Hello everyone.  Many of you know that I have struggled with many of the simpler functions of 3d animation.  (Interfaces and meshes to be the biggest).  I finally got my first real model done (merged head with another body and painted).  A fellow forum member got me turned on to 3DCoat.  Thanks Vidi!  I promised another I would try Substance painter as well.  3DCoat is awesome and does very high quality stuff.  It is so much more than painting, so I am leaving this out there for new IClone users about Substance Painter.

People told me it was more advanced and I should wait to use it.  After struggling with that character for a month and 3DCoat painting seeming like I would retain it, I gave Substance Painter a try.  All I can say is wow!  This is the most simple 3D Program I have used so far.  Texturing was amazing and the output of various maps is impressive.  They give you several options based upon the animation or gaming platform you are working with.

The maps being labeled for our animation systems would have helped me earlier on especially.  This is a new persons dream and I do not think I could ever give this program up.  I made 3D lettering for my first video.  I played around with the different texturing options and just threw something together.  I told everyone here that I would probably not get into quality work right now.  WOW, I impressed myself with this program and ten minutes being in it.  My first render in Iclone and I am still about to stroke about how well those letters came out and the video in general.  I assumed IClone was lower quality after seeing some people note some of its limitations.  This looked better than a Pixar film!  (Not being cocky about my work, I still don't know what the hell I am doing and it was an intro video 11seconds).  I didn't think it was going to produce so well and realized that it was in quick mode and lower quality.  

I truly think Substance Painter would be great for anyone new to 3D and IClone and that is not looking to do mesh work.  The only issue I had was with the lack of control of painting the maps or on models.  I forgot that I also did a whole model on there.  It took me quite a bit more time than 3D Coat.  I have not tried masking yet in either.  3DCoat does have a nicer "fill" system.  Overall, both are great programs, but I thought I would share my experience for others.  Both have Black Friday specials right now and heavily discounted.  Also, please don't beat your head like I did and thinking your in Iclone is how it will come out looking.  You will be shocked!




www.photosw.net

The best thing about 3DCoat are the tools for UV mapping (which Substance Painter does not have).  Trust me, you will need those -- it's fine if your model already has UVs, but a lot do not (or they aren't correct) and even using the auto UV mapping from Coat will then give you something you can use in Substance Painter.

The demo of texturing with SP for use in iClone is all anyone really needs to know how powerful it is (or how much they will need it).

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Yes, I am always forgetting about the UVs haha. I am still shocked how well things come out so easily with IClone.  Between Substance Painter and 3DCoat, I vow to never touch Zbrush again.





www.photosw.net

Thanks for the great - and balanced - review of the two products.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
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Thanks for encouraging me to try it.  I need to figure out masking in Substance Painter.  I was blown away by the results.  I am still happy and it helps after all my struggles lol.

www.photosw.net

Great thread, on the fence about this one,  I've found 3DCoat to be an amazing tool for hand painting IC Characters. Could someone kindly elaborate a little further of what if any advantages of having both apps would be for CC and IC?  Particularity stylized character design... Would like to take advantage of this offer if it's worthy.

Thanks!


Virtual Media® / VTV® / The Virtual Entertainment Network...
http://VTVLive.com

Did you watch this tutorial?  It's well worth the watch if you are on the fence about Substance Painter:



As for characters -- I can't speak for humans, but I textured my robot using this approach, and in less than five minutes I had a pretty amazing version:



I would not want to be without SP (or 3D Coat, for that matter -- I needed it to unwrap the UV).

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Alienware Aurora R12, Win 10, i9-119000KF, 3.5GHz CPU, 128GB RAM, RTX 3090 (24GB), Samsung 960 Pro 4TB M-2 SSD, TB+ Disk space
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Do you known if you need a commercial licence for 3dcoat if you want to use the UV mapping tools for your own Iclone production that you intend to sell?  




Ryzen R9 5950x, RTX 3090, 128Gb Ram ,2 x 2 TB Samsung 980 Pro M.2 SSD

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According to the information provided on this 3DCoat product page - scroll down to the page bottom -you do require a commercial licence if you wish to sell assets.


Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

It's virtually impossible for any software company to enforce any sort of commercial restriction as production pipelines are complicated - especially something like UV mapping which can be handled by dozens of other programs you may already have licenses for.  The goal of these sort of restrictions is to stop a Game or VFX company from buying 50 "amateur" licenses because they only need it to do 'simple work'.  3DCoat is such a powerhouse of a tool, that if you're doing 'real' work you will want/need the Professional version anyway - 2K texture and 7 layer limit is their way of making the software almost useless to "the big boys".  With the price currently at $279... think of it as $79 for PBR painting, $100 for sculpting/asset creation, $50 for retopo and $50 for UV mapping.