Quixel has just released Mixer 2020! 
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From watching the video, and doing some very lighting goofing around (mostly 10 minutes of clicking some buttons), this is what I think thus far.
Itās surprisingly comparable to Substance Painter, able to do a lot of what itās known for. The biggest downside is that it doesnāt allow you to bake your texture stack from within the program, and the masking options donāt look to be quite as robust, relying more on grunge maps used in conjunction with your curvature, rather than doing things procedurally. Also, no mesh fill options yet (ā¦that Iāve seen), so you HAVE to use ID maps to cover the various specific parts of your object.
The UI actually seems better though. Things are a lot more clearly defined, and everything is easy to find.
In digest, itās not quite a 1:1 match to Substance Painter as of yet, but itās still damn good, and hey, itās a new feature release of beta software; any shortcomings are fairly likely to be addressed in the not too distant future. Iād suggest getting it.
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If itās completely free, then why does it still have a pricing page with versions starting at 19.99 a month?
There has got to be a catch such as ābeing free to use within Epicās ecosystem onlyā.
Itās continued reliance on Megascan assets is probably the biggest potential bugbear, but you can get around that fairly easily by using your own grunges, rust textures, and whatnot.
Excited to mess around with this!! Very cool to see so many tools becoming free to use.
That is the pricing for the megascans library, which is a separate product by quixel, which works in conjunction with mixer, but isnāt required to make use of the software.
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In the blog they posted couple of months ago, they clearly state that Mixer will be free for everyone.
Those subscriptions are for megascan assets (you can tell from the description and green M logo) to be used outside of Unreal Engine. They stated megascans will only be free to use within Unreal.
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If those are the biggest issues, then it is a pretty impressive version 1 for a 3D painting software. Definitely going to consider switching over to Quixel over time after baking is added.
Later tonight, Iām going to try and replicate my usual Painter workflow in Mixer. Iāll have a lot more to say about it then.
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Any local library, like smart materiais, doesnāt work here. Anybody else with this issue?
Very nice features and uv seams are really well covered/blended automatically if using box projection. Really a easy painting without effort.
In this test, there middle should be UV seam but gone 
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And here I go. I want to see if I can redo this old TV set in Mixer. Itās a good first since, since fairly stylized, super simple, and it looks neat enough.
Here it is in Substance Painter.
And this is what Iāve got in Mixer thus far. Iāve cheated a bit by bringing my curvature and AO bakes in from Painter, and baked out the ID map in Blender.
First impressions. I donāt have to squint and lean forward to see parts of the UI in Mixer. Thatās a plus. The text in Painter is too tiny and too crowded for its own good.
ā¦also, I might need glasses. I mean, Iām getting old, so you knowā¦
I really do miss just hitting the Polygon Fill tool, and masking out things by their UV islands. I should get used to doing ID maps, since itās proper painting practice (ALLITERATION FTW), butā¦eh. Itās always felt like busywork to me. Oh well. Itās done. Took 15 minutes out of my life Iāll never get back, but Iāll forgive it.
ā¦one day. 
Also, think I found my first bug. It wouldnāt let me save over my file initially. I prepped my model beforehand, then closed the program. When I opened it again, set my textures, then tried to Ctrl+S, it said it couldnāt write to the file.
It did allow me to save it as a new file name, and since doing that, I can hit Ctrl+S all I want. Iāll see if it gives me the same problems after closing out my current session.
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Mixer is free, $19 a month is for Megascans, and only if you donāt use Unreal, also, price got cut by half for non-Unreal users, which canāt be bad!
Okay, I finished the TV. It took a lot of trial, error, and experimentation to get things close to how Iād do them in painter, and Iād say that Iām probably doing things the wrong way. The biggest problem is that layers donāt seem to blend quite the same way as what Iām used to, and to get the results I wanted, I had to make my base a smart material, then stack multiple iterations, and tweak the various layers within to get my colors down with all their AO, highlights, and whatnot.
Iām thinking Iām not using the program properly, and what I should be doing is messing with the mask stack a lot more. Iām gonna need to experiment a lot more. Iāll probably wait til Quixel airs their live stream tomorrow to see whatās up.
Edit: Oh yeah, the picture. Here.
Just watched the intro video, quite nice additions and for a lot of people more than enough texturing power. No need for Painter in that case.
The workflow -is- different from Painter in some ways, and at first glance Iām missing bits like anchors (normal maps related) and UV or poly fills.
Butā¦ itās free for all, compared to Bridge where you (officially) have to use the assets in Unreal only.
So not a bad start there 
Thereās a official reveal on the Quixel YT channel today, letās see if thereās more to discover there.
And with Armor Paint getting a Unreal grant as well, itās interesting times for us texture painters
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oh, nice. i totally missed this. lets see if it lives up to the hype.
So if I use my unreal account I have access to all the scans for free, huh?
Iām loving Mixer, and itās fabulous and freeā¦however, I really do like UV selection from my islands. The work gets done in Blender, and the UV unwrap I make should be utilized in Mixer. But if you MUST have me use Mat IDsā¦Baking Mat IDs in Blender could use some streamlining while youāre at it!
Yes, as written - w/ Unreal account anyone can access whole library for free, but for final showoff Unreal Engine must be usedā¦
Thanks, itās just that I am pretty leery about strongly tying myself to an ecosystem whose parent company is Tencent (who actively works for a regime wanting to destroy not just my country, but my faith as well).
That and the fact that I prefer the option to construct textures out of procedural generation as opposed to hoping I could find something in a library, and I can be pretty specific.