Newbie: PS CC 3D or Substance 3D ?

[S2955176808na]

Hi there

Been working a lot with PS 20 years ago, but now I want to do some work in 3D for the first time.

Since PS CC now has 3D it would seem natural to continue there. But I saw something called Substance 3D as well.

I need to do a quite simple 3D object for 3D printing. Which would you guys suggest me to look into... PS or Substance?

Thanks.

/Steen

[Conrad C]

For a “quite simple” object, the answer is actually somewhat difficult at the moment.

The 3D features you see in Photoshop are actually very old, added over 10 years ago. They are so old that not only are they out of date, they are based on graphics that are not what is used today, and increasingly incompatible with today’s hardware. So Adobe is going to rip it out. If you try the Photoshop 3D features for the first time, you see the message below, and the Learn More button goes to the Adobe article Photoshop 3D | Common questions on discontinued 3D features.

Adobe recently acquired Substance 3D, which has a much more up-to-date set of 3D tools. However, the reason it might not be what you use for a simple 3D object is that it is not included with Creative Cloud, it’s a separate paid subscription.

For a simple project, you can certainly try the 3D tools in Photoshop, in case they are good enough for your simple project. But if you run into any issues or incompatibilities, you may have to turn to something else.

[Trevor.Dennis]

It's quite expensive going the Substance route compared to Photoshop, but the latter is not really an option nowadays.  Are you using Blender?  That's free at least, and the first stage with a 3D model.  We'll ask our @davescm who produces the amazing renders for our SFTW threads.  And @Ged_Traynor who also knows the software.  (they will be tagged about this thread)

[Abambo]

If the choice is Photoshop or Substance, you should go for Substance. But it's extra and not included in Creative Cloud all apps or any other bundle. 

[davescm]

Hi

As mentioned above, Photoshop 3D is deprecated and is being removed. The last version to function was v22.2 but even that had some issues.

Substance 3D is a group of 3D applications with the following functions:

3D Stager - an application for putting together a group of objects into a scene, lighting and rendering them i.e producing a 2D image

3D Painter - an application for applying materials and textures to teh surface of 3D models

3D Designer - An application for creating 3D procedural materials (i.e materials with controls to change them). Those materials can be exported for applying to 3D objects in Substance Painter or other applications.

3D Sampler - Another application which produces materials but excels in materials that start as photographs. It can also do some photogrammetry i.e. produce a model based on a series of photographs

3D Modeler - An unusual 3D modelling application in that it works on screen or in cirtual reality. It works in a similar way to clay modelling.

None of the above are designed for conventional 3D modelling. For that a separate application would be required.

Personally I use Blender 3D in conjunction with the Substance 3D applications to produce and render 3D scenes. If you are colour 3D printing you could use the same.https://substance3d.adobe.com/tutorials/courses/Preparing-a-Substance-Painter-file-for-color-3D-prin...

Dave

[kevin stohlmeyer]

I'll make it even easier

@Conrad C 3D creation is not available in current PS installs. They removed them starting with 22.5. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/3d-faq.html

@S2955176808na be aware Substance is a separate subscription - not part of the Creative Cloud.

[S2955176808na]

Thanks for all your answers.

The last time I looked at PS for 3D was the version 2021 22.5.

So now I decided to look for maybe Blender or similar free application.

Maybe this is offtopic but since Blender has been mentioned a few times here, I guess that's where I should be looking. Or what about Fusion 360, TinkerCad, SketchUp Free or Snapr3D?

A good community would be a big plus.

[kevin stohlmeyer]

Honestly if your intention is to go cheap/free then any of those would work. If you're looking for a professional level builder, I would look at Maxon Cinema 4D - most of the sample builds you see in demos were built with that application, then skinned/modified in Substance.

[davescm]

Don't be fooled into thinking the free licence for Blender makes it an inferior product. It is very powerful and very capable. The user base is huge and support is wide.

As an aside, Adobe is one of the Corporate members of the Blender Development Fund.

Dave