What are the best 3D texturing tools for game development?

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Sep 16, 2020

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4 Options Considered

Best 3D texturing tools for game development	Price	Last Updated
-- Substance Painter	-	Sep 16, 2020
-- Substance Designer	-	Oct 31, 2019
-- Quixel Suite 2	$139.00	Jun 1, 2020
-- PixPlant	$129.00	Jun 1, 2020

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score 3 · Answer 1

Substance Painter

Top Pro

Flexible texture export options

You can export textures from Substance Painter in preset configurations targeting other 3d software or make a configuration for your needs. You can setup naming conventions and even pack texture maps into individual RGB channels. You can also add texture padding on export as well. 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

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

Massive project sizes

Projects typically reach around 100-200 MBs. Project files contain everything added and used in them including baked textures, models, and materials. This is meant to allow you to open the project anywhere without dealing with missing files. See More

Top Pro

Particle brushes

A unique feature of Substance Painter, you can use Particle brushes to paint more chaotic details such as rain, rust, scorch marks, vines, and more. You can customize settings for the built-in particle emitters to the desired result you like. See More

Top Con

Cannot export Substance SBSAR files

Unlike it's counterpart Substance Designer, you cannot export .sbsar files using Substance Painter. It is designed solely as a texture painting application and not a procedual one, despite leveraging Substances for procedual generation of details. See More

Top Pro

Painting and procedural editing of textures

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score 1 · Answer 2

Substance Designer

Top Pro

Node-based procedural texturing

Designer's main strength is that it approaches texturing in a procedural way with the use of a node graph workflow. You can create full materials composed of multiple textures without the need for additional images. 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

Top Pro

Flexible, extendable, adaptable

You can create textures at any resolution without quality loss, create and use nodes of your own or made by others, and it can adapt to any pipeline. See More

Top Con

Resolution limited to power of two

Designer is made with game texturing in mind with one of the caveats being textures are sized to a power of 2. While you can change the resolution in general, you cannot use non power of two. 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

Expensive

A Standalone license is $149 for indie and $990 (!) for pro. There's also a monthly subscription model which includes both Designer as well as other Substance software for $19.99 for indie and $100 for pro. See More

Top Pro

Native integration with many game engines

It has the ability to export sbsar files, these can be put into most game engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine 4 allowing in engine tweaking of procedural content. See More

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score 1 · Answer 3

Quixel Suite 2

Top Pro

You don't have to leave Photoshop

If you like Photoshop so much, Quixel Suite is for you as you never have to leave any tools behind. See More

Top Con

High hardware specs for smooth performance

This loads alot of texture data during typical use and comes with a fancy 3d viewer. If your hardware isn't up to spec, you will experience some major slowdowns when using it. See More

dessertmonkeyjk's Experience

Quixel Suite is for those who love working in Photoshop but lothe having to jump between multiple documents and constantly having to jump back and forth between it and 3d software to see what it looks like in context. This makes things alot easier for texturing to the point you don't have to do any painting at all. The one issue is that it's intense on the hardware and takes some time to add and remove materials with the dDo tool. Be ready for a lot of waiting and need for beefy hardware to run smoothly. See More

Top Pro

Massive material library

You never have to download textures off the internet ever again as it comes with a very large material library to work with. See More

Top Con

Obviously isn't free

It's the price of the full version of PixPaint plus $10 See More

Top Pro

Ability to paint directly on 3d models

The included 3Do viewer allows you to both view and paint on your models so you don't have to guess where that one spot is within your UV unwrap. Note that this is limited to painting masks, you cannot project textures. See More

Top Con

Only Works with Adobe Photoshop

Lack of options when it comes to Image Editing Software, especially since Photoshop is.not even free. See More

Top Con

No longer supported

The development has stopped. See More

Top Con

Doesn't always play nice with manually added layers

Quixel Suite basically takes over Photoshop in terms of layer creation and management. While you can still create layers manually, Quixel isn't always aware of it and may confuse the software. See More

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Answer 4

PixPlant

Top Con

Closer to $150

The demo is the only free version out there, but it has a watermark option that can only be removed if you purchase the full version. And it isn't affordable for everyone. See More

What are the best 3D texturing tools for game development?

4 Options Considered

Substance Painter

My Recommendation for Substance Painter

My Recommendation for Substance Painter

Flexible texture export options

Expensive and impossible to run without an expensive graphics card

Allows you to paint in full 3D

Massive project sizes

Particle brushes

Cannot export Substance SBSAR files

Painting and procedural editing of textures

Substance Designer

My Recommendation for Substance Designer

My Recommendation for Substance Designer

Node-based procedural texturing

Not good for painting textures

Flexible, extendable, adaptable

Resolution limited to power of two

Ability to create custom substance files

Expensive

Native integration with many game engines

Quixel Suite 2

My Recommendation for Quixel Suite 2

My Recommendation for Quixel Suite 2

You don't have to leave Photoshop

High hardware specs for smooth performance

Massive material library

Obviously isn't free

Ability to paint directly on 3d models

Only Works with Adobe Photoshop

No longer supported

Doesn't always play nice with manually added layers

PixPlant

My Recommendation for PixPlant

My Recommendation for PixPlant

Closer to $150

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