Textures?

Hey,

For a while I have been looking for a modeling program that I can use easily and that works with Unity (and won't kill my wallet).

So far I have Wings3D, Blender, Maya PLE and Google SketchUp. At this point I prefer Wings since I find it the easiest to use. BUT, the texture creation is brutal.

So I wanted to know if there are any other good 3D modeling programs (preferably free/cheap) that have good texture tools (I like the look of 'Texture Painting' but don't know how easy it is to do)

Thanks,
Ghost

 

i'm using hexagon2 at the moment and it seems to fit the bill when it comes to modeling, painting and basic displacement painting (similar to zbrush). It's fairly cheap now. Demo here: http://www.daz3d.com/support/downloads.php?product=hexagon

btw you will need to get you head around UV mapping to get good results from 3d painting, especially if your object is a complex organic shape. Most modern modeling apps (silo3d, modo, zbrush, hexagon2) have very good unmapping tools.

cheers.

 

http://www.cheetah3d.com

 

last time i looked cheetah3d doesn't do 3d painting or does it?

 

Yeah, you can UV Map something then use the texture painting tools real time.

http://www.cheetah3d.com/features.php

-Jon

 

just had a play with the demo and i'm impressed. cheetah3d is coming along very nicely. it's interface and work flow seems very cinema4d'ish... which isn't necessarily a bad thing! :wink:

cheers.

 

This began as a rambling discourse on the pros and cons of different 3d tools. Here's the one sentence version: you can tell a lot about a 3d toolset by the images in its galleries (etc.) -- both what you see in them and what you don't see in them.

You might like to consider Silo 3D (especially if 2.0 ever ships -- if you license 1.4x now, you'll get a free upgrade to 2.0 when it ships).

http://nevercenter.com/

If you apply my one sentence rule to Silo you see a very marked example. Silo's galleries feature a lot of breathtakingly good models, but most have no textures at all

 

Well yes and no... one must remember that the famous animation Rustboy is/was being done in InfiniD 4, anyone remember that app? :wink: My point is that really if you learn your tool's abilities and limitations and have some artist ability then your quality will shine through no matter what tools you use.

cheers.

 

Well, I followed some of the suggestions here and this is what I came up with:

Hexagon 2: Looks good on site! BUT, I did not like the interface and also found the texture/bump painting hard to use. Overall I didn't like it

Silo 3D: Got the Edu Version. I liked the interface and Material function, only problem is that Unity screws up the .obj and .3ds on import rendering them useless. Also couldn't figure out how to save materials to read in Unity.

Any other programs I sould give a try?

Ghost

 

try cheetah3d. i played with it yesterday and it's texturing tools look robust and easy to use. Just remember UV unwrapping isn't always a one click solution, sometimes it take a bit of time to get a usable UV map.

but really you are running out of 'cheap' solutions for modeling/texturing/3d painting. Your choices are:

Hexagon2
Modo
Wings3D
Silo3d
Bodypaint3d
Maya
Zbrush

You would need to use Silo3d and Wings3D with a 3d painting app like BodyPaint.

There are some free 3d painters out there for Windows though. Like DeepPaint 3d and Tattoo (think it's free now):

http://www.download.com/Deep-Paint/3000-2191_4-10398243.html
http://www.terabit.nildram.co.uk/tattoo/

Cheers.

 

funny... i just tried the hex 2.1 demo today. it's ok. all 3d packages are weird at first. so the interface i took as just needing to get used to but i will say i was hoping for more. pretty much useless with a one button mouse and it was dog slow on my machine (which is a slow one anyway). it was slow even with 50,000 polys. i've had zbrush over 1,000,000 before it was that chunked (and my machine is slow!). the unwrapping stuff was ok but wasn't that great. i was hoping it would be over the top but it just wasn't. texture/bump painting, again just wasn't impressed. zbrush simply blows it away. no comparison imo (even though zb also takes some getting used to). zb's a bit more cash but well worth every penny i think. kinda like unity - it just works. maybe it's just a matter of figuring out the hex workflow but zb just works so well.

i should have prefaced all this with: i use lightwave as my modeling/animation package. in my case a package like hex or zb is just for uv/painting/normal/bump mapping. so others may find the modeling tools in hex nice. no comment from me on those cause i just don't need them.

silo through blender or wings might help the unity import for you. at least on the mesh. materials... you may need to wait and see what 1.5 brings. if you got a pc, milkshape now supports fbx and it's only like $20-25. pc only though. if you do have a pc and go the milkshape route, lithunwrap is a pretty decent unwrapper. google it - there's a free version out there.

[edit: posted at the same time as thylacine. i'll second that cheetah looks nice. haven't tried it - i'm on 10.3.9 and v3 doesn't look like it'll run.]

 

I haven't tried it, but Blacksmith3D Paint looks quite interesting ( http://blacksmith3d.com/#paint ). Not sure if it could provide a painless route between programs ..... suck it and see.

 

nice find! never heard of it, but I just downloaded the demo and going to have a play. Nice to see they support OSX.

Cheers.

 

I remember reading -- in Guns Ammo of all places -- someone pointing out that the fact that someone CAN do something with a particular tool doesn't mean that it is a good tool for doing that thing. Anyone can do almost anything if they have big enough axe to grind.

I have no clue why the guy who did Rustboy chose Infini-D to do it with, and there's no question a great artist can do great work with terrible tools, but the fact that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling lying on his back on a scaffold by candlelight doesn't mean that this is the best way to paint.

 

AGhost: where did you get the educational version of Silo and how much was it? I'm interested in its topology brush for tracing zbrush meshes, and might be interested in its features as a modeler.