PRO:
- It’s every bit the 3D equivalent to Photoshop and is, in many ways, what MAXON’s BodyPaint3D tried to be.
- It’s fast and highly responsive even with lots of large 4K layers
- Baking is fast and produces quality results, although you might find yourself going back to the slower xNormal on occasion.
- The paint tools are extremely strong, especially with particles on your side.
- MUCH cheaper than Foundry’s Mari alternative
CON:
- Welcome to Camp Adobe. There was never any doubt how Allegorithmic would treat their customers. Support was great and the upgrade pricing was downright reasonable. Adobe LOVES their subscription (ie. cash cow) model of doing business and support has, historically, been hit or miss at times. No telling how they’ll treat Substance down the line, especially since it isn’t officially part of the CC ecosystem. Maybe they’re in it for the long haul. Maybe they’re not.
- Like many established apps, Substance Painter has gotten a bit bloated over the years. I’ve been using it since v1. The UI/UX at v2020 is more “weighty” than it’s ever been. This can be addressed and fixed in future versions, but - let’s face it - this is Adobe we’re talking about. They ignored the bloat issue with Photoshop’s UI for many years. There’s no telling when or if they’ll address the issue for an app that wasn’t born in-house. To be clear, the Painter UI/UX isn’t bad. It just long overdue for some clean up.
ABOUT THE ALTERNATIVES…
I stand by my recommendation of ArmorPaint for indie artists who are strapped for cash. Especially for the tiny/free price, it’s extremely capable. It’s not as fast, stable, or as feature rich as Substance, but that’s to be expected given that it hasn’t even reached v1.0 status yet. On the flipside, there’s something to be said for a no-frills experience. Some of the creature comforts might not be there, but running lean means that you have very little to distract you from the task at had; That makes for an equally newbie friendly experience.
3D-Coat is decently solid for 3D paint and is about as fast as you’d expect from the app, whose voxel toolset is smooth as silk. Of course, you can make an argument that it’ll never be as good as Substance Painter and, well, you’d probably be right. 3D-Coat’s main attraction isn’t the paint functionality. It’s (primarily) a sculpt tool. You can certainly UV and paint in it, but the meat of the app is the sculpting. In that spirit, an app like Substance Painter only has to be good at one specific thing - 3D paint. It doesn’t have to concern itself with also being good at sculpting, modeling, animating, & so on - unlike general purpose suites. Additionally, 3D-Coat’s perpetual license is still 2x+ more than Substance Painter’s (Steam purchase only) perpetual.
Mari is… okay. Admittedly, my exposure to Mari has been limited to the Indie version. Even considering the Indie limited feature set, I’d still rather use Substance Painter or the more limited ArmorPaint. Like MODO, Mari feels thrown together and messy. The paint tools, at least on my end, don’t feel as responsive once your projects get more complex. I would like to think that the so-called “pro” version is faster, but I’ll never know. You’re just not going to convince me to pay almost $2,200 for a product whose alternative is superior AND cheaper. I can’t even direct y’all to any version Mari Indie since Foundry no longer offers it on Steam. I’m sorta shocked that they still offer MODO Indie via that channel too; It should be noted that MODO Indie support is super weak and the app itself is typically a release or two behind the pro version.
BodyPaint3D… Don’t even bother. I first stated using MAXON’s Cinema4D, of which BodyPaint3D is a part, some 18 years ago with R6 and still maintain a current license. To put it bluntly, Cinema 4D’s BodyPaint3D functionality is an utter joke. Much like C4D’s cloth/dynamics, pyroclastics, and material system, its BP3D functionality is ancient, neglected, slow, under powered, and too crude to be practical. Even when 3D paint was being emphasized in C4D’s promo literature, I can’t point out many pros that were actually using it to the same degree as they might use Substance Painter today. At best, most pros (myself included) only ever used BodyPaint3D to touch up 3D textures or fix seams. Feature for feature, comparing BodyPaint3D to Substance Painter might be like comparing MS Paint to Photoshop.
Quixel Mixer… shows promise. It’s free, which is nice. It’s supported and developed by by Epic, which is also nice. I will say, however, that it has a long way to go to be a legitimate competitor for Painter. It’ll get there. It’s just not there yet and the reason why is pretty simple: They basically started over. Mixer’s predecessor, Quixel Suite, aimed to be a 3D paint solution that integrated itself with Photoshop, allowing you to work in 3D, but also use Photoshop’s extensive tool set. Conceptually, the app was brilliant. In practice, however, it was buggy af and hard to keep updated and compatible with each new PS version. Instead of trying to swim upstream, they just abandoned Quixel Suite after a few major releases. Mixer is basically the do over for them; a reboot of sorts that aims to get the job done without being PS dependent. In starting over, they have some old ground to go back over and tools to (re)create. Mixer isn’t as good as Painter, but it might be… in time. Also, how much you enjoy the Mixer experience also depends on how much you appreciate its deep ties to MegaScans.
