What are the best 3D texture painting softwares?

Question

Development3DGraphic Design3D Modeling

What are the best 3D texture painting softwares?

14

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Considered

690

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Feb 6, 2024

Last
Updated

14 Options Considered

Best 3D texture painting softwares	Price	3D	Platforms
83 Blender	Free	Yes	Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD
69 Substance Painter	$150-590	-	-
61 3D-Coat	-	-	-
-- ArmorPaint	FREE+	-	-
-- Quixel Mixer	Free / paid	-	-

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score 156 · Answer 1

Blender

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

Not all Blender add-ons are free

There are some add-ons that can speed up your workflow, but while some paid add-ons cost between $1 and $29, others cost between $30 and $300 (some are premium subscription-based). This means that those who can't afford it will have a harder time completing their Blender projects. See More

Arihan Sharma - Sir John A Macdonald Sr PS (1540)'s Experience

This is the best in the world!!! See More

Specs

3D:Yes

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD

Technology:C, Python

2D:Yes (as of 2.8)

See All Specs

Top Pro

Free and open source

Blender is licensed under the GPL. See More

Top Con

Blender is a lot of things, but it isn't usable half of the time

If you've used Blender for more than 10 minutes, you know what I'm talking about. Blender is definitely a powerful tool-- If you get it to work. Sculpting in real time, for an example. Sometimes it straight up doesn't work. See More

GraciousNuYing's Experience

It Sucks, it is for losers See More

Top Pro

Powerful animation suite

Blender provides a mediocre rigging system, and automates animation by interpolating between keyframe positions. See More

Top Con

The physics engine is a bit lagging behind, especially the destruction physics

GenerousWaramurungundi's Experience

Very intuitive, pretty interface and free, very useful to just quickly open and use, no sign ins, paywalls or big installs! See More

Top Pro

Keyboard shortcuts

Solid keyboard shortcuts for 90% of common use-cases. See More

Top Con

Game engine is deprecated

Blender originally came with a game engine suited for making Blender a AIO solution for making games as well. However, in Blender 2.8, this has been removed. However, a emerging project named Armory3D is your go-to solution if you like Blender-native workflow. See More

DashingCheonjiwang's Experience

Very bad in motion graphics See More

Top Pro

Supports both low-poly and hi-poly modeling

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

UltraVerse Studios's Experience

This software is very powerful for a free program. It has multiple features available at your fingertips. See More

Top Pro

Very useful for a freelancer

With its powerful fully rounded abilities for free, it's become the norm for freelancers that can not shell out thousands of dollars every year. And while the user experience is worse compared to using a dedicated software, its pros outweigh its cons. See More

Top Con

Newer versions require expensive hardware/computers

The latest version (2.8) is free. It has more features, a redesigned User Interface, and better functionality. But for those who don't have a computer with a advanced GPU (with OpenGL 3.3 or higher) will never be able to use that version, unless they have and can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on new computers/devices. See More

InfluentialNuadaAirgetlam's Experience

wont load but who cares SUPPORT 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

EncouragingUkur's Experience

If you want free and open source use armor painter. You dont have to pay. you can just compile it yourself or asks someone 4 someone elses excecutables without it being illegal. See More

Top Pro

It has sculpting and 3D painting features

Although blenders 3d painting and sculpting tools (mostly painting) are not at par with specialized software like Substance painter, z brush, 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

Bad vertex normal after boolean operations

Does not handle polygon intersections well. And needs tweaking by hand points or adding average vertex normals via modifiers. See More

ResourcefulHera's Experience

3 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

Capuccino 's Experience

Blender's new intuitive interface in 2.8, along with its powerful toolset, along with its one-stop shop solution for 3D Artists, VFX Artists, and the like is a must-to-try if you're delving in 3D today. See More

Top Pro

Includes video editing & compositing tools

Blender's node-based compositor has comprehensive video sequencing and post-processing features. See More

IntellectualThinanMalkia's Experience

good . See More

Top Pro

Has a good 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 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

Node based modeling support

Top Pro

Support from the developers

Whenever a bug is detected, you can report it to the developers of Bender and/or Blender add-ons, and they will fix that problem for the newer version. See More

