photoshop or substance 3d designer

Both are useful in their own way. Photoshop is for painting, Designer is for procedural creation (like any node software) for materials/textures.

I think Substance Painter should be also on your list of software to learn since that comes with great tools for baking (occlusion/normal/heights) etc. Painter has the ability to bring in your Designer materials since they are both made originally by the same company. The benefits of Designer/Painter is that you are working in 3D while making/painting your textures. That's just the basics really but Substance tools are great for automation, PBR workflow, optimization, the list is extensive.

Check a few youtube videos if you haven't used it before and decide for yourself since you already know Photoshop so you have an understanding of how it compares.

I purchased a copy of both when they were still perpetual, probably some of the best 2 tools I own and I use them every day. I also still use Photoshop every day so like I said each tool is useful for its specific purposes.

You can work 1000 times faster with Substance Painter just by using the plugins (Artstastion) or the ready-made free materials or the variation with material etc. even Photoshop with quixel is no longer worthwhile.

Next Substance designer :)

Reiterate the above comment.....I'd go for Substance Painter (this is based on my own personal workflow!) Get a good understanding of painter and then perhaps it will give you an easier path-way to learn how to understand and use Designer! Also you can paint high poly assets without the need for a low poly meshes in Painter (as high-low poly workflow can be very time consuming sometimes!) Personally, I often use photoshop to build maps that I can use for Painter. So knowing how to use both is a must for me at least!

OK, I am a long-time Maya model-builder who has used Photoshop(for a long, long time) and Substance Designer for about as long as it has been in existence, and who has written tutorials for both. So, I'd like to take a crack at answering this question. I'm going to talk about Substance Designer only, not Substance Painter, which is a totally different application - assuming that Substance Designer versus Photoshop is the core of the original question.

A quick answer to the question is that the essential difference between Substance Designer and Photoshop is that Substance Designer produces materials that are "photo-realistic" and will appear to be "photo-realistic" in all "photorealistic rendering engines ("PBR"). In fact, they will have the same appearence in any PBR rendering engine - regardless of the identity of the engine (Corona, Arnold, Maxwell Render, Maverick Render, Octane, etc.). This cannot be said of materials made with Photoshop. Typically, materials made with Photoshop will appear differently in different rendering engines.

Photoshop is essentially an image-based painting program that can produce a wide variety of realistic, stylized or painterly materials - which may or may not be seamless. To use Photoshop, you need to have a basic knowledge of image construction, drawing, painting and manipulation/editing. Substance Designer, on the other hand, is a purely "procedural" - node/graph program in which you create materials by pulling pre-built "nodes" from a library, assembling them and modifying them until you have built up an image of something like tree bark of great depth and detail. Substance Designer materials are generally inherently "seamless."

To use Substance Designer well, you first need to have a reasonable grasp of the basics of computer shader and rendering technology. We are really talking about "light" and the way light interactions with physical materials are handled in computer rendering engines. This fundamental knowledge is not something required by Photoshop. But, in my personal opinion, this basic knowledge about how rendering engines handle light is something all professional model-builders should acquire if they don't already have it. The kind of knowledge I am talking about is best represented by these two papers that can be found here https://substance3d.adobe.com/tutorials/courses/pbrguide And, there are two reasons you want to basic knowledge. One, is to be able to understand how Substance Designer works. The second is because you don't know which rendering engines you will be required to use once you've left school. If you have a basic knowledge of how light and materials are handled in rendering engines, and, therefore, how shaders are made, you will be able to quickly adapt to any modern rendering engine.

Substance Designer is a modern computer technology, with a much more expansive future than Photshop. It is quite good at producing "stylized materials", but its basic purpose is to produce photo-realistic materials for 3D models meant to be physically accurate representations of real or imagined objects. I suppose that in some ways, the focus of Substance Designer is more limited than the focus of Photoshop. However, if your purpose as a 3D model-builder is to produce a model with metals, glass, plastic, wood, ceramic (concrete, porcelain, ceramic, putty, tile), liquid (water, honey, etc.) or translucent (skin, water, thin leaves, flower petals, paper) properties, you can best achieve these with Substance Designer. This is because Substance Designer is making use of the same physics of light mechanisms used by a computer's rendering engines to display the materials as to make them. So, the two are inseparable.

As another overview observation, Photoshop is "old-school" - requiring knowledge and skills in image manipulation, as I said earlier. The functions it performs in 3D model-building can be performed almost equally well by several alternative applications (GIMP, CorelDraw, etc.). Skills in one of these applications are transferable to any of the other similar applications. If you are a student, you should have some of these image manipulation skills, but you might want to learn on one of the cheaper alternatives to Photoshop. [I have Photoshop and use it, but you know what? -- I've come to prefer Coreldraw and CorelPaint for my day-to-day working tools. For most purposes, these tools are quick and more straightforward than Photoshop.)

So, to become a model-builder for the future - especially if you are seeking to become a professional, you need basic image-making skills, and you absolutely must learn and be able to use Substance Designer to construct a variety of basic materials.

