3D Coat seems to be a formidable tool as well. ZBrush is an early entry to painting on detail with its texturing ability.

Even then it never hurts to have a low poly count while maintaining as much of the original look as possible.

I'll the first to admit that I'm not that technically savvy about what goes on inside that little electronic brain when it deals with any type of 3D other than too much or too heavy a mesh impacts a computer's performance leading to slowdowns and bad animating or game experiences.Īs a long-time 3D'er, I'm keenly aware of how adding just 'one more accessory' can tip the balance taking a character from usable to a resource hog that no one wants to deal with.Īnd again, to make it clear, this isn't as big a problem in the higher poly world like Poser or DAZ as those are mainly still image renders that can reliably be resource-intense as only single frames are rendered instead of an animation. The result looks the same … as if both were sculpted but the computational load appears to be much different as height driven detail takes much less overhead to operate. On the other hand, with tools like Substance Painter (SP), we can make a simple, flat-surfaced mesh with minimal polys and paint on that raised detail using the height channel instead of shaping polys in a mesh. All this will come with a heavier poly count because the mesh has to have enough polys to sculpt detail into, after which it has to be re-meshed or decimated down to a usable level further diluting the original sculpting lines unless you are using it for a high-poly, single-image render. In the case of a piece of armor like a gauntlet or bracer, you have a choice of modeling the detail into the items such as the rolled borders or any decorative markings. Let's take a break here and briefly look at what I'm talking about before I proceed:

Substance painter vs 3d coat