Top Pro

Has a large community

There's a huge community to help you get started immediately. Many of the people in the community are also contributors of Blender's Development. Whether it's donations, add-on creation, blend files, renders, animated videos, bug reports, or even feedback, contributions are one of the biggest reason Blender is becoming a better alternative to the industry standards of 3D Software. 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

2D Animation is possible in Blender

Blender 2.8 now makes 2D a first-class citizen in Blender, allowing to compose drawings as blender objects on top of 3D objects. See More

Top Pro

Generative geometry using nodes

See All

score 103 · Answer 2

Substance Painter

Top Con

Adobe got it and stuck it's rent on it

It will die a slow miserable death. See More

Top Pro

Can be purchased on Steam

SP can be purchased on Steam but will only get a year of free updates. See More

Elisha Knight's Experience

Way too expensive. See More

Top Con

Expensive and impossible to run without an expensive graphics card

The free trial is the only thing free, but it can only be useful for 30 days. You'll have to pay a lot of money for the full version, and even if you do get it, it won't work on a normal computer. You will have to pay for an expensive graphics card to use it, or an expensive gaming computer to install it on, which means a lot more money flying out of your pocket, wallet, and/or bank account. Plus, since it's now an Adobe product, meaning it's only available via subscription.. 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

CapableFlidais's Experience

The best software for texturing that is being developed curently. See More

Top Con

Cannot export in a procedural format

You can not export substance (sbsar) files in Painter. See More

Top Pro

Painting and procedural editing of textures

Arihan Sharma - Sir John A Macdonald Sr PS (1540)'s Experience

Very Bad. See More

Top Con

Suits more for procedural texturing rather than handpainting (no marquee tools)

Top Pro

Available for Linux, mac and Windows

Substance painter has builds for all 3 major platforms. See More

Harry Bailey (Zombie Battle Divisions)'s Experience

Substance is the most popular for organic texturing and Photoshop is more tailored towards UV maps See More

Top Con

UDIM is limited

UDIM is limited but it is currently being developed. See More

IngeniousShennong's Experience

easy to use, full workflow See More

Top Con

Only works with limited UV maps

Can work with models composed with a couple of uvmaps at most. This makes spainter very limited and only suitable most of the times to hard surface texturing. See More

Top Con

Very un-intuitive, feels like prison

See All

score 71 · Answer 3

3D-Coat

Top Pro

Professionals recommend 3D Coat for Handpainted textures

You can texture in many styles with this app, but when it comes to Handpainting, as seen in World of Warcraft and Torchlight, 3D Coat is the one that many professionals will advice you to as their top choice. See More

Top Con

Voxel sculpting hits your system

Voxel is quite heavy on your computer, if you intent to use this as your main model and sculpt app do enough research to see if your computer can handle it and if you have the right graphic card for it. If you really have doubts , just go ask in the forums. See More

Top Pro

Voxel sculpting

Voxel sculpting is entirely free from the bounds of polygons and topology. See More

Top Con

Not a voxel program

This is a paid texture program. Why is it in this list? See More

Top Pro

PBR materials

3D Coat supports the creation of your own PBR materials that are ready to be used in the PBR workflow. See More

Top Con

7 layer restriction in the affordable version

The cheapest version available only lets you paint on 7 layers, which is very unfortunate. See More

Top Pro

A known app for retopology

3D coat is also known in the game industry to be a great app to preform retopology. See More

Top Pro

A fast and fun way to UV

3D coat makes UVing your work go super fast and it's actually quite fun because you're finished in a breeze. See More

Top Pro

Link to Photoshop, or any app that can open PSD files

You can save and open your texture work in apps like Photoshop, work on them and send them directly back to 3D coat. It will remember your layers and update. See More

Top Pro

Well Rounded

Robust software similar to Zbrush for sculpting / painting and texturing. See More

Top Pro

A good and easy software for beginers

See All

score 38 · Answer 4

ArmorPaint

Top Con

It's NOT free (even though it's open-source)

Armor Paint is open-source, but the official binaries are not available for free. Unless you can compile it yourself, or you run Arch Linux or a system based on it and can use an AUR package that'll build it for you - you'll have to pay to use this program. See More

