Reply To: To Substance or Not To Substance: That is the Question

[Shawn Blanch]

Thanks Kent. I agree with your commentary and really appreciate the feedback. I am still very much a noob when it comes to procedural and shaders. I can definitely say without bPainter I would have not given blender more of my texture painting time. That add-on is great for the price in my opinion.

That being said I am still very new to shading and when I watch most shading exercises. That is exactly the comment I make haha.”Okay this goes here, connect that to the vector map node, magic happens, more magic happens, connect that”

I’m not saying things are terribly explained, that is just my skill level of understanding what is going on. I am getting better at understanding some more of the basic nodes so I think I am catching on slowly, but I am guilty of blindly following without thinking about what I am doing. I then try things out on my own and that’s when I begin asking the questions I need to answer. I actually enjoy that  process a lot. Which is why I am asking this question that I don’t necessarily want to take the easy road but was interested in the idea of pursuing the substance suite.

I think too many times that if I just buy something that can do awesome work then my work will be awesome by default. But that has never been the case for me. I do awesome work when I understand the workflow and can let my creative juices flow. Now great tools can help things look awesome too but I have to learn their usage well and use my own creativity to do so.

Currently Blender without add-ons does an okay job with texture painting but it is probably one of the features I have not seen addressed in the update paths. I think it will get there eventually. And my add-ons are making it better and less painful. We made awesome stuff with it in the previous livestream for the treasure chest course and there was nothing special there. I just like the idea of none destructive painting workflows where things live on layers and can be mixed dynamically. With bPainter and the other add-ons I mentioned I can do that I just don’t know them as well as I would like. Substance is one more thing that I could grow to love, but not necessarily need.

I’m thinking out loud now. Sorry for the ramble. It seems to hep me though. Hopefully it helps another person in my shoes weigh the options.

As long as I can go back and forth between the programs and do things well I may end up buying it just to have the option to use it, but I don’t want it to take away from me learning the basics of how these things work. This is the thought I am getting at I suppose. I am really enjoying the trudging in the mud journey as a hobbyist. It is slow, and sometimes painful, but I am learning the hard way through trial and error and frustration and epiphanies and light bulb moments, which I think makes the lessons and theory stick more…….