Ha cheers Jens! Also I apologise for calling it the Mari Expansion Pack in the video and not the Extension Pack, I've always called it that and can't train myself to stop. For anyone reading this - this is the creator of the Mari Extension pack I touch on at the end - check his stuff out. It's awesome :D
Good video. Conclusion is, learn both. I don't know why there has there always has to be a software debate in this industry. As a generalist, I appreciate both packages and wouldn't use any DCC exclusively just because of my own personal bias. Substance excels in... well, substances (lol). I use primarily for hard body assets and when I deem 4k texture size is enough for the purpose. The 'quality vs. time spend' ratio is just unbelievably good in substance. Everything organic, hero assets and basically anything which requires cross UDIMS strokes just has to go through Mari. I must admit I find Mari rather slow and tedious to work with, but that's not really Mari's fault. Working with big UDIM sizes will slow down even the most powerful rigs out there.
@@Alexandriel. I'm sorry but I don't know much about marmoset. If I'm ever painting transparency in Mari I just do it as a mask and export it for which ever renderer I'm using (Arnold these days), so I'm guessing the same would be in Mari. I'm not sure if Mari has a way to view opacity in shaders!
Hello Michael, other industry lurcker here, I think one of the points often overlooked in these comparaisons, is potential architecture growth. Substance is more recent, benefits from newer tech advancements, and can potentially leverage a lot more before it "calsifies". Mari was built in a different era and around a very narrow set of needs, it's the best at what it does but is pretty set in its ways. Reminds me of blender vs Maya, if blender had more purchase in the industry. E.g: SubP now has paint across UDIMS. Mari users are still waiting for some semblance of topology based painting.
@@Cruz76ss Yer I actually think that's a very very valid point. All too often I do see suggestions about Mari fixes be shot down with "we can't because of X due to the way this is coded, or the way this interacts with the GPU". On one hand I 100% get that, you can't just make a piece of software do everything and if you want to then it requires potentially a giant rewrite or architecture change which isn't financially viable. That said on the other side of it, it's frustrating as an end user who doesn't really care about the back end but just wants a version of functionality that a competitor provides to help the software be as good as possible. It's been months since this video and I'm finding myself using Substance more and more. Am I still a mari user at heart? 100%! Will I be in 3 years? Well if the way this year has turned out is anything to go by, I may well end up back in Mudbox to texture ;)
Thanks for this, yes what I've gathered from studios out there. Gaming is more geared towards Substance. Where VFX is Mari with substance a useful to have.
Thanks for the great video. It's a really nice and balanced view. Mari is a complex beast and it can be difficult to access for new users working on simple projects. I suspect this is because it was originally written for users who were very much not beginners working on simple projects. Weta was always pretty detail heavy and the texture department there included some of the most experienced texture artists in the world at the time. Mari was designed to deal with the most complex assets that group of users had to deal with and not a lot of work was put into it to make it more accessible. It always assumed you were an experienced texture painter working on complex problems. Anyhoo, thanks for making the videos Michael. They're great.
Eiiii ! Hats of sir ! Learn both for sure ! Tbh in games we use painter more but man it`s nice to pop some displacement in mari on a model and have some ref patterns for scales and such for free! Nice vid Michael and all the best :D
The reason why I use Mari: I can select polys or UV-Groups and hide them. ... I also like how customizable I can make my masks and do references to other layers. But even for small projects, Mari is unaccepatble slow imo.
@@hypeuprise7026 Probably as in pedantic. It seems like it'd be a lot of levers and switches. Which for a professional VFX set up isn't an issue but I think for a casual 3D artist might be a bit too much. Like, I need to go to the store. Do I drive the car with the automatic transmission, or do I take the 5 speed manual? They'll both work and learning stick will make you a better driver in general but do I really need to mess with the shifter and clutch to get there?