Top Pro

Paint on multiple maps at once

ArmorPaint allows artists to paint across multiple maps at once. This allows for easy creation of coherent color, roughness, and bump maps. See More

DecorousMushdamma's Experience

The user interface is clean and it is very immediately useful with little more than one comprehensive tutorial or a read through of relevant material. See More

Top Con

Beta

It is not completed yet, which may lead to support drop, or a software that is not entirely usable. See More

Top Pro

Entirely GPU-run

Supports GPU acceleration. Since it is run entirely on the gpu, it makes painting huge maps nice and smooth on modern graphic cards. See More

SophisticatedPriapus's Experience

Its FREE ! See More

Top Con

No lossless upscaling of brush strokes

When exporting your maps in higher resolutions in Substance Painter - it'll re-draw all your strokes in the background to make sure the exported textures have as much detail as possible. Armor Paint doesn't have such a feature so far - if you paint on a small resolution texture - you're stuck with it, or you'll have to manually re-paint it yourself to get a higher resolution texture. See More

Top Pro

Node-based brushes

A simple and robust "blender-based" node system to modify brush channels. See More

Top Con

No projection on normals

The brushes are projected with a simple viewport projection, which can lead to weird warping of the brush on irregular surfaces. See More

Top Pro

Open-Source

ArmorPaint falls under the zlib license. The zlib license has been approved by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as a free software license, and by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) as an open-source license. It is compatible with the GNU General Public License. As such, the program is FREE if you compile it from source, and (as of August 2, 2020) costs only €16 to purchase pre-compiled binaries. See More

Top Pro

Epic MegaGrant's recipient

ArmorPaint received a $25,000 Epic Mega Grant. This is a large donation of money given by Epic Games through their MegaGrant Program to programs that show great promise. These grants are unconditional and recipients are expected to continue program development as they see fit. These grants can not be used to purchase unpurchasable software (open-source software). See More

See All

score 25 · Answer 5

Quixel Mixer

Top Pro

It's beautiful, intuitive as hell and creates any texture you can dream of...if you have the hardware for it.

Top Con

Seems to still be in beta

Many features missing, like layer deletion. See More

MightyLempo's Experience

Best free 3D texturing application See More

Top Pro

Free

It's freaking free. See More

Top Con

Heavy use of GPU. You need a lot of VRAM for this to run well on Mac.

Just as you get going, Mixer hangs or freezes. Especially if you start hand painting every layer. You need at least 8gb video card to have a modicum of stability. Plenty of storage and ram are a given. See More

Top Con

Free Version only works with Unreal Engine

While it is technically free, it only allows you to export with a UE licence to a UE project, very inconvenient. 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

See All

score 37 · Answer 6

BodyPaint 3D

Top Con

Bugs galore

There are programs that provide much more for much less. Specifically, it is very bug laden for such an expensive software. See More

Top Pro

Very easy to learn

MellowJanus's Experience

Aweful, poor tools, poor UVing, doesn't do 3d acceleration well, the worst part of awesome Cinema 4d. See More

Top Con

Awful everything

Lighting changes when you turn the model. Awful interface. Very few tools. See More

AmiableYacatecuhtli's Experience

It's like the damn thing was written in the seventeenth century. It's like they made it bad on purpose. See More

See All

score 28 · Answer 7

ZBrush

Top Pro

Benchmark for sculpting software

Top Con

Expensive

A single-user license for ZBrush costs $795. But, Pixologic has not charged a penny for upgrades to licensed users since inception. Anyone who has purchased Zbrush has not been left behind. See More

Top Pro

Always evolving and innovating

Every iteration of Zbrush has evolved beyond the last and has kept all other 3D package devs on their toes consistently. See More

Top Con

An odd perspective view

Does not lend itself to cinematic or artistic renderings due to a strange perspective system found nowhere else in 3D which warps according to the relationships between models and rendering viewpoint - there is no real 'camera'. It is sufficient for rendering your work on a sculptural piece or industrial design, but KeyShot Pro or any other PBR rendering program that uses a camera are recommended for scene rendering, at least in 4R7. See More

Top Pro

Can easily simplify mesh topology

Meshes sculpted with ZBrush can contain billions of polygons, but tools are provided to cleanly reduce the poly count. See More

