Free Substance Painter Alternatives – Armor Paint vs Quixel Mixer

substance painter free alternative This is a topic that many people are looking for. bluevelvetrestaurant.com is a channel providing useful information about learning, life, digital marketing and online courses …. it will help you have an overview and solid multi-faceted knowledge . Today, bluevelvetrestaurant.com would like to introduce to you Free Substance Painter Alternatives – Armor Paint vs Quixel Mixer. Following along are instructions in the video below:

In this video, @Martin Klekner explores what are the pros and cons of the two free texturing solutions, Armor Paint and Quixel Mixer, compared to Substance Painter. Are they as good as, or in some cases even better than Substance Painter? Let’s find out!

⇨ Martin’s YouTube Channel: @Martin Klekner

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CHAPTERS
00:00 – Intro
01:45 – Substance Painter
03:57 – Substance Painter Pros & Cons
04:06 – Armor Paint
08:44 – Armor Paint Pros & Cons
09:14 – Quixel Mixer
13:40 – Quixel Mixer Pros & Cons
13:51 – Conclusion

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⇨ Substance Painter Launch Pad course: https://bit.ly/substance-painter-laun…
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RESOURCES
⇨ Armor Paint: https://armorpaint.org/
⇨ Quixel Mixer: https://quixel.com/mixer
⇨ Substance Painter: https://www.substance3d.com/products/…
⇨ Backpack model by Lumpycow: https://www.blendswap.com/blend/2126

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#substancepainter #texturing #free

There’s one thing. We at cgboost like its definitely blender of course. But also also free preferably open source tools which is of course not the case substance painter 3d texturing software that i made a course for at cgboost some time ago and i gradually noticed that in the comments.
A lot of you were asking the very same question is there a free alternative. Maybe. A free software with the same capabilities as substance painter.
Well that’s what i decided to find out i went in and tried to texture the same asset this awesome backpack. I got from blendswap use various material editing and masking techniques. Add decals and generally try to achieve the same results using three different software packages substance painter quixel mixer and armor paint based on what i’ve learned through the process.
I then gathered the pros and cons of all these and tried to resolve the question is one of these two tools actually as good or even better than painter. One thing. I will clarify right of the bat.
I did not include mari or 3dcoat and other paid solutions since these are well paid. It’s not that they are not worth the money both are amazing pieces of software. Alas.
Expensive. Which would kinda ruin. The original idea of this video.

Many of you may also ask why have i not included blender into the mix is blender capable of doing the same thing substance painter does well to that i can only tell you a definite maybe not really. It’s safe to say. Though you can expect a lot of info.
Coming in the near future at cgboost concerning. Cg texturing. Because there is a huge texturing update coming to blender launch pad course by zach.
Upbeat music air whooshing first off let’s look at substance painter. This tool has of course become an industry standard quite some time ago and if you’ve tried my substance painter launch pad course you probably know how very versatile. It is what i love about it is how many different parts of the workflow you can do without ever leaving.
It so here you can see me painting some normal and height map. Details. This is a process.
I constantly keep using and it often even replaces the need to sculpt anything i even made a free lesson about this so you can definitely check it out link is of course in the description of this video after the bake process. Which of course happens in painter. As well you can apply a large library of materials you can then use awesome smart masks.
Which save a lot of time and make use of some good working particle. Brushes and then pack everything into reusable. Smart materials.

