Photoshop, Gimp, or blender 3d paint?

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Ok, so I do a lot of texturing in blender. I have used photoshop and it’s great, problem is, you have UV unwrap most all your meshes and that’s a pain. Is it worth spending the <$600 to buy Photoshop or is it better to use Gimp or the Blender 3d paint?
I mainly do metal materials and such, such as the uploaded image. I love photoshop cause it has dual brush and angle jitter as well as scatter and other things so that your brush doesn’t look like an image that was just repeated, (as it does in gimp) I originally started with gimp and I could do some but it was a lot more tetious. What about the internal blender texture paint? I’m having a tossup on whether to just use gimp, ps, or blender. I would like your help! Any comments would be greatly apprectiated. (I dont’ use the filters really that much in photoshop, mainly just brushes so if any of you could help me…)
Thanks!!

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Use either photoshop or GIMP. Blender 3d paint is far less powerful. For simple objects and textures you can use automatic unwraping and use blenders features to paint but for complez objects I suggest youi using external programs. I hope one day we have bodypaint tools in blender.

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Ok, so now it’s narrowed down to two. One of the biggest problems I have with gimp is the lack of brush settings, it has fade out and all that, but it’s just like a repeating picture, rather than a brush you can drag and get a nice random result.

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Since allways, before using blender, and now, i use a 3d painter, and then a 2d painter.

One can do all texturing in 2d . If the UVs are good (if they arent, you still can texture, but will be disgusting experience)

3d painting in blender has evolved as much as stop using my pruchased comercial 3d painter.

I’d even go as far as to say I can quite do full procedure just with blender 3d/2d painting. Indeed i’ve done, just not hyperrealistic, but toon stuff.

For realistic stuff, I usually 3d paint for seams (yet to try the new stamping feature of blender) and some fast marking up, some sketching. then the fine work over that in 2d. Then go swicthing between the two methods, this to me result in the faster method, and the more enjoiable. But can be me.

You end up with a good texturing. But the better are the UVs , the easiest the later texturing. Extremely good Uvs wont have much advantage on 3d painting, and some static objects indeed, or many of them, wont benefit of 3d painting.

yet so, for organics, hi res, can be of a lot of help. And for human characters, etc.

You don’t need the jitter thing. In a 2d application, you can just work over some random pattern you create and apply some edits, then paint over it, playing with layers and layers modes, and using non JPG, but hi quality original textures. In game stuff, i used to take my own photos, with macro. or use some company’s material for base material. funnily, sometimes started with a dirty wall texture to make a nice corroded metal…

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Thanks for your help Extrudeface, as of now I’m leaning towards just using gimp and creating animated brushes. Photoshop is big bucks and it’s kind of a fad to use GIMP with blender, instead of PS, I dunno it’s the impression I got that one of the keys to being a blenderhead is using GIMP too…haha :wink:
I’d appreciate anymore comments.

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If its brush options your looking for, I suggest looking into Corel Painter. If your on Linux,
try taking a look at Krita.
Gimp is pretty capable, but I find its interface immensely frustrating, especially on the Mac.

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Mikahl: Thanks, I will look into corel painter, as of now I’ve been making animated gimp brushes, which takes longer than just using photoshop, but they’re more customizable. Hopefully I’ll be able to pump out good enough textures with dear old GIMP. But hey, that’s what they used for elephan’ts dream!

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I don’t think you need Gimp to be a blenderhead :wink: Neither I think you need to be a Blenderhead… To be an artist one just gotta get the job done and express whatever you want…

( am just in /joke/ mode… :wink: )

if you’re in Windows, I haven’t got much into these, but you can have a look at them:

  • ArtRage (mac version also. free version does not have layers)
  • getpaint.net

But imo, Gimp is absolutely good for doing any texture. I rather prefer Photoshop for everything, but imo Gimp is totally capable.

if the UVs are flat, no or good distortion, well scaled across all chunks, humanly readable, well packaged and distributed on the UV texture space, and if you keep any viewer, opengl or whatever, in a moisaic like distribution of your desktop, of a kind that updates as you hit ctrl+s in the 2d editor (in windows there are a bunch, free and not free) ,that would ease a lot pure 2d texturing, that, thanks to the usually more advanced painting and editing tools of specialized 2d packages, is often the most professional way. But imo, this may change soon…i can tell you I have felt very comfortable texturing only in Blender…

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…also…two other windows ones, free… :

http://www.pixarra.com (the free version)

http://www.artweaver.de/index.php?en_version

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I would recommend Paint shop pro by Corel, though anything past version 10 isnt worth the money IMHO as past that its been tailored towards scrapbookers etc. and not digital artists.
I used PSP for years before finally upgrading to CS3 a few months back

Photoshop elements has got to be worth a go also.

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You know you can make your own brushes in GIMP. You can even take an image and change it to a brush.

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For creating texture maps, there’s a brilliant (free) node based texture map editor called Mapzone:

www.mapzoneeditor.com/

Completely procedural and resolution independent texture creation - combine this with GIMP and Inkscape (Mapzone imports SVG graphics as well) and you will not need Photoshop ever again for texturing. In addition to colour maps, it generates normal maps, diffuse maps, and more. Only drawback: Windows only, I am afraid. And, being node based, its initially more complex approach to texture generation may put some people off.The tutorials are easy to follow, though.

Tour: www.mapzoneeditor.com/?PAGE=DOCUMENTATION.MapZone2Tour

Gotta love those nodes. :slight_smile: