mean much to you let me assure you this is pretty significant if you're doing your high resolution sculpting or modeling in blender baking mesh maps can be a fiddly process and even zbrush doesn't always produce the results i want in mixer's official tutorial series they use marmoset to create the bakes marmoset's baking tools are really robust but its price tag is similar to that of substance painter so this rules it out from a cost to savings perspective mixer is also missing more easily developed features such as working with multiple uv maps or utems and much to my dismay it didn't even have an option for painting in symmetry considering the pace of development mixer has seen in recent years i don't expect these to be issues forever if you're watching this video in the future there's a good chance that these features have already been added so if you have a way to create the mesh maps necessary for use in procedural texturing mixer is quite robust now that we have laid out all of the pros and cons of each software let's talk about which texturing software i would recommend you use based on the current states of each piece of software your artistic goals and skill level mixer is great if you're a beginner and i get the sense it was originally created for indie developers who would already be working with existing assets this software did start as a way to blend materials together after all it's in the name it's very good for quickly altering the look of a model in big ways but has enough depth that an artist can use it extensively as well if you're new to the craft definitely give qixel mixer a go there's no cost and you get 90 percent of the functionality handed to you in a super comprehensible way [Music] substance painter is for the artist who knows they will be committing to the craft it's an all-in-one texturing suite that includes a massive library of smart materials and has the depth to create truly fantastic results in both the photo reel and the stylized if it's your job or even just a serious hobby i can certainly say it is worth the money while i already sat down in the substance painter camp i'll be keeping an eye on qixel mixer in the future with a rapidly growing feature set i expect it to soon be substance painters equal if adobe doesn't step up their game and i must say i am a sucker for clean uis i hope this has been helpful in understanding the landscape of texturing software while some of the tools are a little half-baked i am very excited for the futures of each software the free alternative that qixel provides will put pressure on adobe to step up their game and in the long run both softwares will be better for it as usual thank you for watching these videos wouldn't be possible without all of you in this amazing community [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Stylized Station

Views: 89,884

Rating: 4.9106202 out of 5

Keywords: substance painter stylized, substance painter 2020, substance painter, substance painter tutorial beginner, substance designer stylized, stylized texture, texturing tutorial, substance painter tutorial, substance painter smart material, substance painter stylized tutorial, substance painter stylized materials, substance painter stylized painting, quixel mixer, substance vs quixel, quixel mixer vs substance painter, substance designer vs quixel mixer

Id: 1cFmXK5T3Hs

Length: 9min 15sec (555 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021

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[u/LadyQuacklin]

Exactly my thoughts.The update from 2020 to 2021 in substance painter was... a bit disappointing.There are so many features users are asking for since years.
At least we finally got geometry masks. But still one of the worst camera controls and no 3d mouse support. I mean the most upvoted feature request is Low priority since years.

http://feedback.substance3d.com/forums/261284-substance-painter/filters/top

Or or a simple color palette which was "started" in November 2018.http://feedback.substance3d.com/forums/261284-substance-painter/suggestions/6805886-color-palette

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But after all it is the best texturing tool available.But when Adobe continues which so few feature updates and don't listen to their user. I'm sure others will overcome substance painter.