Also everything is procedurally generated. So you can upscale or downscale your textures at any time in other words you can do pretty much anything in painter. These days and i’ve come to rely on it extensively in my workflow.
Which i guess is clear since i’ve made a course for it. But i know that the reason you decided to watch the video was not to learn about how great painter is to list a few negatives. I have to say that after trying out some other texturing solutions painter may not be the most easy to use.
It’s not that it is user unfriendly. It’s more like it has become a bit difficult with all the features it now provides and so it may not be as intuitive at first also one very problematic aspect is of course that now it is owned by adobe. I will not go into the controversy of it all and how hurt all the fans of the original developer allegorithmic feel about the move to sell the company.
Me included still we all know how adobe treats its software. And how very much they like the money they earn. So let’s hope substance can become the bright exception here with the model done and textured.
I exported the textures to blender and rendered the model out and i got this result and set out to achieve something similar with a different software. But this time for free air whooshing first of those two there was armor paint. And i chose is specifically because it is so darn close to blender.
It actually comes out of the blender software code and integrates many features you may already know from there mainly the shader nodes beside other nice things about this tool. It is also free you can get it from github or you can of course decide to pay for it a small price at gumroad. Which is what i have done because i think it’s more than fair.

If you want to support the development immediately one of the great things you will find out is that armor paint actually imports blend files among others. And it is as easy as dragging your file into the viewport and bang. Here you go as opposed to substance.
You don’t really have to deal with too many things before you export you just sort out your meshes name them and do the uvs in blender and then throw the model into armor paint. I also very much liked the idea of the layer system unlike in painter. Where all depends on what materials you export from blender.
Here. You can just directly assign various textures to various meshes other than that it all functions. Like you are used to from any other layer based software.
Even with different blending modes. Quite rudimentary. But still useful baking option also exists here in armor paint.
And though. The results can’t really compare to substance it can definitely find its uses you can bake ambient occlusion curvature normal maps and others very quickly and then of course use them as masks. So smart masking based on these geometry information is available here though i must admit in the end.
I used some maps. I baked in blender and painter in the texturing process instead of the ones from armor paint. Unfortunately.

Painting your own normals and height details is not really that possible here at least not in a fast and reliable way so that’s one thing. I was missing and had to resort to sculpting in blender on the other hand masking is as easy as dragging your mask image onto the mesh with our layer selected. So if you have a curvature or ambient occlusion mask.
Ready you can simply use the baked image to mask out your result or you can always resort to painting masks by hand of course when it comes to materials your options are either to paint your own with a variety of classic painting tools like brush blur eraser clone. And even some particle brushes based on blender particles. Or you can add texture materials by just downloading.
Some pbr texture. I for example used the great site cc0textures and was able to achieve fine results. What i experienced though was a lot of slowing down when i started layering too many 4k textures.
Which is quite normal and occurs in substance in a limited amount as well. But not this much and armor paint actually started crushing on me in the later stages. Quite regularly so in the end.
I went in and had to flatten all the textures. Which kinda ruined the great layer approach for me oh and due to its texture based nature. You can’t really upscale your results.
The way you can in painter. Where it is all procedural of course as mentioned when setting up materials. You will be right at home.

If you know blender system in that area. It has many very similar nodes like you know from shader editor one thing i missed though was some sort of right mouse button popup menu and the ability to automatically connect new nodes like in blender but that’s a minor detail really one thing. I would like to emphasize are decals.
Which are very easy to use definitely more intuitive. Although admittedly less advanced than in painter or mixer just set a material for them and left mouse button click and paint them in the same way function the text capabilities and you can even change the text any time finally i would like to mention that the ui is very clear and good looking so i felt very comfortable working in armor paint on smaller tests. It was easy to get into there is also quite a bit of free tutorials at youtube plus.
A good enough manual you can follow on the homepage unfortunately. I was missing some beta normal painting capabilities advanced masking functions and the further i went and the more textures. I added the more painful the work and the more unexpected the behavior of the software got the result.
I was able to achieve something very similar like i did in substance painter. But it definitely took me more time. I had to use other software to prepare necessary maps.
And it cost me a few gray hair in the process. Especially in the later stages. Armor paint is a bit rough around the edges.
And it sometimes does not execute operations as you would expect it to including the undo option and moving layers up and down the layer stack. Still what it offers for free is great. And there is also one thing.

