Introducing
The Slant team built an AI & it’s awesome
Find the best product instantly
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now
4.7 star rating
0
What is the best alternative to MapZone?
Ad
Ad
Material Maker
All
13
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
6
Specs
Top
Pro
One-click PBR material export to pupular game engines
Material Maker allows exporting materials ready to use in Unreal, Unity, Unity HDRP and Godot instantly.
See More
Top
Con
No proper funding and development
Maintained by author rodzill4 as a hobby, the project doesn't have any serious structure or long-term funding whatsoever.
See More
Top
Pro
Full GPU acceleration
All the nodes are actually shaders, so Material Maker works as fast as your GPU. For complex operations like blurring a buffer is used, but you can add a buffer node yourself to further optimize the texture generation.
See More
Top
Con
UI needs work
Using the node editor with a very complex graph gets difficult - using node groups is recommended to mitigate this problem.
See More
Top
Pro
Free as in Freedom
Open-source and completely free to use.
See More
Top
Con
Export to
See More
Top
Pro
Powerful nodes
Material Maker has a lot of interesting nodes that together allow artists to create amazing materials. You'll find many nodes similar to what Substance Designer offers.
See More
Top
Con
Should aim at a more professional goal
The project should consider becoming serious, and aim for not just indie but more professional users because that's the only thing can keep a project prevail.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to create new nodes
All nodes are made in GLSL and are editable.
See More
Top
Con
Lack of learning resources
See More
Top
Pro
Inputs are functions
This means that nodes can use sub input graphs as part of their behavior to make complex stuff like raymarching or fractals.
See More
Top
Con
Lack of course or training
Given different workflow from Substance, there should be courses on different aspects.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Linux, Windows, MacOS
License:
MIT License
3D:
Yes
Graphics:
OpenGL 3
Hide
See All
Experiences
FREE
36
1
Neo Textures
All
6
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
3
Top
Con
No longer being developed
Neo Textures is no longer being developed. The project seems to be abandoned.
See More
Top
Pro
Powerful control on procedural nodes
Can easily modify all of the multipliers and alligorithm values of procedural generation.
See More
Top
Con
Doesn't support PBR
Neo Textures was created before PBR was a thing, and it's based on the deprecated Diffuse/Specular rendering pipeline, which is no longer used.
See More
Top
Pro
Faster than Substance Designer
See More
Top
Con
Lot of bugs
See More
Top
Pro
Open-source
Neo Textures editor is a free and open source project available on SourceForge.
See More
Hide
free
11
1
Quixel Mixer
All
3
Experiences
Pros
1
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Free
Its freaking free.
See More
Top
Con
Seems to still be in beta
Many features missing, like layer deletion.
See More
Top
Con
Free version is technically non-commercial only
But, uh, "exporting" is as easy as opening up the file locations.
See More
Hide
Free / paid
44
4
Substance Bitmap2Material
All
3
Experiences
Pros
1
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Generates several outputs from a single image
B2M generates any output that you may need from a single image automatically (base color, normal, metallic, roughness, ambient occlusion).
See More
Top
Con
Comes at a price
Sets you back over 100 dollars.
See More
Top
Con
Not a complete tool
B2M will only allow you to create a normal map from an existing image. You cannot create a custom texture from scratch with it.
See More
Hide
Get it
here
28
3
Filter Forge
All
7
Experiences
Pros
4
Cons
3
Top
Pro
Not only a Photoshop plugin, has a lot of other hosts
See More
Top
Con
Slow development cycle
New versions come fast enough, but for example, the beta version of 7 doesn't have a lot that 4 didn't have.
See More
Top
Pro
Several filters
Filter Forge includes a lot of filters and each of them has several presets. Filters are grouped into different categories (Organic, Patterns, Creative, Distortions, Photo, etc...) so it's easy to locate them.
See More
Top
Con
No free tier
Filter Forge is not free. The basic edition (cheapest one) is $149. It does go on sale regularly though for around $30.
See More
Top
Pro
Large online library of filters
The website has thousands of filters available for download. This is the only thing that makes the basic edition feasible.
See More
Top
Con
Hefty price tag
Its $399 for the professional version, whereas a big competitor used by large studios is only $149.
See More
Top
Pro
Standalone application or PhotoShop plugin
Filter Forge can be used as both a standalone application and as a plugin for PhotoShop.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
150$
16
2
Substance Painter
All
4
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Allows you to paint in full 3D
Since Substance Painter allows users to paint in full 3D, it can be used not only to paint full textures, but can also paint masks which can then be used in other tools (like Substance Designer) for material filter generators (like the ones used to make edge wear and dirt)
See More
Top
Con
Expensive and impossible to run without an expensive graphics card
The free trial is the only thing free. You'll have to pay a lot of money for the full version, and even if you do get it, you will have to pay for an expensive graphics card to use it, which means a lot more money flying out of your wallet and/or bank account.
