When comparing 3D-Coat 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 3D-Coat is ranked 3rd. 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 A known app for retopology
3D coat is also known in the game industry to be a great app to preform retopology.
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.
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.
Pro PBR materials
3D Coat supports the creation of your own PBR materials that are ready to be used in the PBR workflow.
Pro Voxel sculpting
Voxel sculpting is entirely free from the bounds of polygons and topology.
Pro A fast and fun way to UV
3D coat has made UVing my work go super fast and it's actually quite fun because you're finished in a breeze.
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 Not a voxel program
This is a paid texture program. Why is it in this list?
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.
Con 7 layer restriction in the affordable version
The cheapest version available only lets you paint on 7 layers, which is very unfortunate.
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.