Is there an easier (and free) software than 3ds max for doing your textures? I only know how to do 2 things with 3ds, make planes/cubes and manipulate the points to make custom shapes, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to draw textures on with a brush rather than assigning materials to an entire mesh.

I'm trying to make terrain meshes, and basically I just made a number of "bumpy" fbx models that with the perimeter edges rounded off (mound shapes and rock perimeter pieces) so they're "tileable" but I can only assign a solid texture. I want to paint on details, I can open the texture in photoshop and paint it 2d, but I want to see it in 3d while I paint it.....




Any advice? Normally with the Unity terrain tools you can blend textures in at different opacities to make it look nice but for mobile these meshes are way way way way way way way less resource intense and can be culled when not in view.

Is there an easier (and free) software than 3ds max for doing your textures?

Take a look at blender, an open source/free modelling package.
Is it easier ? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on your skills, but it is the defacto standard free modelling tool, hi-professionals will use max or maya, but I can recomment blender for any beginner/hobby/indie developer. When you want to learn driving a car, a space ship won't help you much, right ?

There are tutorials on the web for using Z-brush to paint and model your terrain .
Also in 3ds max you can add details using the vertex paint options . Texture blendind , textures , bump maps and so on . Check the tutorials on vertex color / vertex paint using F1 in 3ds max .

Also don't underestimate the power of photoshop and integration with 3ds max . You can make a top wireframe render , load it in photoshop and paint on it , and in 3ds max you can load the same psd and it will update when you save the psd file . I can provide more help if needed

Kudos !

[quote name='lmbarns' timestamp='1335373703' post='4934812']
Is there an easier (and free) software than 3ds max for doing your textures?

Take a look at blender, an open source/free modelling package.
Is it easier ? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on your skills, but it is the defacto standard free modelling tool, hi-professionals will use max or maya, but I can recomment blender for any beginner/hobby/indie developer. When you want to learn driving a car, a space ship won't help you much, right ?
[/quote]

I spent some time yesterday getting to the same point in blender I was at in 3ds, where I can make a mesh, manipulate the points to make whatever shapes I want, and they look pretty good.

The problem was when I imported them as fbx into unity, first they were upside down, reverse/inverted versions of what I made, if I made a mountain, it was a cone like inverted mountain. Then when I added a material, the same material I added to my 3ds made fbx files (stone texture), it would only show as a solid cream color, I tried different shaders and it was nothing but a solid color and not my material

Still trying to figure it out.

Z-brush looks amazing I just don't have the money to buy it, but it is reasonably priced relative to it's competitors, but I can buy a lot of stock models for the price that are likely nicer than what I'd be able to make myself in a months time.