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[Redskull]

Was just wondering what people thoughts were on this tool.

https://www.allegorithmic.com/products/substance-designer

I think it looks like fun but I can't decided if I'd be willing to pay that much for a tool just so I can make some nice textures. Don't know if that be overkill for use with WW.  ;D

[wallworm]

Great question.

I own Substance Designer and think it's a really great tool. Your mileage will vary depending on what you want to do with it.

My personal advice is first to master Slate and the materials built into Max and how to get all you can get from those. If you are already at that level, Substance Designer is probably a great choice if you want to learn how to create new arbitrary material systems to be reused in Max or other environments (like UE4, etc). Even for making materials inside Max, SD can be useful. Making Substances takes more technical understanding that average materials... and I think that it can become cumbersome if your intent is to quickly make materials. For many artists, my guess is that letting someone else create the substance is most convenient.

One Substance I would certainly add to your collection is Bitmap2Material. I use it all the time... and it solves 95% of the cases where I'd otherwise want a substance. I love BM2M.

[wallworm]

PS, I meant to add this above.

In case you did not see it, there is also a new video on how Substances fit into the WW Pro texture workflow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6pXGCoMbVE

[Redskull]

Awesome tutorial! I'll have to check out what I can do with 3ds max, although I don't know if 2010 has the same  features material wise. Only reason I'm looking for other methods is because I can't quite achieve the results I'm looking for in Photoshop. I can make a great texture but it never seems to look perfect once I apply it to a brush. So I might just have to experiment with the slate tools more. Thanks for the info.

[wallworm]

Why hanging on in Max 2010, may I ask? 2015+ is definitely superior in every way. In terms of texturing, 2011+ was when the Viewport Canvas became a really cool tool (the 2010 implementation, if memory serves me, was the initial addition and was really pointless in that version). Viewport Canvas is one of those tools I personally love using for adding character to textures and painting.

[Redskull]

I'm using 2010 primarily because the games I like to mod are only compatible with that version of max. I guess I could try to install an updated version on a different drive thought. Just don't want to deal with the hassle of resetting everything up for the other games I export models to.

[wallworm]

Adding an update:

Substance Designer 5 will crash on opening if you haven't updated it since Jan 1. So if you own SD 5, you'll need to download the updated patch.