Yeah, all true and valid thoughts. But sometimes the long pipeline saves you work compared to a one trick tool that does everything a little bit but nothing really well. Especially when this pipeline is designed to work with each other.
In the end is allowed what works, which we both agree to 
Greetings Dynobot,
There is really not much I can add about Blender 2.9x except to say that the Biggest change in everyones workflow in the last decade has been Realtime viewport rendering & Rendering in general.
Since switching from Maxon C4D to Blender completely, for both content creation and final animation rendering , back in April this year,
I could never go back to any 3DCC software that did not offer realtime or very rear realtime viewport performance.
For general look Dev & TD/lighting work, Blenders EEVEE is quite the treat after so many years struggling with C4D’s Bloody awful veiwport.
I am currently working on an animated web series based on the Popular videogame franchise “HALO” from 343 Industries.
and creating all of the content in Blender including the custom clothing& armors for my Iclone/CC3 Avatars
and importing my animated Characters from Reallusion Iclone/CC3
back to Blender for rendering
I will be doing all of my final renders with EEVEE.
I would also strongly …Strongly!! urge you to invest in the Hardops& box cutter add-ons even if your modeling passion is sculpting.
Also be sure to get the free SSGI plugin for EEVEE from Github
(or perhaps Gumroad??)
Essentially it enables realtime (screen space) Global Illumination for EEVEE, giving Emmissive materials the ability to act as light sources in EEVEE the way they do in path tracers.
On the matter of free or low cost companion software for Blender
You should have a look at Krita as well.( free)
They have done a right proper job at ripping off Adobe photoshop
with the latest release ( in a good ,flattering way)
and it is a much more “polished” tool than GIMP IMHO
Also Krita ( I have found) is the only free 2D editor than can output SVG files that Blender can recognize /import for extruding 3D models from vector profiles.
Also I now use the Free version of Davinci Resolve 16 from Black Magic Design,
Not only does it have an excellent nonlinear editor with non destructive adjustment layers and color grading tools, but a proper node based compositor( Fusion)
with many open FX plugins/ effects.
and a powerful ,feature rich sound editor called “fairlight”
I have found Davinci resolve a perfectly suitable finishing/delivery replacement for my aged Final Cut Pro and After Effects CS since leaving the Mac OS platform for good after finishing a very long term 93 minute animated film project back in April.
Cheers.
Hey Threedude!
Thank you for the information. I’ve been playing around with Blender the last few days., really changed from when I last saw it years ago.
Thank you again for taking the time to give me your input
Sure thing Mate,
Alot to take in, but all of the affordable options on offer these
days makes for a good time to sort of wade back
into 3D/CG at your own pace.
Cheers.
Between Gimp & Krita, I don’t think that it has to be an “either or” situation. While there is a lot of overlap in what they’re each designed to do, both apps have their place. IMO, if you’re going to use Krita then using Gimp alongside it would be prudent. Each does stuff that the other doesn’t. Krita fills some major holes in Gimp’s capabilities and vice versa. My only real complaint, however, is that neither app is spectacularly fast. Some iffy sluggishness especially when it comes to layer or adjustment ops.
Yes, Gimp is image manipulation, and Krita is digital painting. That’s indeed two different areas with completey different approaches and feature sets.
Gimp and Krita aren’t bad. They do the job to some degree. I would nevertheless also have a look at one of the commercial solutions. Serif’s Affinity Photo is known to be a good competitor to Photoshop nowadays, is cheap, and is miles ahead of Gimp. Same goes for digital painting. Krita has a somehow cryptic interface, i never got warm with it. There are better solutions around.
This depends of the job though. I don’t want to miss Gimp for creating my simple UI icons. The box selection and grid features are not so good solved in Affinity Photo.
Agreed. 100%.
To me, the most shocking thing about Affinity Photo is the basic fact that, by way of Serif Photo Plus, it’s pretty much been around for 21 years. I guess that I had been so heavily invested in Adobe’s ecosystem that I never once gave any of the credible alternatives my time. I’m actually glad that I did. Affinity Photo kinda dances to its own beat at times and I do find myself missing a few features here and there, but it has proven to be a credible replacement. A Gimp & Krita combo is excellent if you’ve got a $0 budget, but I’d almost certainly recommend Affinity Photo over Corel PaintShopPro or even Adobes PS Elements. In hindsight, I feel really silly to have ignored Serif’s apps for so long.
Indeed it depends on the job at hand
The best texture painting tools are still the paid/subscription ones
After 19 years as a 2D print Design professional in the Wash DC metro area,
using every version of the Adobe tools since the mid 90’s,
I find myself with very little need for any serious 2D image manipulation
now that My main focus is modeling& 3D animated filmaking/VFX.
Although Krita has many photoshop styled Image editing tools and is not strictly a
“painting” app
(pic)
Even using my Actual Photoshop and Illustrator CS3 ,over on my ancient Mac, feels quite anachronistic these days( I keep holding down the middle mouse button& trying to rotate the image on the X/Y axis)
I tend to look at most other softwares through the lense of; does it enhance my Blender workflow?
I am completely windows based now with three PC’s
Blender is very discriminating about where SVG files come from so Krita’s ability to export vector layers to Blender compatible SVGs for complex profile shapes
,prevents me having to fire up that dusty old mac computer just to use Illustrator CS for a few minutes.
Right now Iclone pro 7 & CC3 Pipeline are my only paid software(perpetual)
and I plan to keep it that way.
