with painter having gone subscription and/or so-called perpetual license done by steam, what alternative do y'all recommend? I will not do subscription, that is why I left Cinema4D after 12 years, among other reasons and linking software to online account when I log in is a no go too, if I understand steam download correctly

I did a search for this and nothing showed.

Moin,

subscription vs. perpetual is a heated discussion in itself for sure.

As for painter: There is Mari, of course, which does have some kind of Indie version as I hear (I refuse to buy/support Foundry software, so I really do not know). Back when I used it, it was without any doubt superior to Substance Painter in almost every aspect. I think Painter even today still doesn't really support UDIM workflows, painting over seams is still an issue etc.

Then there is Blender, which may be somewhat inferior to Painter in its (Painter's) most recent version, but it is quite constantly being worked on and I have been in contact with a few people using Blender that actually know what they are doing. So my hopes for this software have increased recently, even though the licensing issues Blender imposes on third-party developers are considerate.

There is Blacksmith3d (https://www.blacksmith3d.com/) - I never could “get warm” with it back in the days when I tried to use it, but it still seems to be worked on.

I am interested in this discussion, as I have had my problems with Painter's performance (what performance?) and mentioned limitations. I loved Mari (before they “improved” the UI, making it much slower) and would immediately renew my license/buy a new one if it got sold to a different company. The product ROCKS.
So I am, too, looking for a solution that “works for me” - and I am considering writing one myself. I can imagine it to be possible to “integrate” something like a painter module into Houdini. It would have to be a somewhat separate tool that only connects with the viewport and outputs maps into Houdini, in order to get usable on-screen performance. From the tech side of things I would be able to develop something like this, but I lack Houdini API understanding/guidance and I am not sure if there would be a market for this “inside the Houdini-verse”.

Would you be interested in listing your top priority features that you are looking for? Maybe it helps with finding an alternative, too

Marc

thank you for the comment Marc. Basically I just want something which integrates with Houdini similar to Painter

Mudbox's painting tools are pretty good. There's a non-commercial version of Mari if you want extreme power and complexity. The next version of Quixel Mixer will have 3D painting. Looks pretty exciting to me, plus it will be free. 3D-Coat has painting, but I've never used it.