Top Con

UI is far from user friendly

Though, it's fully customizable. Like for any software, there is a learning curve. See More

Top Pro

Powerful brush system allows for lots of creativity

ZBrush lets the user sculpt an object in fine detail with customizable 3D brushes. See More

Top Pro

Plays well with others

Can transfer work between other packages via AppLink and/or Bridge seamlessly. See More

Top Pro

Has low poly modelling tools with 4r7 version

Top Pro

Best for hi-poly modeling

Due to the nature of the program and how it uses high poly mesh sculpting it is best to consider this app when wanting high poly models, as that is what it aims to do best. See More

Top Pro

Best support

No other 3D package has had continued support from their parent company or community like ZBrush has had since inception. See More

Top Pro

Industry standard

ZBrush is a long standing industry standard for sculpting and painting 3D models which means you are guaranteed a solid application with lots of good learning material. See More

See All

score 43 · Answer 8

Mari

Top Pro

Free Trial

Though it is expensive, if you wish to use it continuously you can constantly renew your trial with lovely fake emails. Learning this can benefit your career into games or film. See More

Top Con

The most expensive one yet

Not made for hobbyists or indie game developers. See More

CromulentTelete's Experience

It has both node based and painting in 1 interface and can handle all the UDIMS. the texture projection methods are great ass wel as their keybinds. The UI doesnt trick you into thinking it wil/can do something it can not being delibraty confuzing like adobe realy loves. See More

Top Pro

FIlm Industry Usage

Though Substance Painter is catching up to Mari in terms of texturing wiht higher res textures, this program is what is used in tandem with Zbrush most commonly in Film. For the Game industry it is Substance Painter and Zbrush. See More

Top Con

Eye wateringly expensive and inaccessible like all their products

Oğulcan Sarıca's Experience

If you're not in the gaming industry and want to achieve maximum realism with your textures. Mari is the tool. See More

Top Pro

Great at handling large texture sets

Mari can handle 32K textures since 2010. It was used in creating the characters faces and such in the Avatar movie, as close-ups require such high-res textures. See More

Top Con

Not object oriented

See All

score 22 · Answer 9

PaintCube

Top Con

14 day trial

Limited options during trial. See More

Top Pro

Accessible on the web

You can use this software on your devices for as long as it has a browser. This means you can work on your projects using your personal computer, laptop, and soon on your tablet. See More

EnchantingRugiewit's Experience

The login service doesn't work fuck this shit See More

Specs

3D:Yes

Dev platforms:Browser-based

Desktop targets:Windows; Macintosh; Linux

Top Con

Not free

It's a subscription-based program. you'll have to pay between $5 and $20 in order to continue use of PaintCube once the free 7-day trial is over. See More

Top Pro

Supports layers

You can build your work in layers of texture information as you complete your model. See More

Top Con

Still in Beta

See All

score 21 · Answer 10

Sculptris

Top Pro

Free

Free 3D painting software which can be used in commercial projects is a rare thing, and Sculptris holds up to very few competitors in its domain. See More

Top Con

No N-gon support

Sculptris does not support N-gons which can make importing 3D models from other applications to paint them a little more complicated. See More

TirelessNusku's Experience

Its free and easy to learn :) See More

Top Pro

Bump map painting

Sculptris supports bump map painting, which can then be exported as a bump map, or as a normal map. See More

Top Con

Lack of tools

Sculptris is not primarily geared towards 3d painting, but rather sculpting. It also is not designed as a top of the line tool, but as a simple intuitive introduction software. This means it is a bit lacking in simple features, such as an eraser tool. See More

Top Pro

Sculpting allows for easier creative expression

Sculptris has great editing tools that allow designers to concentrate on sculpting and completely immerse themselves into making models, forgetting about all the complex methods modelers usually have to use in their daily business. See More

Top Con

Maximum of 2048x2048 texture size

Although 2048x2048 is plenty for most indie developers, the lack of 4k support is definitely be a huge draw back for models that require larger textures. See More

Top Con

No support for specular map painting

Sculptris has no support for specularity (or roughness) maps, which are necessary in a PBR workflow. See More

See All

score 13 · Answer 11

Photoshop

Top Con

Its from Adobe, and Adobe care about the money and attention than its customers and subscribers.

