I’m starting now and would like your opinion of which program to use to create (model) high poly and low poly character? Which program do you use to create maps and objects? I want to be able to export to EU4 Sorry if I’m posting in the wrong place or if it’s simple questions.
Try some of them and see with which one you feel more confortable: Blender, Maya, 3DS Max, Houdini, Cinema 4D, …
3ds Max and Maya are the standards, but expensive. Blender is free and capable. Modo Indie and Maya LT are cheaper alternatives aimed for indie devs. Houdini is effects and tech art magic.
I have found 3D Coat to be the easiest workflow for high poly and retopo to low poly. It has an automatic retopo that works quite well. 3D Coat coupled with Substance Painter can do pretty much anything.
I doubt that you can do rigging and animation in 3D Coat.
After all it’s a specialized sculpting software and not a complete allround 3D Software Package like Blender, C4D, Max, Maya, Modo,… .
Ofc. you can always grab a specialized Software like 3D-Coat, zBrush, Mudbox and fill in the gaps with other Software, but in the end you will need to learn 3 or 4 programms instead of one or two.
So i’d really recomend to start with an allround 3D package and learn it.
All of the Major Packages have everything you need to produce your assets.
Ofc. there might be some things one software does a little better then others, but also things where the other packages shine.
Specialized software on the other hand can help you to improve and speed up your workflow in a particular area and sometimes go way beyond what the allround package has to offer in that particular discipline.
For example: you can texture or paint your Model in all of the packages, but it’s much faster and easier to do it in Substance Painter/Designer, especially if you aim for PBR materials.
Still you need to model, uv map and bake out at least some basic texturemaps (color ID, normalmap) in your 3D app otherwise there’s nothing you can feed Substance with.
thanks all for your help!