I literally got a job saying I only know Substance (I studied for game pipeline). They told me they'll teach me Mari, I'm learning from this channel instead. It was a big VFX company so I'm just grateful I can learn
Thank you for this video, I have been scared to use Mari only due to how to approach when texturing. Iv been using substance for a month and I do like what it can do, but I am trying to learn Mari. my fear is how to start off by texturing. But this video was great, again thank you for this and love your work Michael. :) Would love to see your stream at some point. Hope your safe and doing well
Check out this playlist featuring videos I made for The Foundry a year or so back to teach you how most of the software works, then I've got more advanced videos on my own channel :) ruclips.net/p/PLfcn6CVBmf7gA2iAFExUXaD60b-2Gw7lE
I love it, but a few things can be added: 1. I think everybody these days *should* learn both package just for the sake of and the rivalry between products, to exchange approaches and to finally learn to combine generative and organic ways of doing textures. One can say: "hey, grandpa, maybe you'll also advice to learn to texture in Photoshop first, like back in the ol' days", but let's not go there. Besides it really challenges developers - as you may remember, Mari added nodes only in 2015 after - well, you guess it - Substance Suite started it's triumphant march on the CG landscape. Mari still doesn't have quick masks and Painter though, *except* they are present in the Extension pack EXACTLY in the same form as SP did it years back, even previews the same. This challenge thingy works both ways and that why Painter's team been developing UDIMs for five years and regretted GPU dependency so much. 2. GUI of the both packages are horrifying, you can't get enough displays to lay it all once, but Mari at least have hotkeys which can compensate for what and which you can press to call the required pallet. Painter doesn't have that and you have to open them each time by *moving cursor to the icon* engaging in very frustrating pixel hunt activity, or have it all enabled at once and look and the tiny viewpoint, like you are making all of it in tank. 3. I don't agree on the point about projections in Painter - they basically doesn't exist. Well, if you want to put a sticker or project a mask - fine, but it's absolutely useless for painting. 4. And most importantly - it's only software which probably will be replaced within few years by new, modern rivals. So invest your time in the skill. And learn both packages, it's not *that* hard, but don't get too attached to either of them.
Completely agree with number 4 there, like I say under ease of use (the first category) one of the biggest take aways from Mari is it forces you to learn the fundamentals due to its complex nature vs Substances relative ease to drop materials on. I'm seeing students that don't understand what each map controls- they just know how to make a shiny gold object in the software with the right smart masks and sliders. If tomorrow a brand new texturing program were to replace them both, then all you will have is knowledge of the fundamentals, so yer you're right, that really is the most important thing :)
thank you for your video i am currently learning 3d in selftaught , i create already some project to subtance and daammm i find this software really easy to use but it give you bad habits because sometime your just applied a material and hop it s working perfecly , so actually i am switching to mari it s hard but i am happy to understand everithing i do when i texturing :) thank for your tutorial your do in your channel it s help me a lot :) and sorry for my bad english i am baguette ^^
I cant agree more on every single word you said... at the time. But I have the feeling Substance is going to take all the Pros soons. It evolves every month and have now UDIMs and Geometry Mask. Only the MariExtensionPack5 can adjust the levels... But it is expensive.
Yer I agree with you there too! I’m going to do a new one of these after it’s been a year I think (so next month), substance has brought some fantastic updates - most importantly UDIMs - and it has meant I am now using substance on a daily basis at work, not Mari! I hope Mari does bring some exciting updates or a price change to help it keep in the running, as it’s one of my favourite pieces of software, but I do worry if it will be talked about at all in 5 to 10 years.
sums up everything. Love your videos and used them to learn mari! But can you make a video about color spaces and importing bakes and masks from substance? I do know the fundamentals but I’m kinda lost when creating masks, (when do I need to use 8bit, 16 bit from substance for example) what should be srgb/linear and so on, thank you!
Nodes are great - I would hesitate to say essential though, I know great texture artists at Weta that use layers! I used layers when texturing the Thunderbird on Fantastic Beasts for example. I would say the reason I side with Mari is all the features it brings to the table along with the understanding it forces you to have when texturing an asset
It would probably be too much of a hassle to work with nodes in Painter without fundamentally changing the way Painter works.For example would each texture set require its own node graph? Or if you wanted to share a material between 10 different texture sets, would you then have to use 10 different input node to plug the material into?
Because that's exactly the point why Designer is existing? You also could ask why Designer doesn't have painting features, but the name of SP is self-explanatory.
Hi! Great video! Any chance you have time to do an update video now that Substance is almost 2 years older than it was at the time of this video and now has UDIM support?