Nobody should use Adobe products. Period. Same as Autodesk. They love to force customers to pay every month to use any of their products in every way possible, instead of providing them the customers with a free, no trial, basic version of their products. Probably because they can. Also no, Photosop is terrible for 3D texture painting. Period. See More

Top Pro

Mobile companion apps available

There's a free mobile app available for iOS, Android & Windows Phone. See More

GraciousNuYing's Experience

TRASH! Can´t even see what I´m doing See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS

License:Hagu

Tethered capture:via Bridge

Top Con

Latest versions of Photoshop are subscription-only

While you can still buy CS6 from 2012 without needing a subscription by contacting Adobe support or the cut-down Photoshop Elements, any full-version version of Photoshop past CS6 requires a subscription. See More

Top Pro

A cheaper, standalone version called Photoshop Elements is available

A stripped down version of Photoshop, called Photoshop Elements can be bought as a standalone application for $100. See More

ExceptionalLanCaihe's Experience

BEST EVER See More

Top Con

Expensive

The standalone version of Photoshop costs $19.99/month, though it can be leased as part of the Creative Cloud Photography bundle that includes Lightroom for $9.99/month. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with Creative Cloud

You can save all projects directly to the Creative Cloud allowing you to access them from any device and with any relevant Adobe software. See More

Arihan Sharma - Sir John A Macdonald Sr PS (1540)'s Experience

3D is very bad; too simple. See More

Top Con

Very slow

It needs a very power CPU and GPU and many GBs of RAM and still it is so slow. See More

Top Pro

Creative Cloud Photography subscription includes Lightroom

Lightroom is another image editing software from Adobe that's specifically designed for photo editing and managing of large quantities of digital images. See More

Top Con

Not good enough to be so expensive

Probably the only big advantage Photoshop has over the other free software is the adjustment layers. But still too expensive for just one feature. See More

Top Pro

Packs a staggering amount of functionality

Photoshop is the most fully featured image editing software available today allowing you to perform highly advanced image manipulation. It has tools for RAW image adjustments, lens correction, retouching, image stitching, HDR, fixing framing. It supports most professional color modes and file formats. It includes extensive lists of filters, styles, effects, fonts as well as tools for painting, sketching and typography work. It understands both raster and vector graphics. It even includes tools for video editing, working with 3D objects and support for 3D printing. See More

Top Con

Affinity Photo is just as good at a fraciton of the price

Switching from Photoshop to Affinity Photo and it's hard to notice the difference quality of a professional's work. They say that PS is the industry standard, but so very few pros that tried Affinity Photo ever look back. See More

Top Pro

Lots of tutorials

There's a huge number of both free and paid tutorials available online. Websites like Lynda.com offer premium high-quality, in-depth tutorials, but there are plenty of free alternatives to be found on YouTube, blogs and specialized sites on the Internet. See More

Top Con

Doesn't give free updates

Top Pro

Industry standard

Photoshop is used by professionals everywhere in a wide variety of fields including photography, graphic design, and digital art. It is the de facto standard for image manipulation. If you've seen a magazine ad featuring a model, you've probably seen the effects of Photoshop. You won't be alone when using Photoshop. See More

Top Con

Learning it can take some time

While you can relatively quickly learn how to perform a few basic image editing tasks, understanding Photoshop's ins and outs can be difficult. It's partially due to the sheer amount of functionality that Photoshop packs (and understanding that some of the advanced functionality can take a while to understand on its own), and partially due to it being aimed at professionals with little hand-holding for novice users. See More

Top Pro

Includes powerful content-aware tools

Photoshop includes content-aware tools such as content-aware fill that can fill in a select area based on what surrounds it. See More

Top Con

Asset management capabilities are lacking

In Photoshop asset management is done through a separate program called Bridge. As Bridge is supposed to be a file management tool for not just Photoshop's files, but for files generated by all of Adobe's applications it covers a breadth of capabilities, but not depth. See More

Top Pro

Trove of plugins that extend functionality are available

A wide variety of plugins that add new effects, improve existing functionality and simplify workflow are available. See More

