If you already use Blender and want Inkscape-like functionality, grease pencil has gotten REALLY impressive! Worth checking out! But let’s talk about materials real quick:
I personally got burned when I dropped hard-earned cash on Substance and they sold out from under us.
It might not be 1:1 for the most powerful features found in Alegorithmic’s traitorware, but the PBR Painter add-on has been AWESOME for painting materials in Blender.
There are some other add-ons for materials and advanced effects too.
(For designing, I’m glad fo see Material Maker mentioned! It’s impressive and legit! I hope that project goes far!)
I honestly think a majority of that stuff is totally doable in Blender right now, add-ons just make it easier and/or a bit more efficient, and these devs are worth supporting.
Armorpaint looked pretty cool, but is it still being developed? Seems like it’s been awfully quiet, which is a shame because it seemed very promising!
It’s sad because Substance was the ONE time I relented and said “Hey, maybe this commercial software will be really worth it.” Fool me once.
I’m still using the 2018 Substance, which is the last one for which there was a proper license (which I have). Then Adobe bought the Allegorithmict and turned that suite into a subscription application.
Still works fine and apparently the software hasn’t significantly improved ever since it turned into a subscription.
By the way, cheers for mentioning PBR Painter - I added it to my list of possible replacements.
Honestly, depending on what you need it for, there may not be an alternative. I’ve tried a bunch over the years, and most don’t handle overprint, don’t have colour management settings, don’t know about the more complex shading types or type 3 fonts, etc.
There are specialised software packages that do know about these, but they are closed source and expensive, and then ignore other parts of the PDF spec like 3D or animation.
Acrobat is awful bloatware that somehow still lacks basic functionality - but it’s the only one I know of that covers pretty much all of PDF.
One posted by someone recently
Where Fl :(
Blender 3D Artist here:
If you already use Blender and want Inkscape-like functionality, grease pencil has gotten REALLY impressive! Worth checking out! But let’s talk about materials real quick:
I personally got burned when I dropped hard-earned cash on Substance and they sold out from under us.
It might not be 1:1 for the most powerful features found in Alegorithmic’s traitorware, but the PBR Painter add-on has been AWESOME for painting materials in Blender.
There are some other add-ons for materials and advanced effects too.
(For designing, I’m glad fo see Material Maker mentioned! It’s impressive and legit! I hope that project goes far!)
I honestly think a majority of that stuff is totally doable in Blender right now, add-ons just make it easier and/or a bit more efficient, and these devs are worth supporting.
Armorpaint looked pretty cool, but is it still being developed? Seems like it’s been awfully quiet, which is a shame because it seemed very promising!
It’s sad because Substance was the ONE time I relented and said “Hey, maybe this commercial software will be really worth it.” Fool me once.
I’m still using the 2018 Substance, which is the last one for which there was a proper license (which I have). Then Adobe bought the Allegorithmict and turned that suite into a subscription application.
Still works fine and apparently the software hasn’t significantly improved ever since it turned into a subscription.
By the way, cheers for mentioning PBR Painter - I added it to my list of possible replacements.
Some poor pickings for acrobat there. Why no okular?
Honestly, depending on what you need it for, there may not be an alternative. I’ve tried a bunch over the years, and most don’t handle overprint, don’t have colour management settings, don’t know about the more complex shading types or type 3 fonts, etc.
There are specialised software packages that do know about these, but they are closed source and expensive, and then ignore other parts of the PDF spec like 3D or animation.
Acrobat is awful bloatware that somehow still lacks basic functionality - but it’s the only one I know of that covers pretty much all of PDF.
I think it is better to focus on foss when you can. This is more of a list of alternative companies to Adobe.
Cool graphic though
Foss has the most standout icon