Tools / Software needed other than Unreal 4

crum,

Very interesting workflow. I may look into these programs (123 design is free and shadermap 2 is 40$? count me in). What do you you for animation and rigging?

What I use for my current workflow (is a tiny bit more alternative) goes a bit like :

Models: 3dsMax / MudBox
Baking: Substance Designer / xNormal
Texture creation: Bitmap2normal / Substance Designer / Substance Painter / Photoshop CS4

I personally love the Substance suite, has everything you need to make great textures and is not limited to only making substance files, you can export the textures to other file formats. And Painter is a lot of fun! Allows you to paint on a 3d model, or directly onto the UV map in 2d view, has really cool particle brushes and stencils etc. I got it on sale a while back, but even now all 3 of the programs bundled in the indie pack is $199, and you can cut out photoshop for most of your texturing work. :slight_smile:

Pretty similar to a lot of these replies, I use:

3dsmax
Zbrush
Topogun (hasn’t been updated in forever, but still works just fine)
Photoshop
Substance Designer

It is very difficult to justify the cost of Autodesk products when you’re just starting out. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t even have a commercial licenses of any of that software if much of it hadn’t been part of my compensation for my first industry contract a few years ago, which probably isn’t the norm. As for which package is easier between Maya and 3dsmax, I’ve always preferred 3dsmax. I think that has mostly to do with my familiarity with it, though. It was the first 3D modeling program I devoted serious time to in an academic setting, I’ve been using it for years now, and it just sort of clicks with me. I’m sure other people feel the same way about Maya.

Even though I do use Autodesk products, I’m also a big believer in Blender. In the last decade, and particularly the last few years, it has really grown in leaps and bounds. I don’t think it’s a waste of anybody’s time to get familiar with its interface, and it’s quickly closing the gap in terms of its set and polish. It isn’t quite there yet, and I expect companies like Autodesk will always be a little bit ahead, but it’s become a very viable solution for commercial work.

Outsourcing animation, if not then Mixamo, that’s one area I still haven’t tackled yet. I can’t see myself paying for maya just for that and I was told the lt version of maya is missing something needed for animations with ue4 so you gotta plunk down the full cost if you don’t have a student license. Anyway once Mixamo has there workflow for ue4 all set up correctly I’ll probably go that route, till then I’m focusing on creating levels and assets. If anyone has another alternative solution I would be all ears.

Maya Lt doesn’t currently have support for python scripting, which you need to use the unreal animation and rigging kit. You can still animate in Maya Lt, you just can’t use the kit provided here on the forums.