Hey! Yes I'm actually hoping to record a new version of this in Jan next year - as you mentioned the landscape has changed and I also have been using Substance as my main package at the company I've been at for over a year so a lot to discuss :) Sub to hear when it's out!
@@MichaelWildeVFX Nice!! I just subbed and I definitely look forward to hearing your up to date thoughts on Substance. I'm interested in Substance for a wide variety of contexts or use cases, but i'm getting into trying some higher res skin texturing and am wondering if Substance is usable on higher end machines for that purpose, or is the rule still you must use Mari, if you happen to have thoughts on that for the video. Looking forward to seeing the video in January and any substance/texturing related material you post!! :-)
It’s a good suggestion but a) I don’t like discord because I don’t understand it hahah and b) I try to answer all questions people leave here so that anyone else who clicks on the videos who may have the same issue can see the solution! Maybe if the channel keeps growing it is something I can look into though :)
No it's not. Students all too often have asked me "I want to texture on films, do I need to know Mari if I know substance?" They don't really know how to texture, they know how to change sliders around to make something look nice. The theory is really important. I don't know enough about games to answer why they don't use Mari, but I find that surprising since I do think it's such a great tool regardless of realtime or pre-rendered.
The topic that divides the community almost as much as maya vs blender. In truth if you know how to use photoshop both of these programs can be learned in around 2-3 hours.
I’ve used mega scans textures before at work, since they have such good high quality ground tiled textures that I can take into Mari or substance. I can’t say I’ve ever used mixer, I don’t quite understand what it’s for if I’m honest! Same with alchemist from substance
@@MichaelWildeVFX Ha ok no worries, thanks for the answer. Latest update of Mixer allows you to bring in 3D assets for texturing similar to Substance and Mari and it's completely free. Just wondered if VFX were looking at it at all or if it was more games pipeline. Thanks
@@MichaelWildeVFX Alchemist and Mixer are basically the same principle. They are for creating new material (variations) from mixing tiled textures and whole materials, mostly the 3D scanned type, but you can basically mix all kind of materials no matter the source (handmade, procedural, scanned). The mixing is often done via heightmap so they blend very naturally together, but you can paint masks or use alphas and procedural patterns. With a handful of Megascans ground textures for example, you could create hybrids of them, mix them with sculpted heightmaps, or procedural noise to create new variations. You can create tons of variations very fast and mixing photogrammetry derived surfaces looks very realistic. Mixer has some basic features you'll also find in Substance designer, to create patterns and repetitions, to stencil object over the surface etc.... Additionally Mixer supports very basic painting features and smart materials and the plan is to push the program more into a direction not unlike Painter for full asset texture creation. Overall I would say, If you use Megascan textures, but don't mix them, then you're doing it not quite right. (leaving a lot of potential behind). I would definitely recommend to take a look at them, these programs are very easy to understand, time needed to learn should be minimal, Mixer is free and I am pretty sure every texture artist can gain some time back from using these tools since they are very powerful and fast (no matter if its Gaming or VFX).
Their are really less content in RUclips about mari, please keep uploading new tutorials but as I am new to Mari speed up videos don't help me a lot. Thank you looking forward for your new video but please 🙏 don't speed up.
I suggest you to look at (if it's not already the case) to the FlippedNormals tutorial about Mari, and also Artruism Digital and Meshmen Studio RUclips channels :)
"i saw good creature texture paint in Substance yesterday" you said. can you tell me about that video? you said learn both. i am gonna learn substance painter first
@@MichaelWildeVFX well..in mari you can make procedural textures too right with nodes? i hate it Substance have seperate software for that called Substance designer. why they cant just put all together in 1 thing
Supporting the home team I see. Not serious: The Foundry do good work. btw and force of habit: Hence means "as a consequence; for this reason." So saying "hence why" is like saying 'why why" so drop the "why".
i think it hardly depend on the work you want to have done. At the end of the day, Mari and Substance are just tools, there is no ideology behind this, at least in my opinion. Many people may see this different, but the more they get professional, time and effectiveness become more important, the label on the package will have no meaning. i would everyone who make game assets recommend substance painter, drag and drop, easy and fast results. But when the complexity grows, you find yourselves into the world of Layer Pain. While in Mari i can browse easy and fast through my nodes network, i have to go through time-wasting fiddling. For organic stuff with high details, mari it is. In combination with Zbrush, a great team in my opinion. . With 5.0 they made many things better and fast, even the interface is still somehow old baked unix style though.
