During the production of my previous game – Dare the Monkey – I leaned heavily on ZBrush for rendering my game assets. The reason for this was the simplicity and quality of ZBrush’s MatCap materials. The MatCaps really helped my characters and objects to pop out of the screen.
When I moved into full production for Dungeons of Doom I just wasn’t getting the look I needed. After experimenting with various options I eventually settled on Substance Painter for rendering my sprites. I found that its preset materials allowed me to very quickly get the look and feel I was after. From here I could modify each preset to create my own unique materials quickly and easily.
Using its iRay rendering engine also meant that I could very quickly light and render each asset and I seemed to have more control over the final look of my renders. Now don’t get me wrong I still love ZBrush but for this project I just found Substance Painter to be the better solution.
Have a look at the renders I’ve posted. I’m fairly happy with the results so far.