When comparing Mari vs Substance Painter, the Slant community recommends Substance Painter for most people. In the question“What are the best 3D texture painting softwares?” Substance Painter is ranked 2nd while Mari is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Substance Painter is:
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)
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Pros
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.
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.
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.
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)
Pro Painting and procedural editing of textures
Cons
Con The most expensive one yet
Not made for hobbyists or indie game developers.
Con Eye wateringly expensive and inaccessible like all their products
Con Not object oriented
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.
Con Cannot export in a procedural format
You can not export substance (sbsar) files in Painter.