I like Mixer, but its not that useful for VFX as it is for games. Look how long it took substance painter to have Udim workflow. Mixer is playing catchup
None of this matters when Mari is so prohibitively expensive, especially compared to just how inexpensive Substance tools are. Non commercial/Student versions are utterly and absolutely worthless for indies and frankly anyone who realistically wants to use the software. Much as i dislike Adobe i have to stress just how little The Foundry have done to put Mari within /legal/ reach of people who are just starting out or anyone working on a modest budget. Even the monthly subscription is so outlandishly expensive that i personally would not even consider this potentially wonderful piece of software.
Which bit has confused you? I'm only talking about texturing since this video is about Mari and Substance - they are texturing packages. But I'm talking about them in relations to the visual effects industry, not Games or VR or anything like that.
Btw. Mari has a one year free for Students as well. Great video. And yes - learn both :)
Ha cheers Jens! Also I apologise for calling it the Mari Expansion Pack in the video and not the Extension Pack, I've always called it that and can't train myself to stop.
For anyone reading this - this is the creator of the Mari Extension pack I touch on at the end - check his stuff out. It's awesome :D
I really love your videos Michael. Please dont stop!
Cheers Patryk :)
Good video.
Conclusion is, learn both.
I don't know why there has there always has to be a software debate in this industry. As a generalist, I appreciate both packages and wouldn't use any DCC exclusively just because of my own personal bias.
Substance excels in... well, substances (lol). I use primarily for hard body assets and when I deem 4k texture size is enough for the purpose. The 'quality vs. time spend' ratio is just unbelievably good in substance.
Everything organic, hero assets and basically anything which requires cross UDIMS strokes just has to go through Mari. I must admit I find Mari rather slow and tedious to work with, but that's not really Mari's fault. Working with big UDIM sizes will slow down even the most powerful rigs out there.
Exactly..
If you have any questions, thoughts, feelings, emotions on this topic feel free to post them here - as always I try to get back to everyone one!
@@Alexandriel. I'm sorry but I don't know much about marmoset. If I'm ever painting transparency in Mari I just do it as a mask and export it for which ever renderer I'm using (Arnold these days), so I'm guessing the same would be in Mari. I'm not sure if Mari has a way to view opacity in shaders!
Hello Michael, other industry lurcker here, I think one of the points often overlooked in these comparaisons, is potential architecture growth. Substance is more recent, benefits from newer tech advancements, and can potentially leverage a lot more before it "calsifies". Mari was built in a different era and around a very narrow set of needs, it's the best at what it does but is pretty set in its ways. Reminds me of blender vs Maya, if blender had more purchase in the industry. E.g: SubP now has paint across UDIMS. Mari users are still waiting for some semblance of topology based painting.
@@Cruz76ss Yer I actually think that's a very very valid point. All too often I do see suggestions about Mari fixes be shot down with "we can't because of X due to the way this is coded, or the way this interacts with the GPU". On one hand I 100% get that, you can't just make a piece of software do everything and if you want to then it requires potentially a giant rewrite or architecture change which isn't financially viable. That said on the other side of it, it's frustrating as an end user who doesn't really care about the back end but just wants a version of functionality that a competitor provides to help the software be as good as possible.
It's been months since this video and I'm finding myself using Substance more and more. Am I still a mari user at heart? 100%! Will I be in 3 years? Well if the way this year has turned out is anything to go by, I may well end up back in Mudbox to texture ;)
Thanks for this, yes what I've gathered from studios out there. Gaming is more geared towards Substance. Where VFX is Mari with substance a useful to have.
Thanks for the great video. It's a really nice and balanced view. Mari is a complex beast and it can be difficult to access for new users working on simple projects. I suspect this is because it was originally written for users who were very much not beginners working on simple projects. Weta was always pretty detail heavy and the texture department there included some of the most experienced texture artists in the world at the time. Mari was designed to deal with the most complex assets that group of users had to deal with and not a lot of work was put into it to make it more accessible. It always assumed you were an experienced texture painter working on complex problems. Anyhoo, thanks for making the videos Michael. They're great.
