This is the Blender Collaboration 2025, week 43 challenge. Don’t be afraid to join, a lot of us are beginners. This is all to practice, have fun, learn, and get together.
This week’s subject is “Songs”.
“Songs” - “Song: a song, lyrics, music style or album art that inspires you”
The rules are simple. 1 subject, 1 entry, 1 week.
You create whatever object or scene or whatever you can think of that has something to do with the subject. It can be as simple or complicated as you want, all entries are welcome!
Post your picture here in this thread. At the end of the week, we start to vote. And if you are the winner, you may choose the next subject and win a unique badge.
Hi everyone, here’s my contribution to this topic. I tried sculpting a rapping lab rat in a cage. Then I painted it with texture paint. I really should watch some tutorials, because I think they can be sculpted much better. I’m really looking forward to the other posts; to be honest, this wasn’t my favorite topic It’s a shame Substance Painter is so expensive. I heard you can do really great textures with it. I’m really looking forward to your feedback. Have a successful rest of the week, everyone!
Nice render! Adding to the topic about Substance Painter, actually, Blender can do everything that Painter does. The point is that in SP, it’s just easier to do everything. Free addons like Ucupaint add layers to the Blender painting workflow that make it similar to SP, and Ucupaint even has smart corner masks that are actually not bad. Also, there is this new app called InstaMat that is free for indie developers and is literally Substance Painter + Substance Designer + world builder in one app.
If you have time, check this guy’s work - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/guqibljW2PA. He does all his renders from start to finish in Blender with Ucupaint, and his work looks stunning. If I remember, he said that he worked before in SP, but for the sake of doing everything in one app, he started last year using Ucupaint and was amazed by what is possible to do with it.
I have Painter for a while now, but I don’t use it much; it adds much more work on top. For collabs here, most of the time I choose to do it all in Blender.
All in all, it’s a good and powerful app, but if you don’t plan to work in a professional industry, not necessary.
P.S. Those are just my thoughts from experience with it.
I haven’t tried it yet myself but I’m currently keeping an eye on the development of ArmorPaint. It looks promising but it is still in Alpha so could be buggy. The code is open-source and the developers offer a pre-compiled version for $19.
But as Srl1 said there are native options in Blender that could be well worth checking out
As inspiration I picked lyrics from the song “Paper Forest (In the Afterglow of Rapture)” by Emmy the Great. Lyrics: “And a paper forest grows up in the supermarket aisles”. My mind works in a very visual way so when I heard this song a couple of years ago I was already picturing it.
I’m going to try out the Depth of field option because I haven’t used that yet and I think it could enhance my final render. Right now I used a mistpass that I ran through the soften filter in the compositor but it did not entirely give the effect I was hoping for.
Mistpass is a kinda tricky effect to add. Could it be that you missed some steps? There are two different places where the check mark is needed, and then a new socket appears in the compositor that you need to guide through Alpha over node, and also there is an area that needs to be fixed where u want the mist to be. After a long time, no use, I always forget about one of those steps, too. I used Mist Pass in the last two collabs (autumn and pirate).
Thank you so much ! I just checked out ucupaint. It’s a really cool add-on. There are a few tutorials for the add-on on YouTube. I’m going to install it right now and try it out. Thanks so much for the tip! That’s exactly what I was missing, and now I can just forget about SP
Thank you very much! As I just wrote to Srl1, it’s definitely worth checking out the ucupaint add-on if you haven’t heard of it yet. I haven’t really dealt with add-ons at all and don’t know what else there is to discover. Aside from auto mirror and node wrangler
If you really want to work in SP, then go for it! I didn’t mean to discourage you - those were just my thoughts. As for Ucupaint, it has a steep learning curve at first, and I think the UI is a bit messy, but if you stick with it, it definitely helps you work faster. Blender is a different beast with addons. I really like your work, man - keep creating!
We @BlenderCollab have a few days to vote. You can vote fast but also think slowly about design, colors, technique, difficulty, subject, realism, etc. Choose consciously and not on your entry.
The new subject week 44 “Lost, abandoned place” has already started. The winner of this week’s “Songs” challenge may select a subject for next week 45 and win a badge.
We talked about the Ucupaint addon here, so I thought I’d add the new “Polygon Runaway” tutorial video he released recently on youtube. I think it’s the best one about this addon I’ve seen so far, so maybe it will help people who are interested in learning it. Cheers! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxWK5KROv74&list=WL&index=3
It’s a shame Substance Painter is so expensive. I heard you can do really great textures with it. I’m really looking forward to your feedback. Have a successful rest of the week, everyone!
! I just checked out ucupaint. It’s a really cool add-on. There are a few tutorials for the add-on on YouTube. I’m going to install it right now and try it out. Thanks so much for the tip! That’s exactly what I was missing, and now I can just forget about SP 