I haven’t mentioned yet. It was just recently funded by epic games. So i do really hope that the enthusiastic author lubos.
Lenco will be able to improve this promising piece of software air whooshing the second alternative is another super promising tool. Which coincidentally was actually funded by epic games as well way to go epic maybe i will install your game store. After all mixer is of course part of the quixel family originally a clunky add on for photoshop.
Nowadays known mostly for its amazing megascans library. And yes more and more for mixer. I actually really love what the developers are doing with the tool.
What started out as just a way to mix various megascans textures gradually got functionality to add displacement intelligent masking and finally ability to add your own models with each new update. It is growing rapidly and i would not be surprised at all that if you’ll watch this video. Some time in the future.
Many of the issues. I will list here will have disappeared also it might be clear. But let me mention it again.
It is free there is a little catch. Though mixer is actually very closely connected to megascans libraries. Similarly to painter.

Which has its own substance. Source collection from megascans libraries. You can draw a lot of materials decals.
Imperfections. Etc. And you have to pay for those so in the end you will do best to pay subscription to megascans assets.
Which i would recommend anyway because they’re awesome. But it of course removes the free label from it fortunately if you download quixel bridge. You will be able to import your own textures and assets and then use them in mixer.
As well so that mostly eliminates this issue. But what about the actual process well immediately at the start you will meet limitations first off. You can not use multiple uvs or udims instead mixer.
Supports only one uv map for the whole model you will import so that’s not that great. But if you get over this fact prepare your uvs and export your model in a format like obj or fbx. You will be able to simply load it in and very quickly start working another drawback you will find is that there is not an option to bake your mesh maps not to mention paint normals.
So you will still need to use other tools for that in my case. It was kinda ironically substance painter. I must say i enjoyed the texturing process very much in mixer at times.

It even felt more quick and fluid than in substance. The ui is slick and easy to orient yourself in and if you have megascans using materials is as easy as searching for them and then dropping them in onto layers. The best way to mask out.
And assign your materials to different parts of the model prove to be the id method assigning different vertex paint colors to your model in blender. And then just very quickly choosing between them in quixel that was working as great as i know it from painter. There is also quite a lot of options for more advanced masking like direct possibility to use generated cavity and ambient occlusion masks and much more.
It is still not as far as painter in this aspect. But i fully expect this will be one of the areas where mixer will improve a lot very soon you can easily work. With your layers blend them together and actually even group your materials.
And mask layers and create smart materials from them. That function. The same way as they do in painter.
And even here it works as an amazing time saver mixer. Doesn’t really offer too many advanced brushes. But you can definitely make your own and also it does not provide particle brushes.
Unlike painter and armor paint. Furthermore. I did not really like the way it handles painting decals.

It is definitely less intuitive than in case of the previous two tools curiously. It does not even have a mirroring tool. Yet and you are not able to add various channels.
Most notably opacity all of this i expect to change soon. Though the original nature of mixer. Being just a texture mixing tool instead of a full 3d texturing package is still very apparent.
Although it’s in the title. But it’s great to see it growing and improving with each new version. I’d say though that if you’re not overly demanding for masking options and don’t mind preparing your models with just one uv map you are certainly good to go to try mixer out and will probably love it if you’re work in unreal engine.
It’s actually very good to combine it with it if i were to guess mixer will become substance painter’s most fierce competitor. Quite soon it only needs to add several vital options like baking. Better masking and painting and better uv handling capabilities.
After that substance painter might be in big trouble. Air whooshing in the end all three texturing tools. Did the job and each worked great in some aspects and lacked in others.
I definitely loved the way armor paint handles the files how fast it imports blend projects and that you can draw from your knowledge in blender. When it comes to shaders quixel. Surprised me with how fast.
It is how easy to understand it is also great how seamlessly it uses scanned megascans assets and most of all how fast it develops to be completely honest i would not trade substance painter for these tools just yet. It is still is the fastest and most advanced tool of them all especially with the new udim painting capabilities still i very much hope armor paint and mixer will be able to rival substance in a big way because such a competition in the end is always best for us the users air whooshing. .

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