IF YOU OPT TO GO THE SUBSTANCE PAINTER ROUTE…
Opt for the perpetual license Steam version. There’s no telling if Adobe will keep on offering it alongside the subscription version, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice to NOT pick it up. At $149, you can’t lose. You get 12 months of feature updates and bug fixes for a program that is in every way the same as the non-Steam version. Plus, even if Adobe abandons their Steam plans, it’ll never expire.
You could argue that the non-Steam version is worth the $219 because it also includes Designer & Alchemist. However, not everybody uses or needs Designer. You might well be paying an extra $70/yr to just use one app, Painter. On top of that, unlike with the Steam license, you’ll be paying $219/yr in perpetuity thanks to the subscription model. Stop paying and you no longer have the app at your disposal. The Steam purchased edition is yours forever, or for as long as it’s compatible with your OS/hardware. You only have to pay once. Of course, you could opt to pay $149 every year for the latest Steam version.
(Naturally, there are some that might suggest it’s still more costly to pay Steam $298 every year for Designer & Painter especially since you’re not getting Alchemist or Source in the deal. Again, however… perpetual licenses. That’s a fair trade, imo. )
NB: If your Substance account is linked to your Steam account, you’ll also have access to a license key and EXE installer via your Substance account. Why is this cool? It means that you don’t need Steam. You can install AND activate that perpetual indie license offline. No Steam! Great for environments where you’ve got restricted internet access or where the Steam client isn’t an option.
"SHOULD I BITE THE BULLET AND USE PAINTER?"
It depends.
If you’re cash strapped to the point where you can’t afford the $149 for a Steam perpetual license or $219/yr for a subscription, ArmorPaint is viable. Again, there are limitations and the product is still WIP, but $0 ($19 via Gumroad) is hard to beat. If you’re patient and have no problem working with a program that’s still growing and coming into it’s own then ArmorPaint is definitely an option. With Epic having recently tossed a (small) MegaGrant their way, ArmorPaint remains one to keep an eye on. It’s not a 1:1 replacement for Painter, but it’s about as close as you’re going to get in an open source app.
If, however, you don’t mind (blech) subscriptions or can afford to pay up $149 to Steam at least once, pull the trigger and go with Substance Painter. You might never want to go pro, but that doesn’t matter. Painter’s rich feature set is so seductive that you’ll want to use it anyway. It does everything SO well that it’s hard to pass by. Save the cash if you have to.
Substance Painter is in a very unique position.
With Photoshop, even though it’s the de facto standards, many users can do just as well by opting for the alternatives instead. Even if Affinity Photo didn’t come so close to PS-level power, which it does, it wouldn’t need to anyway. In practice, most artists only ever need a small subset of what PS has to offer. Digital artists, for example, might never touch any of the many features related to print work. Similarly, artists working in CMYK might as well ignore the features most appealing to RGB or 8-bit artists.
Substance Painter, otoh, is so laser focused on what it does that there’s no segmentation in features required by the different types of users. Texture artists working on games and film will end up touching the same corners of the app. Any Painter alternative you choose (or build) will involve some personal or functional compromises. That’s fine if you can live with them, which is why I still recommend ArmorPaint to hobbyists or poor indies. If, however, you want a TRUE 1:1 Substance Painter experience then only Substance Painter will do.
If you DO want to go pro, learning Substance Painter is probably a must. You could learn the 3D painting techniques elsewhere, but Painter compliance entails having hands on experience with the program first before applying for a studio job. Learning the app isn’t super hard, but doing so on the job is probably not recommended. 
Should you go for Substance Painter? Assess your needs. If you can get away with ArmorPaint or Blender with some 3D paint related add-ons, go for it. If you find an itch to go pro or that Painter calls to you like a buxom siren, just bite the bullet and pay up. It’s not a PS vs Affinity sort of comparison where good enough is perfectly fine. At the sub-$500 price point, no other 3D paint app is exactly as powerful as Substance. Choosing a Painter alternative also means choosing to live without a feature you might later want or need.
which at the same time kinda evoked a Homer ‘doh!’ face palm moment when I eyeballed your reply since it’s sister vector app - Designer, I’ve utilized over the previous eleven months too draw graphic art biased illustrations.