Eiiii ! Hats of sir ! Learn both for sure ! Tbh in games we use painter more but man it`s nice to pop some displacement in mari on a model and have some ref patterns for scales and such for free! Nice vid Michael and all the best :D
Cheers Vick! :D
The reason why I use Mari: I can select polys or UV-Groups and hide them.
...
I also like how customizable I can make my masks and do references to other layers.
But even for small projects, Mari is unaccepatble slow imo.
Slow as in laggy?
@@hypeuprise7026 Probably as in pedantic. It seems like it'd be a lot of levers and switches. Which for a professional VFX set up isn't an issue but I think for a casual 3D artist might be a bit too much. Like, I need to go to the store. Do I drive the car with the automatic transmission, or do I take the 5 speed manual? They'll both work and learning stick will make you a better driver in general but do I really need to mess with the shifter and clutch to get there?
Loved the visual puns :D
Thanks so much for this. Im a student graduating in a few months. Learned Substance. Didnt even know Mari existed. I will teach myself.
No worries at all, it's crazy how little it seems to be spoken about!
I literally got a job saying I only know Substance (I studied for game pipeline). They told me they'll teach me Mari, I'm learning from this channel instead. It was a big VFX company so I'm just grateful I can learn
You are right. Mari is very important for VFX.
Thank you for this video, I have been scared to use Mari only due to how to approach when texturing. Iv been using substance for a month and I do like what it can do, but I am trying to learn Mari. my fear is how to start off by texturing. But this video was great, again thank you for this and love your work Michael. :) Would love to see your stream at some point. Hope your safe and doing well
Check out this playlist featuring videos I made for The Foundry a year or so back to teach you how most of the software works, then I've got more advanced videos on my own channel :) ruclips.net/p/PLfcn6CVBmf7gA2iAFExUXaD60b-2Gw7lE
I love it, but a few things can be added:
1. I think everybody these days *should* learn both package just for the sake of and the rivalry between products, to exchange approaches and to finally learn to combine generative and organic ways of doing textures. One can say: "hey, grandpa, maybe you'll also advice to learn to texture in Photoshop first, like back in the ol' days", but let's not go there. Besides it really challenges developers - as you may remember, Mari added nodes only in 2015 after - well, you guess it - Substance Suite started it's triumphant march on the CG landscape. Mari still doesn't have quick masks and Painter though, *except* they are present in the Extension pack EXACTLY in the same form as SP did it years back, even previews the same. This challenge thingy works both ways and that why Painter's team been developing UDIMs for five years and regretted GPU dependency so much.
2. GUI of the both packages are horrifying, you can't get enough displays to lay it all once, but Mari at least have hotkeys which can compensate for what and which you can press to call the required pallet. Painter doesn't have that and you have to open them each time by *moving cursor to the icon* engaging in very frustrating pixel hunt activity, or have it all enabled at once and look and the tiny viewpoint, like you are making all of it in tank.
3. I don't agree on the point about projections in Painter - they basically doesn't exist. Well, if you want to put a sticker or project a mask - fine, but it's absolutely useless for painting.
4. And most importantly - it's only software which probably will be replaced within few years by new, modern rivals. So invest your time in the skill. And learn both packages, it's not *that* hard, but don't get too attached to either of them.
Completely agree with number 4 there, like I say under ease of use (the first category) one of the biggest take aways from Mari is it forces you to learn the fundamentals due to its complex nature vs Substances relative ease to drop materials on. I'm seeing students that don't understand what each map controls- they just know how to make a shiny gold object in the software with the right smart masks and sliders. If tomorrow a brand new texturing program were to replace them both, then all you will have is knowledge of the fundamentals, so yer you're right, that really is the most important thing :)
I've used the Substance UDIM Beta and it's not too bad for a beta. I truly hope that it starts catching up to Mari in that aspect.
Outstanding! Thank You :) !
thank you for your video i am currently learning 3d in selftaught , i create already some project to subtance and daammm i find this software really easy to use but it give you bad habits because sometime your just applied a material and hop it s working perfecly , so actually i am switching to mari it s hard but i am happy to understand everithing i do when i texturing :) thank for your tutorial your do in your channel it s help me a lot :) and sorry for my bad english i am baguette ^^
I cant agree more on every single word you said... at the time. But I have the feeling Substance is going to take all the Pros soons. It evolves every month and have now
UDIMs and Geometry Mask. Only the MariExtensionPack5 can adjust the levels... But it is expensive.