Top Con

Batch editing of images is not straightforward

Photoshop is designed to work extensively on one image at a time and while batch editing support exists, it's not that intuitive to use. See More

See All

score 23 · Answer 12

Mudbox

Top Con

Its from Autodesk

Nobody should use Autodesk derived products.The 3d industry is really contaminated with Autodesk monopoly and abuse of inflated prices that everybody seems willing to pay. Enough is enough. See More

Top Pro

True 3D and projective painting

Top Pro

Supports UV-less PTEX painting

Top Pro

Subscribe for as little as $10/month, $80/year

Top Pro

Artist-friendly tools

Mudbox offers intuitive, easy-to-learn and use sculpting and painting tools that are a joy to use. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Top Pro

Unlimited 8K paint layers

Top Pro

Academy Award-winning toolset, originally developed at Weta Digital.

See All

score 18 · Answer 13

SelfCAD

Top Con

Not a good texturing software

Also, blender is better at modeling. See More

Top Pro

Free for students and teachers

LogicalChrysus's Experience

it is amazing how easy it was to learn See More

Specs

3D:Yes

Dev platforms:Browser-based

3D in Classroom:Free for Students and Teacher

Top Pro

Amazing sculpting tools

See All

score 4 · Answer 14

Substance Designer

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

ResourcefulPirwa's Experience

It's a great piece of software but is purely designed for using "substance designer" materials. You cant use your own images as textures. Also, it looks as though it's driven by a market-place to purchase new materials. The install ships at over 1GB but does not seem too usable out of the box. I gave up after not being able to texture a simple low-poly test model. 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 allowing in engine tweaking of procedural content. See More

See All

14 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Blender

My Recommendation for Blender

Wide import and export format support

Not all Blender add-ons are free

Free and open source

Blender is a lot of things, but it isn't usable half of the time

Powerful animation suite

The physics engine is a bit lagging behind, especially the destruction physics

Keyboard shortcuts

Game engine is deprecated

Supports both low-poly and hi-poly modeling

Poor particle system

Very useful for a freelancer

Newer versions require expensive hardware/computers

Regular release schedule

Does not handle NURBs

It has sculpting and 3D painting features

Bad vertex normal after boolean operations

Python extensibility

Includes video editing & compositing tools

Has a good rendering engine

Coherent and streamlined workflow / internal use logic

Node based modeling support

Support from the developers

Has a large community

Very versatile

2D Animation is possible in Blender

Generative geometry using nodes

My Recommendation for Substance Painter

My Recommendation for Substance Painter

Adobe got it and stuck it's rent on it

Can be purchased on Steam

Expensive and impossible to run without an expensive graphics card

Allows you to paint in full 3D

Cannot export in a procedural format

Painting and procedural editing of textures

Suits more for procedural texturing rather than handpainting (no marquee tools)

Available for Linux, mac and Windows

UDIM is limited

Only works with limited UV maps

Very un-intuitive, feels like prison

My Recommendation for 3D-Coat

My Recommendation for 3D-Coat

Professionals recommend 3D Coat for Handpainted textures

Voxel sculpting hits your system

Voxel sculpting

Not a voxel program

PBR materials

7 layer restriction in the affordable version

A known app for retopology

A fast and fun way to UV

Link to Photoshop, or any app that can open PSD files

Well Rounded

A good and easy software for beginers

My Recommendation for ArmorPaint

My Recommendation for ArmorPaint

It's NOT free (even though it's open-source)

Paint on multiple maps at once

Beta

Entirely GPU-run

No lossless upscaling of brush strokes

Node-based brushes

No projection on normals

Open-Source

Epic MegaGrant's recipient

My Recommendation for Quixel Mixer

My Recommendation for Quixel Mixer

It's beautiful, intuitive as hell and creates any texture you can dream of...if you have the hardware for it.

Seems to still be in beta

Free

Heavy use of GPU. You need a lot of VRAM for this to run well on Mac.

Free Version only works with Unreal Engine

Free version is technically non-commercial only

My Recommendation for BodyPaint 3D

My Recommendation for BodyPaint 3D

Bugs galore

Very easy to learn

Awful everything

My Recommendation for ZBrush