My younger son is getting into modeling and texturing these days. He’s going to need a decent paint program for making the textures. I know pros pretty much universally use PhotoShop, but I find that expensive and rather complex, too, so I’m looking for alternatives.
Desired feature set:
layers
support for graphics tablet (with pen pressure, eraser, etc.)
decent set of tools (brighten/darken, smudge, blur, sharpen, brush opacity, etc.)
paint “texture” (paper, bumps, etc.)
some easy way to restrict tools to a certain area (paint within selection or whatever)
runs on a Mac, and doesn’t look/feel like some cheesy Windows or Linux port
I use GraphicConverter or SeaShore, but I’m not entirely happy with either of those. Years ago I used an app called Color-It which I liked quite a lot, but it’s no longer available for modern machines. I don’t need my software to be free, but I’m looking to spend under $100 on this.
Hmm, never used it, looks interesting… though at $150, it’s quite a bit beyond what I was hoping to pay. Our modeling software (Cheetah3D) already has simple painting tools for painting directly on the model… but they’re too simple for serious work. Substance Painter looks quite serious, but maybe too serious… we don’t want to use PBR or paint with “substances,” we just want to generate PNGs that map nicely onto our models.
But maybe Substance Painter can do that. I’ll certainly look into it.
Call it an investment, I don’t see any studio large or small without it these days If you aren’t hot at UVs you can also just use auto UVs and it’ll make a great job out of those too.
It’s less about the money and more about whether it’s a tool that will work smoothly for us, or fight us every step of the way.
I have to confess I have a bit of bad feeling towards Allegorithmic, because the last time I looked into their stuff (I think it was Substance Designer), I found it to be an amazing pile of complexity. If you’re trying to do photorealistic rendering then it’s probably great, but if you’re trying to do a more cartoony look, it was a heaping plate of overkill with a complexity sauce and a side dish of hard-to-use.
My son is only 11 and is going for a cartoony look: broad, flat colors, gradients, and crisp lines are mainly what he needs. I’m looking for a tool that will be easier to use than my existing ones, not harder. A quick look through the tutorials doesn’t show anything remotely like what we want to make… but I haven’t given up on it. I will dig deeper. Just letting you know where I’m starting from.
Any other suggestions (anyone) for a decent painting app?
Affinity is a good option. I have been waiting for a Windows version for awhile though… Gimp is a FOSS option and there is always Photoshop, which is 10 bucks a month. All work when creating texture maps, complexity/learning curve is pretty much the same across the board.
Substance Painter is amazing and in the end will generate/export 2d maps. It would be nice for a free non commercial though. Speaking of which, The Foundry’s just announced a free, non-commercial version of Mari… Both Painter and Mari have learning curves.
If he is just starting out in 3d & texture creation I would start with one of the image editors first. Gimp, Photoshop, etc… Learn the fundmentals then add Painter or Mari into the mix.
If you are willing to pay $100 and still want that Photohop feeling, why not Photoshop Elements? The only two features of PSE that I really miss from PS proper are layer folders and pen tools. Otherwise, it’s a pretty good paint program.
Totally forgot about Krita! … They have been running Kickstarter back projects recently, so there is a lot of dev work going into too. Def worth looking into!
I’m trying Krita now, but it seems really unstable… so far it’s crashed every time I try to open a (JPEG) image. Maybe the JPEG importer is just broken, but that’s hardly a good first impression.
…But, trying again, and as long as I avoid opening a JPEG (which isn’t a necessary part of my workflow anyway), it does seem pretty great. Layer & selection support (which are sort of basic requirements) seem good. And the support for mirroring & tiling are definitely a plus. I’ll hook up the graphics tablet at lunch and see how it feels with that.
I’ve also got a free trial of Affinity on the way, so I’ll see about that too. That one is clearly aimed more at photo editing than artwork, but I realize there’s a lot of overlap there.
@aer0ace , I have tried Photoshop Elements, and it’s not awful. It was my fallback solution if nobody could suggest anything better.
Has anybody tried Blacksmith 3D? It looks like it’s primarily an on-model painting app (though it also includes some deformation tools that might be handy now and then). It costs around $100, more or less depending on whether you get standard or pro. (Free trial of that coming down, too, but curious to hear from those who have gone before.)
Hippo - do you have any references (image) for this automatic UVing on organic objects?
I’ve looked around and so far it only looks like devs use this for innorganic stuff, which isn’t really difficult dealing with UVs.
Maybe I just have to dig a little deeper.
For the record, I’ve pretty well decided to go with Affinity Photo for general painting, and for painting on the model, I’ll bang out something in Unity based on this tutorial project. Between the two, I think we’ll be in pretty good shape!
Sketchbook Pro from Autodesk. (there’s free and paid options)
This is very much more for an artist than a technical artist. I don’t know how well it plays with a gamedev setup, but for concept artists, comic artists, etc. it’s fantastic.
The method in which I stumbled across this is actually through my Android tablet, because I wanted a good painting program for it. If you ever decide to go the Android tablet route, another app that’s equally good is ArtFlow. Both have excellent UI/UX, although they are slightly different. After using them for some time, I still can’t decide which one I like better.
I think, PS is the best Photo manipulation tool , but not the best drawing tool .
My favor 2D Drawing Tool is Clip studio . And of course you can not only draw manga with this .
For me it has the best brush feeling that I ever use. Also It has the similar structure of Layer, GUI, and setting like PS .
I use it also together with the bridge function in 3D coat (also PS like, but 3D painting and additional with PBR and and many more)
Have you looked into paint tool sai? It’s amazing as a painting program, and would easily allow you to make flat textures with transparency. It costs around $45 (4700 yen I believe), and has been well worth my money. You can try it free for 30 days as well!
If you aren’t hot at UVs you can also just use auto UVs and it’ll make a great job out of those too.
… They have been running Kickstarter back projects recently, so there is a lot of dev work going into too. Def worth looking into!