See More
Top
Pro
Painting and procedural editing of textures
See More
Top
Con
Cannot export in a procedural format
You can not export substance (sbsar) files in Painter.
See More
Hide
20$/m
113
16
Blender
All
25
Experiences
Pros
16
Cons
8
Specs
Top
Pro
Free and open source
Blender is licensed under the GPL. Some Blender modules such as the Cycles rendering engine are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
See More
Top
Con
Too many possibilities, no unified workflow
The operations are not optimized enough for specific tasks.
See More
Top
Pro
Wide import and export format support
Support lots of modern 3D formats including DAE and FBX - ideal for game developers.
See More
Top
Con
The physics engine is a bit lagging behind, especially the destruction physics
See More
Top
Pro
Has a powerful rendering engine
Blender runs the Cycles path tracing engine under the hood. Cycles is a very powerful rendering engine capable of full path tracing (light fall off, caustics, volumetrics). It is mostly compatible with OpenCL and CUDA rendering, and is implementing mycropolygon displacement features. The upcoming release has a viewport engine called EEVEE whereby you can see and interact with your work in render mode in real time!
See More
Top
Con
Difficult learning curve
Blender has a history of being unintuitive, but the 2.8 overhaul made the program far easier for beginners to pick up, and changes continue to be made to further improve the experience. However, there is still a learning curve.
See More
Top
Pro
Python extensibility
Blender embeds Python 3, which can be used to write add-ons, tools, extend the interface, rig characters and automate tasks.
See More
Top
Con
Not good for Industrial Design because it uses average vertex normals
You can not create a hard surface with a radius continuity degree along a surface using a specific radius value.
See More
Top
Pro
Powerful animation suite
Blender provides a full rigging system, and automates animation by interpolating between keyframe positions.
See More
Top
Con
Vertex normal issues on edges after boolean operations.
After creating a simple boolean operation the vertex normals are broken. A lot of work to fix the issue and you loos surface continuity.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports both low-poly and hi-poly modeling
See More
Top
Con
Bad vertex normal after boolean operations
Does not handle well polygon intersections. And need tweaking by hand points or adding average vertex normals via modifiers.
See More
Top
Pro
Regular release schedule
Releases are made every ~3 months.
See More
Top
Con
Does not handle NURBs
Is not capable of real hard surface for industrial design because is not able to reproduce surface continuity degree as a NURBs does and average vertex normal destroy surface radius.
See More
Top
Pro
Sculpting and 3D painting features
Although Blender's 3d painting and sculpting tools (mostly painting) are not at par with specialized software like Substance Painter, ZBrush, or Mari, it is more than capable of getting most jobs done if the user takes the time to learn and understand it.
See More
Top
Con
Poor particle system
The Blender particle system can at times be a little limiting and finicky (and buggy) to get working. Even if it can get most straight forward jobs done, it is far from the most advanced system, and could benefit largely from advancements.
See More
Top
Pro
Includes video editing & compositing tools
Blender's node-based compositor has comprehensive video sequencing and post-processing features.
See More
Top
Pro
Node based modeling support
See More
Top
Pro
Keyboard shortcuts
Good keyboard shortcuts for everything. Keep your left hand on the keyboard and your right hand on the mouse.
See More
Top
Pro
Very useful for a freelancer
It offers a round solution (it covers many areas and professional fields) for a freelancer, for free, constantly updated, very polished, and allowing high quality results that clients do require. After some learning, it becomes very useful for professional work.
See More
Top
Pro
Has a large community
There's a huge community to help you get started immediately.
See More
Top
Pro
Coherent and streamlined workflow / internal use logic
The trick with Blender is to get used to its usage philosophy, as it keeps consistent through all the application. Once you get it, every feature or addition is learnt naturally, almost effortlessly.
See More
Top
Pro
Very versatile
You don't have to switch between software when you want to do different things. Because modeling, sculpting, composting, video editing etc can all be done in blender.
See More
Top
Pro
Generative geometry using nodes
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD
Technology:
C, Python
3D:
Yes
2D:
Yes (as of 2.8)
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
663
95
Substance Designer
All
4
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Native integration with many game engines
It has the ability to export sbsar files, these can be put into most game engines allowing in engine tweaking of procedural content.
See More
Top
Con
Expensive
The pricing starts at $20 for the indie license and $100 for the pro license.
See More
Top
Pro
Ability to create custom substance files
Substance designer allows users to create custom substance files, it offers a lot of power with a mix of workflow of working with procedural textures and bitmaps.
See More
Top
Con
Not good for painting textures
Substance designer is not very powerful when it comes to painting textures, while there are 2D painting tools, they are not very good.
See More
Hide
Get it
here
11
9
Built By the Slant team
Find the best product instantly.
4.7 star rating
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now - it's free
{}
undefined
url next
price drop