Yer I agree with you there too! I’m going to do a new one of these after it’s been a year I think (so next month), substance has brought some fantastic updates - most importantly UDIMs - and it has meant I am now using substance on a daily basis at work, not Mari! I hope Mari does bring some exciting updates or a price change to help it keep in the running, as it’s one of my favourite pieces of software, but I do worry if it will be talked about at all in 5 to 10 years.
sums up everything. Love your videos and used them to learn mari! But can you make a video about color spaces and importing bakes and masks from substance? I do know the fundamentals but I’m kinda lost when creating masks, (when do I need to use 8bit, 16 bit from substance for example) what should be srgb/linear and so on, thank you!
Thank you very much
substance designer is better than mari extension pack node graph?
You need to ramp up your audio levels for next upload . your audio is below average .. great content
That’s good to know! Cheers :)
Does your opinion change now that substance has udim support?
Nodes are essential. How did substance drop the ball and not make painter node based like designer. That's why Mari is best.
Nodes are great - I would hesitate to say essential though, I know great texture artists at Weta that use layers! I used layers when texturing the Thunderbird on Fantastic Beasts for example. I would say the reason I side with Mari is all the features it brings to the table along with the understanding it forces you to have when texturing an asset
It would probably be too much of a hassle to work with nodes in Painter without fundamentally changing the way Painter works.For example would each texture set require its own node graph? Or if you wanted to share a material between 10 different texture sets, would you then have to use 10 different input node to plug the material into?
Because that's exactly the point why Designer is existing? You also could ask why Designer doesn't have painting features, but the name of SP is self-explanatory.
Hi! Great video! Any chance you have time to do an update video now that Substance is almost 2 years older than it was at the time of this video and now has UDIM support?
Hey! Yes I'm actually hoping to record a new version of this in Jan next year - as you mentioned the landscape has changed and I also have been using Substance as my main package at the company I've been at for over a year so a lot to discuss :) Sub to hear when it's out!
@@MichaelWildeVFX Nice!! I just subbed and I definitely look forward to hearing your up to date thoughts on Substance. I'm interested in Substance for a wide variety of contexts or use cases, but i'm getting into trying some higher res skin texturing and am wondering if Substance is usable on higher end machines for that purpose, or is the rule still you must use Mari, if you happen to have thoughts on that for the video. Looking forward to seeing the video in January and any substance/texturing related material you post!! :-)
@@MichaelWildeVFX Hey ! It's January ! Are you still holding the plan !? Will hope to see that !
Cheers
Does mari need good graphics card like Substance painter?
Why don't you start a discord server? I think this could be very helpful for beginners to receive feedback.
It’s a good suggestion but a) I don’t like discord because I don’t understand it hahah and b) I try to answer all questions people leave here so that anyone else who clicks on the videos who may have the same issue can see the solution!
Maybe if the channel keeps growing it is something I can look into though :)
Isn't it generally understood that in general, Mari is a VFX tool and Substance is a games tool?
No it's not. Students all too often have asked me "I want to texture on films, do I need to know Mari if I know substance?" They don't really know how to texture, they know how to change sliders around to make something look nice. The theory is really important.
I don't know enough about games to answer why they don't use Mari, but I find that surprising since I do think it's such a great tool regardless of realtime or pre-rendered.
@@MichaelWildeVFX I'm assuming that its more popular in games because of Designer as well.
The topic that divides the community almost as much as maya vs blender. In truth if you know how to use photoshop both of these programs can be learned in around 2-3 hours.
I like how 3ds max isn't even mentioned now.
Hi, just wondered what your thoughts are on Quixel Mixer & Megascans and if you have had any experience with it?