At any rate, Photoshop and Substance Designer are not comparable applications. The only thing they have in common is that they both can produce materials that can be part of the shaders for a 3D model.

.......... I'd be happy to answer any more detailed questions about the differences between these two applications. Just ask.

Can I make an observation or two, that is aside from the point of your original question ?

A lot of old model-builders like myself (20+ years) have significant difficulty learning Substance Designer. Painting and drawing imagery or screen-capturing other people's textures seem relatively straightforward. But creating an image - a material, by assembling "nodes" in a graph seems so foreign as to be incomprehensible. So, many old professional model-builders are and have failed to adapt to technological change.

BUT, ... if you work with Substance Designer for a little while - it may take about three days to become accustomed to it, you'll find that it is FUN! Building a Substance Designer material is very much like playing with cardboard puzzles. You've got a playboard in front of you that is the "graph" and your task is to find and use the most appropriate node out of the Library sitting to your left, that will help complete the puzzle. Very often, making a "Substance" is a matter of trying one node after another, playing around with their settings to learn if those settings will do the job.

If you look at many of the Substances published by Adobe in "Substance Source" or by others at Artstation Marketplace or on Gumroadd, they look like hoepless spaghetti fields. Impossible to trace and understand. Intimidating. But, it doesn't have to be like that! A lot of those massive old spaghetti field "substances" were created when only a few primitive nodes were available, or were created because the authors were trying to create materials that could have the older Diffuse-Specular map outputs, as well as the newer Metallic-Roughness types of map outputs. Now days, we have many basic nodes that let you create really good "substances" with just a few nodes . For the most part, you make a substance by dropping in a basic node, dropping in another that modfies the first in some way, dropping in a couple more to add some other features, and that's it. And, if you are a good person in this life, you neatly organize the nodes and comment them so that any one else can understand your graph with just a little bit of examination. Its all very much fun!

you just have to find your own pipeline how you work best and that takes time.
Look at the profiles of the people who wrote here and they say they have a clue, form your own opinion and find your way, you can do it :)

p.s. do you already know how to model and uv cut?

photoshop use for creating curvature map ,, - which you can then use in substance painter for metal edge wear ( use the curvature map( you can bake this map / in photshop u can add control to the map,,,, you can see me working in usbstance painter here and how combining photshop substance painter - substanc designer is differnece to substance painter used susbstance designer for creating normal maps , ambient occlusion maps ( here demo some of the methods below on my channel

substanc epainter creating metal this great waty to understand metal refection and rust .. how can be built .. probaly when rendering out in marmoset or fave render pbr material not exact match what u see in power ful iray render

metal this was great tho for learning metal .... i spent around 3 days creating metal .. ur can then create them ssbr files drag deop on your project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrFqLZ2lr4U

metal susbtance painter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrFqLZ2lr4U

curvature map
helps to creat moss and brick work great control same method using metal edge wear
substanc epaintrer and photshop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjGvSim7LY&t=40s

susbtance designer m - and combing programming with blender ( substance player great cos ur can export maps free ur creat then
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNEbZnBcwM0&t=4s

substanc painter currently great for creating maps and textures ,,,,above ...photoshop cropping uploading ( colour correction ect (- and curvature maps (checking uvw maps ,,, both package are needed .. subnstance desiger when ur need to creat normal map brick work concrerete textures ,,,, ( use less ) .. can be handty ... ..use designer less than substance painte and photoshop ,

( substanc epainter alternative photshop called gimp ( open scource)

substanc painter currently great for creating maps and textures ,,,,above ...photoshop cropping uploading ( colour correction ect (- and curvature maps (checking uvw maps ,,, both package are needed .. subnstance desiger when ur need to creat normal map brick work concrerete textures ,,,, ( use less ) .. can be handty ... ..use designer less than substance painte and photoshop ,

( substanc epainter alternative photshop called gimp ( open scource)

susbstance desinger work,flow not the same as painter tho . has learning curve based on mixing diffent blends togethusualy black and white oveerlays ..greyscale9 IT LEARNING CURVE NOT THE same PHOTSHOP BLENDING METHODS ... ther learning curve when getting into creating brick work and rust - substance painter mixing materials is easy than designer

apoligies cheers 3d cargo . i wont next time pal cheers

Julie, to get a good discussion of the differences and the benefits of the two programs, I would recommend that you seek out the Discord channel for Substance Designer.
https://discord.com/invite/010JCPblJTh3d6CXe

Virtually every Substance Designer user is familiar with Photoshop and has Photoshop skills as well as Substance Designer skills and experience. You are sure to get a good discussion of the basic nature of each program, the differences between them, and the benefits of learning both at this location.

naugfhty dog on substance painter and designer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_yi537h9HQ

during my tuime building cars . im only on my 3rd vechile buil d. During the process of building the vechiles. Within the process of creating a clean ambient occlusion map within substance painter has taken the longest part of the build .

taken longer on 3 occasions than buildingthe mesh of the vechile ..based on having to uwrap several times different methods to ensure there no black areas within substance painter ,....... ..the only reason imbaking my ambient oclsuion map to drive the mertal edge wear if needed for rust later on ,,,,,how have other found this method ...