Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
I think the perpetual license of Substance Painter is the best deal for owning a texturing software, but Mudbox is crazy easy. The rent price is great in my opinion.
Quixel Mixer puzzles me... either I don't get it or it's empty. Like you can do anything except loading an already made texture, then other on top and blend them. I don't see options or tools to create anything. Hence the name and free tag.
Marmoset Toolbag is including Substance-like painting tools. Expensive, but worth mentioning. Not sure it supports UDIM either.
3DCoat seems nice too. I tried it some time ago for retopology and it was great, not sure about texturing. They are very religious and ask you nicely not to do anything that would make Jesus sad, it's up to you how comfortable you are with that: https://3dcoat.com/about-us/our-voice/
I never noticed 'til you mentioned it. Their software is pretty powerful and they support it with frequent updates. I think that counts for something.
There's also Materialize, which is free and recently updated and looks very good now. Also Blender can now create PBR textures in 3.0 or 2.93, I get those confused.
Not enough to make me touch that with a 10-foot pole, lol. I'm all for freedom of spiritual beliefs, but I tend to get nervous and squicky around any company that makes those beliefs part of their business model.
For non-organic stuff, yeah you can come real close. If it needs SSS or translucency, you're going to get wildly different results because Substance handles it very differently than Studio - at least based the numerous experiments and amount of hair I've lost trying to do so thus far.
Anyway, if you watch the official tutorials videos from Adobe/Allegorithmic and some from FlippedNormals on Youtube, you should be able to learn the basics fairly quickly.
free this month using Unreal
You are very welcome :)
They hide it on the website, so here is the link! https://www.foundry.com/products/mari/non-commercial
Just keep in mind, its personal use only. Its a great way to test the waters and see if its for you. I personally love it, I just don't do enough texturing anymore to make it worth the cost of a professional license.
I like Substance Painter. I just stick the maps in the appropriate boxes and turn the strength up to 1. Works good for me.
So I see a Substance B2M3 on sale for $33 from Steam. I do not have Photoshop, so would this be ok for generating bump and normal maps from a texture, or can Painter already do this?
That is, I think, more of a Substance Designer feature - B2M is implemented as a Designer material withitsinputs being the maps to be used to geenrate the new material and the settings. I never had much success with it, but that was at least in part unreasonable expectations.
I don´t know if Painter can do it, but even if it does, B2M is very easy, and creating maps from a photo takes seconds. If this is something you plan to do regularly, don't even think about it and grab it. I know there are free alternatives like Materialize, but for me, nothing beats B2M. BTW, it was later renamed Alchemist and now it's named Sampler (ew).
If the 33 doesnt break the bank, Id say go for it. The substance series is really an amazing group of softwares.
I just wanted to make sure I wasn't getting something that might be unnecessary. I have tried a few free normal map makers at times and was rather underwhelmed. It isn't something I do often, but it would be nice to have something like that which is capable of something a bit better. Plus after using those free apps I was curious how much better it actually is.
It is really nice to have PA's input on this subject (and ones who make some really cool stuff at that). I am totally in the dark on these kinds of software and I appreciate this information from your perspectives.
I am curious though, if B2M3 is something Substance Designer does, perhaps I should just grab Designer and Painter together. I'd be down with that since Designer 2021 is at $100 on sale, too. Or is B2M done in a way that makes it quicker for those specific tasks than Designer?
I've only ever used Substance Painter. It's fairly easy to use.
B2M is similar in function to the free Materialize: https://boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/
Worth tring that first to see if it does what you need. There are tutorials for it on YouTube if it's not intuitive enough.
Ok, after some searching B2M is not something Designer does.
They are completely different things.
Substance designer lets you connect together nodes to make procedural substances.
B2M3 lets you turn pictures into textures.
So that answers that. I'll just grab B2M with Painter since it is on sale. Unfortunately I am running out of time to take advantage of the Steam sale, so I don't have enough time to play around with BoundingBox. The sale ends at I think 1pm tomorrow, but I have to hit the bed and work. At $30 I can go for that. That's less than a discounted Daz pro bundle, LOL, and I'll get more use out of it (at least I hope so).
Again, thanks for the input, everybody. And maybe somebody will come across this thread in the near future and find it useful to them.
there's quite a few apps that can turn images into normal & height maps, I haven't used this in years ..but it's free http://www.crazybump.com/
Substance Designer includes a Bitmap To Material Light node, which provides a "Light" version of the full Bitmap To Material program. Here is a link to the help file for this node.
Not free anymore it seems - license is $99 - $299.
I don't think people are actively performing 3d projection alogirithms in their head while painting in 3D painting apps.
This is why you have a 3D painting app so you can paint in 3D rather than 2D, or you can visualise in 3D while painting in 2D.
That aspect of it should really be the least of your concerns.
Granted, I've never investigated these types of applications in any kind of depth, but Armor Paint looks amazing. I love the nodes approach.
Thanks for the reference.
No worries - I've been a supporter since a few iterations ago and it's really made loads of progress. They've just added a material resource function, similar to Substance Source (though not as extensive, yet) and a whole bunch of other cool stuff.
Over the last 2.5 years I lost my short term memory so much of that time is a blank for me so the stuff I did know about Substance I have now forgotten. I've forgottetn how to use a lot of my development programs.
As I said earlier in that post, I know very little of how these apps work. Whenever I have tried to edit a texture I have found it in the Surfaces tab which shows me where to find the image in the DAZ Studio Textures folder. There are the flattened, 2D texture maps and I have to try to figure out where to start editing. Invariably, I am way off.
So if these apps can take a dress or a car from my library and I can edit them in 3D and save them so that I can use the edited version in DAZ Studio, then they do what I am hoping they do.
Outrider42
Whatever (and whenever) you decide to take the plunge with, how about doing a bit of a review on it here at the forum? I really enjoy reading your posts, and you have an interesting perspective about things. I have been contemplating getting into some texturing myself, and would love to see where your footprints lead to.
I have bought Armor Paint, but I see it mostly support only .obj format.
Is it stable enough to be used, because on the download page, it says it is just a preview.
OK, I may be showing my ignorance, but wouldn't Armor Paint just need the object's uv map? OBJs don't carry much material info, but they do carry uvs perfectly. That is, what other format would be desirable beyond OBJ, which is supported absolutely everywhere?
Good point, @TheMysteryIsThePoint.
I just do not know Armor Paint, that is why I ask, if somebody else has used it and could share some practical usage tips about it.
Otherwise I will be just a supporter of Armor Paint, like @Silent Winter