What other software do you use alongside Blender?

Although Blender is a fairly well-rounded tool with a massive array of powerful features, I know that a lot of users are using it because of the awesome modelling tools, and rely on other software for specific tasks where Blender is lacking, or perhaps the workflow is less efficient than a more focused tool. The most commonly used tools I see are Substance Painter for materials and Zbrush for sculpting, but I was wondering what other tools do you use, and if you use Blender for professional work, what industry are you in?

I work in the videogame industry and have worked almost entirely on smaller projects that have been 2D, or the use of 3D has not required sculpting or PBR workflows, but I want to learn ZBrush and Substance to stay employable.

Use frequently:
Photoshop
Sublime Text (I write a lot of scripts and write Unity game code too)
Affinity Designer (when I need to do vector art)

Seriously want to learn:
ZBrush
Substance Painter
Krita

I’m also interested in checking out Houdini, which I used for a month or so way back in 2002 at university. I studied computer science, but we did a 3d module, which involved using Houdini. I can use Maya, but never use it these days because I don’t need to (thanks Blender!)

As of late it has been mostly UE4, krita.

Adobe Photoshop for textures
Adobe AfterEffects for Compositing/grading
Adobe Premiere for editing

I’m in the advertisment business, big part of my job consists of short commercials.

3D Coat : fantastic dynamic tesselation + voxel sculpting + paint app + retopo
Zbrush
Krita
Substance Painter / Designer

I’m working on movies / advertisings

The Substance twins for texturing. Houdini for FX and certain modelling tasks it’s good at. Fusion for compositing and finishing.

We use Maya+Arnold (hopefully soon Redshift…) at work and don’t have Houdini licenses, but we use Substance and Fusion pretty much the same way I do in personal projects.

I have a personal Zbrush license, but I probably use it once a month at most. I’m not a fan of the UI or the direct/destructive nature of the workflow, so I avoid it as much as I can. And I don’t do much character stuff in my freetime, so I can avoid it quite a bit.

gimp 2.9
G’Mic ( terminal version - supports 16 and 32 bit data )
GDAL and Qgis
USGS/ JPL’s ISIS3 for georeferencing and mapping images for textures

for extracting Height data from images to make a mesh :
a C code program for “shape from shade”, along with “NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline”

then Blender with the Blender-gis plugin
and recently fun with the nodes

mostly gimp 2.9

I use Daz Studio, Bryce, UV mapper, Krita and Gimp 2.6 portable.

No one yet mentioned - Marvelous designer for anything that have some cloths in it.

Blender (duh)
GIMP 2.10 (2.9 - 2.10 were a massive improvement for GIMP)
XnView (for some small tweaks / cropping, XnViewMP is not stable yet on my pc and still misses some stuff sadly)
Inkscape (for occasional vector stuff)
Shortcut Video Editor (maybe not the best, but has enough for my needs)
Unity
Substance Painter
Windows Snipping Tool :slight_smile:

Concept artist & art director in games, films, animation.

Blender - Layout, pre-viz of lighting, 3D-base for paintover.

3DCoat - Awesome when you just need to sketch up a scene very quick with voxels. Especially if your traditional 3D modelling skills are not up to par, its very straight forward and easy to understand. Awesome when you need to keep things loose and fun, but if you need to be exact or making interiors, i find it cumbersome and then i go back to Blender. Things end up looking a bit “muddy” with the voxels, but it doesnt matter if you are not doing closeups or if you will paint over a lot. Scenes can get very heavy but I´ve done fairly big scenes containing a landscape, buildings, big mech all in one 3dcoat scene, exported out as obj, material & render in blender and then some paintover.
Photoshop - Painting
Davinci Resolve - Post Process/Grade. After starting using Davinci to grade, Photoshop felt like MS Paint to me

This is an interesting thread to have I think.

