Quixel Mixer a good free alt to Substance Painter?

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

2 months into learning blender now, and i was watching a game asset tutorial where he takes in into substance to texture it. Seen as iv been drawing mine manually in gimp so far that tool just blew my mind, all the materials with all the different wear settings and such looks amazing.

Im not at a stage where i want to spend money yet though because im not sure if il even be any good at it in the end, so i searched and found this quixel mixer one. To my novice eyes it looks quite similar to substance with a library of "smart materials" to make texturing quicker.

Has anyone used it?
Is it even what i think it is?
Is there better (free) alternatives for beginners?

[The Renderer]

It is what you think it is and it won't hurt trying it out. Apparently it lacks a few things that Substance has/can do, but it's free to try, so nothing to lose here.

I'm not aware of other alternatives, but then again I simply got Substance on Steam, it's not that bad if you get it during a sale.

[Karmaterrorᵁᴷ]

Oh wow, i wasnt aware it was on steam, thanks for that i stuck it on my wishlist. I was just looking on the website and all i could see were subscriptions, for a one off payment I think im cool with investing a little :)

[butcho]

Originally posted by Karmaterrorᵁᴷ:

I was just looking on the website and all i could see were subscriptions

That's because Substance got aquired by Adobe and they added it to their ♥♥♥♥♥♥ subscription business model. I guess Steam here is the only place where you can still buy a license.

[Mio Rin]

Originally posted by The Renderer:

I'm not aware of other alternatives, but then again I simply got Substance on Steam, it's not that bad if you get it during a sale.

There is Armorpaint, which is derived from the texture paint mode in Blender.

[robsanta74]

Originally posted by The Renderer:

There is Armorpaint, which is derived from the texture paint mode in Blender.

Is it? I thought that it was just an offshoot of the Armory 3D engine. Totally different afaik.

Either way, ArmorPaint IS free, but you have to compile each new build yourself. However, if that's too intimidating for you, just head over to Gumroad where you can buy it already compiled for under $20 USD. Subsequent compiled builds will be available for free from your Gumroad account after that.

ArmorPaint isn't bad. It's not even close to being a 1:1 Substance Painter replacement because it's still so very rough, but there are enough features available there for you to get some decent PBR painting going.

The biggest thing holding it back atm is a lack of a robust pre-built brush library. You can roll your own by importing alphas and building node trees for each one, but that takes time. However, if you're so inclined, you can certainly emulate all manner of brushes.

Particle effects to simulate weathering are placeholder rough too and not worth your time, unless you want to simulate a bit of water trickle down a wall.

MaterialMaker is another free PBR painting option. Definitely good for the $0 price, but also rough around the edges being FOSS and whatnot. On the plus side, its node-based material creation is a fair share more advanced than ArmorPaint's and you can create some pretty rich looking procedural materials. MaterialMaker leans a bit more to the Substance Designer end of the spectrum.

As I said, neither one are 1:1 replacements for Substance's tools, but they can serve you pretty well if you can't or don't want to spend any extra cash.

If, however, you're a Blender user and your main issue is not wanting to leave the core experience then there's always the BPainter addon. It's about $40 and integrates with Blender, providing it with a layer-based 3D paint system, PBR, and a bunch of brushes. It gets updated often enough and is currently compatible with the most recent Blender v3.0. You can pick it up over on BlenderMarket.

https://armorpaint.org/
https://rodzilla.itch.io/material-maker
https://blendermarket.com/products/bpainter

(I'd link directly to Gumroad's ArmorPaint page, but Steam removes it. Just head to gumroad and search it out..)

[The Renderer]

Originally posted by robsanta74:

Originally posted by The Renderer:

There is Armorpaint, which is derived from the texture paint mode in Blender.

Hey, I didn't write that. :P

[robsanta74]

Shush! You write what I say you write. Got it. ;-)