I’ve used mega scans textures before at work, since they have such good high quality ground tiled textures that I can take into Mari or substance. I can’t say I’ve ever used mixer, I don’t quite understand what it’s for if I’m honest! Same with alchemist from substance
@@MichaelWildeVFX Ha ok no worries, thanks for the answer. Latest update of Mixer allows you to bring in 3D assets for texturing similar to Substance and Mari and it's completely free. Just wondered if VFX were looking at it at all or if it was more games pipeline. Thanks
@@MichaelWildeVFX Alchemist and Mixer are basically the same principle. They are for creating new material (variations) from mixing tiled textures and whole materials, mostly the 3D scanned type, but you can basically mix all kind of materials no matter the source (handmade, procedural, scanned). The mixing is often done via heightmap so they blend very naturally together, but you can paint masks or use alphas and procedural patterns. With a handful of Megascans ground textures for example, you could create hybrids of them, mix them with sculpted heightmaps, or procedural noise to create new variations. You can create tons of variations very fast and mixing photogrammetry derived surfaces looks very realistic.
Mixer has some basic features you'll also find in Substance designer, to create patterns and repetitions, to stencil object over the surface etc....
Additionally Mixer supports very basic painting features and smart materials and the plan is to push the program more into a direction not unlike Painter for full asset texture creation.
Overall I would say, If you use Megascan textures, but don't mix them, then you're doing it not quite right. (leaving a lot of potential behind).
I would definitely recommend to take a look at them, these programs are very easy to understand, time needed to learn should be minimal, Mixer is free and I am pretty sure every texture artist can gain some time back from using these tools since they are very powerful and fast (no matter if its Gaming or VFX).
Their are really less content in RUclips about mari, please keep uploading new tutorials but as I am new to Mari speed up videos don't help me a lot. Thank you looking forward for your new video but please 🙏 don't speed up.
I suggest you to look at (if it's not already the case) to the FlippedNormals tutorial about Mari, and also Artruism Digital and Meshmen Studio RUclips channels :)
"i saw good creature texture paint in Substance yesterday" you said. can you tell me about that video? you said learn both. i am gonna learn substance painter first
While I say learn both I’m very much implying you should learn Mari first :)
@@MichaelWildeVFX well..in mari you can make procedural textures too right with nodes? i hate it Substance have seperate software for that called Substance designer. why they cant just put all together in 1 thing
Yer I only work with nodes in Mari!
Supporting the home team I see.
Not serious: The Foundry do good work.
btw and force of habit:
Hence means "as a consequence; for this reason."
So saying "hence why" is like saying 'why why" so drop the "why".
i think it hardly depend on the work you want to have done. At the end of the day, Mari and Substance are just tools, there is no ideology behind this, at least in my opinion. Many people may see this different, but the more they get professional, time and effectiveness become more important, the label on the package will have no meaning.
i would everyone who make game assets recommend substance painter, drag and drop, easy and fast results. But when the complexity grows, you find yourselves into the world of Layer Pain. While in Mari i can browse easy and fast through my nodes network, i have to go through time-wasting fiddling. For organic stuff with high details, mari it is. In combination with Zbrush, a great team in my opinion. . With 5.0 they made many things better and fast, even the interface is still somehow old baked unix style though.
Try Quixel's Mixer instead!
I don’t know a single VFX artist that uses Mixer at work. That could change but I wouldn’t spend energy learning it over other things :)
@@MichaelWildeVFX I think it's more promising given that Substance is kinda lost in the big Adobe pool now.
Quixel is super lightweight, never going to take off in terms of production work and produces sub-par results.
I like Mixer, but its not that useful for VFX as it is for games. Look how long it took substance painter to have Udim workflow. Mixer is playing catchup
None of this matters when Mari is so prohibitively expensive, especially compared to just how inexpensive Substance tools are. Non commercial/Student versions are utterly and absolutely worthless for indies and frankly anyone who realistically wants to use the software. Much as i dislike Adobe i have to stress just how little The Foundry have done to put Mari within /legal/ reach of people who are just starting out or anyone working on a modest budget. Even the monthly subscription is so outlandishly expensive that i personally would not even consider this potentially wonderful piece of software.
I agree with the pricing of Mari. It should be much lower for monthly subscription for indie artist. Hell Even Autodesk have an indie version.
Kinda confused here, VFX stand for Visual Effects, there is only talk about texturing...
Which bit has confused you? I'm only talking about texturing since this video is about Mari and Substance - they are texturing packages. But I'm talking about them in relations to the visual effects industry, not Games or VR or anything like that.
@@MichaelWildeVFX oh, ok, I thought if was gonna be about, like explosions, dust, etc in games and movies :D, thanks for clearing it
I really love your videos Michael. Please dont stop!