Part of the brilliance of Blender for me is it’s holistic vision and it really can be used for pretty much everything. I hope this is never lost. But it still can be good to use other more narrowly focused specialist apps alongside of course. I use a whole host of apps so will stick to 3D workflow.

For my personal set up the main secondary 3D apps I use alongside Blender are ZBrush and 3D Coat.
I also still run my ancient Photoshop stand alone too but thinking of a more modern alternative.
Perhaps Gimp ? Photoline ?

When working in house at most places my main secondary 3D app these days tends to be Maya :wink:

GIMP
Substance Painter and Designer
Notepad ++
Inkscape
Audacity

Mainly a hobbyist, working on a personal projects.

-Photoshop CS6 (last version I’ll ever use, hah hah)
-GIMP
-Krita
-Image/Text Clipboard Editor*
-Instant Meshes
-Substance Designer and Painter
-PhotoScan
-WorldMachine
-Notepad++ / Notepadqq (linux)
-VS 2017 Pro (various C++ projects, custom blender builds (for stuff add-ons can’t do), and of course add-on projects)

  • Custom software. For simple things other image editors won’t do or allow. Actions bound to hotkeys or clipboard copy events. Auto removal of formatted text leaving only unformatted text. Removal of image urls, etc.

ABSOLUTELY NO SUBSCRIPTION OR “CLOUD” SOFTWARE! I cannot stress this enough. In a shithole where internet is total garbage because 18th CenturyLink rules the roost, can’t be too careful. Out of state WISP on a daisy chained set of towers is only option ($75/mo for 8|2 Mb/s). I think you might be able to get a 1|1 gigabit connection somewhere for around 5-10 kilobucks per month, maybe less if the corrupt local municipality pays off whoever using taxpayer money (assuming you are buddies with them or they like you of course).

GIMP 2.9
Krita
Inkscape
PTGui (Panorama-stiching)
Audacity (for Voice-recording)
Ardur (for sound-, music-, voice-mixing and final Sound-tracks)

lightworks 14 (final-cut and postpro)

VLC media player (for import, vidoe format changes and final control)

MakeHuman (sometimes for real quick things - but more and more seldom, cause of Manuel left MH and does his own thing with Manuel Bastioni Lab - and it’s classes closer to reality)

OBS Studio (for Broadcasts and/or onscreen recording)

Storyborder (Wonder Unit)

Sweet Home 3D (if I have to do buildings and/or interiors fast quickly f.e. on base of blueprints/floorplans)

ah - yes! SheepIt (not software) for outsourcing the renders

For arch-viz i use
blender
Substance Painter (sometimes designer)
a few time i used UE4 for real time rendering

Lately i’ve been into vfx so i started learning C4D, i used blender for modeling stuff and using c4d for the tracking & mograph & rendering stuff, the 2 were good for me for the simple stuff that i did.

My primary apps are:

Clarisse iFx
Katana + Renderman
Maya
Mari
Nuke
Blender

I also use Photoshop, but less and less (and own but haven’t yet gotten into Affinity photo)
I also use meshlab from time to time.
I’m starting to learn houdini, but it’s hard to find the time.

I’d love to start using z-brush.

Zbrush over everything
Maya for exporting and retopo /uvs switching to blender
Substance designer and Painter

mostly it

I am a graphic designer in the medical field.

Daily tools:

Adobe suite
Blender
Houdini
Davinci

I only started using Blender 2 years ago and Houdini about a year ago. I have been using Adobe Suite for years.

Funny thing is, I find myself using PS/After Effects less and less. I used to use PS to design all our magazines and billboards etc. .

Now with Blender since I have most of our products modeled I do about 90% of layout and composition in Blender then fix small problems in PS.

Same with After Effects, Looking over VideoCopilot tutorials, I feel I can do them much quicker with more control in Blender, So I mainly just use AE for compositing now and handle any visual FX with Blender/Houdini.

Once Eevee officially comes out, its going to cement Blender even further as my everyday tool.