Substance Vs Mari | What You need to Know

in recent years or maybe I should say in the last decade substance painter has made a name for itself maybe you are aware of it or maybe not but substance painter dominated the game development industry almost overnight but was that because it was too good or maybe because there were no other Alternatives but what if I told you that there is on the other hand a very good alternative or a competitor that has been around for many many many years and it is called Mari popular among VFX professionals but it is mighty in its own right now what is the difference between the two and what are the strengths and weaknesses of the two and which one of these tools is actually better and [Music] why but before we continue I want to let you guys know that the blender Market is having right now a huge sale where you can save 25% or more on over 11,000 blender animals courses models you name it and by the way if you don't know where to start you will find a list in the description of this video with the best anal in all categories so without further Ado let's jump right into it but before we get into the comparison I think it is important for us to understand first how we got here in the first place don't you think so the story of Mari Finds Its Origins deep within the offices of for digital during the production of the now iconic first iteration of Avatar Jack Grizzly who was a senior R&D or research and development software engineer at the company back in the days recalls that when the Avatar production was just starting Wana took a good and hard look at the available painting software in the market and said none of it was good enough to bring the magical world of Pandora to life so in a true Spirit they said forget it let's make one ourselves and later on the texturing Department took charge of the mission with the aspiration of creating a software capable of handing the massively complex and highly detailed textures that were required for that movie and these efforts were what gave birth to the legendary software called Mari a name inspired by the Swahili word Mar daddy which means beautiful and also a sense of usefulness however fate eventually led the software to the hands of another industry Titan which is a company called The Foundry the company that had already made a legendary software like Nuke which is the leading VFX compositing software in VFX Productions so when the chance to acquire Mari came along they didn't let it slip but how did they do that you may ask in an interview given to effects guide after the Takeover Bill Colles the CEO of The Foundry at the time shed light on what made Mari so attractive to them the fascinating thing for us he explained is that it gave them access to a software that has already been production proven you know it just made way more sense for them to get this technology to the public and the industry at large rather than trying to reinvent the Wheel from scratch themselves and after a few years on the other side of the world between the mediteran Sea and the Atlantic Sea a French company called algorithmic was making a name for itself in the game development industry and by 2013 along with the success of substance designer four their first truly successful product from a business standpoint and the first PBR already art tool and it was successful because there was a desperate need in the community and the industry of 3D for a solution to paint directly on 3D models well fast forward to GDC 2014 the public B of substance painter was dropped and let me tell you it was a massive hit with tons of licenses flying off the shelves and practically over night substance spanger claimed the throne as the industry standard texturing software in the video game industry indry and in a similar fashion to Mari painter along with the rest of the substance set of tools caught the eyes of another industry giant called Adobe who acquired algorithmic back in 2019 and with that I think the story or the background of each software is clear and now the question is which one comes on top and where each one of them excels most in all honesty at the first glance these two software might seem like they are cut from the same CLA but but once you start digging in you will find a whole galaxy of differences between them so let's start with Mari as you might have guessed it is a texture creation software or a texture painting software that uses a combination between a non-destructive layer creation and node based systems but how when you open the program for the first time it can seem a bit intimidating with all the menus and buttons staring back at you but don't worry about that because it is very simple in its spirit for starters we have what is known as paint buffer which is an invisible rectangle that is used to paint on 3D objects and as long as the painter buffer is still not applied you can adjust it however you want but also you can twak the resolution and all the good stuff such as the use of multiple buffers per model with a varying resolution that can go up to 32k yes 32k which is really really interesting to back this up we have a bunch of other tools that come with it along with all the typical settings that you would expect if you have ever used a software like Photoshop or funny enough even painter it comes with a similar structure with all the basic structures like size and opacity up to the advanced ones like custom brush creation and the renowned projection tools which is a fancier way to say painting with the use of higher resolution texture maps and by the way it is the bread and butter of the tool since Mari is known for its incredible projection capabilities but that's only one side of the formula because we also have the node based workflow if you have ever played around with nodes in programs like blender it is pretty much the same deal we have the principal brdf and with it you can connect all your nodes then you have nodes that represent each one of your layers and others for channels like roughness bump and so on and the rest represents the likes of painting node or transparency the layer nodes also have a masking section that you can add masks into and apply two textures only into specific Parts based on the mask pattern which can be further adjusted and as you know since they are nodes we can add as much as we want to make even bigger formations and even more complex materials and textures on the other hand the alternative which is substance painter stands as a purely layer based software with a much more simplified user interface as we can see we have things like brush layer to paint directly on top of your 3D objects you can also adjust and load different brushes as well as paint layer to add materials into with all the channels such as basic color metallic and roughness but to be honest this is not where the power of substance painter lies the true potential of the software is in its procedural workflow with smart materials and masks for the first time you can find pre-made material presets that combine multiple texture channels and effects and it adapts and reacts realistically to your models in a smart way for example any more dirt into the areas that have more Shadows just like how it would happen in real life and in a similar vein smart masks or generators which are procedural solutions that automatically generate and apply masks like rust or Edge wear based on various criteria such as curvature and meat inclusion position and More in addition to a series of filters and special effects to support this workflow and many adjustable parameters to edit the various aspects of the smart masks and Generator based on that we can conclude that substance painter is King when it comes to quickly and automatically generated materials while at the same time still offering an excellent level of manual painting abilities whereas Mari on the other hand leans more towards manual painting and when it comes to the other stuff it is a bit more complex the positive thing about Mario is that it can handle extremely large textures much better than substance and it is easier and more versatile to generate high resolution with it thanks to the paint buffer workflow and besides the nodes make it better to come up with complex results it is also worth mentioning that both support udm which divides the model into different UV tiles allowing you to use multiple texture maps for model however on the other hand my in my opinion can handle a bigger number of high resolution newms even better and from what I can see when it comes to difficult tasks especially in vfax that require many dims and extremely high resolution textures and materials Mari is absolutely king or queen depending on how you see it in the early days Mario was famously known for its highrise textures and projections and the ability to handle heavy geometry in addition to high resolutions plus it support for multiple UDS which made it a fan favorite or industry favorite in vfax and it was used in projects such as Planet of the Apes in addition to Game of Thrones and other popular projects like these meanwhile substance painter was more known for its procedural workflow and PBR real time texturing making it a better choice for video game development or real time Productions as it is heavily used in the game development industry and pretty much every video game you see is using it across the board over the years though these two Rivals started to step into each other's territories thanks to introducing new and Innovative features however they still held on to their core philosophy so when it comes down to picking one again it really depends on your needs and your projects just like how a senior look development artist said if you want to work on hero assets for film Mari is the only answer but for environment assets I think substance painter is better suited some environment artists don't have enough time or knowledge to paint textures from scratch nor is it really needed and some well done presets and paint work done with care and substance are good then that could be appli app to a bunch of other assets but for anything here asset related the Mari without a question that was an opinion of an industry professional and with that we conclude the video I hope you guys found this video useful and informative if you did please give it a thumbs up also please subscribe to this channel to receive more videos like this thank you guys very much watching again and I will see you in the next one

Channel: InspirationTuts

Views: 5,018

Keywords: Substance Painter, Mari, texture painting software, 3D texturing, VFX, game development, Weta Digital, texture creation, procedural texturing, smart materials, node-based workflow, UDIM support, PBR texturing, high-resolution textures, 3D modeling, real-time texturing, VFX industry, game industry, texture projections, Avatar, Planet of the Apes, Game of Thrones, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, texturing workflows, digital art tools, texture painting comparison, CG artists

Id: EqH20VE8m04

Length: 11min 2sec (662 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2024