All 3D programs are kind of the same, just different interfaces and ways to do the exact same thing.
UI’s
C4D
Maya
Houdini
Zbrush
Except Zbrush. Zbrush is not the same as the others.
But they all aim to do the same thing…
Create models
So, let’s say I wanted to create a head.
In Maya/C4D I’d box model.
Make a sphere. Make it higher resolution.
The start creating bigger forms.
In Zbrush, I’d sculpt.
It’s the same process, but it looks different because they use different UI’s (basically)
In reality, you’d prob want to box model in C4D/Maya/Blender, then send that to Zbrush for detailing and secondary forms, and then back to C4D/Maya/Blender for rendering.
That’s a super simplified way of looking at it (there’s a bit more to it), but just think in terms of ‘I create a model, then I do stuff with it.’.
Texturing
If you wanted to texture something (basically, give it a surface), that’s super easy.
I’ll do it in C4D bc it’s the most straightforward.
You take your model (in this case, just a simple cube, but could be anything: a modeled head from zbrush, a photogrammetry scan, a chair you used AI to make)
Then add a material.
Then add texture.
Let’s say i wanted to add a fingerprint texture.
Then make it less glossy.
But I think you were talking about making the textures affect the surface… how it moves.
Surface Displacement
Can easily do that with ‘displacements’.
I’ll do it in C4D the easy way, but there’s loads of ways to do it.
You can see here I’m just selecting different types of noises, but it could be a fingerprint texture, a clay texture, a brick texture, etc
As long as you make it high resolution enough…
You can enough limit it to certain parts using motion graphics in C4D (or, in zbrush, with a brushstroke)
And you can combine textures and displacement, using the same one for both (and animating them).
For example, the fingerprint texture from earlier.
If I make the models super high resolution and apply it, I can use the same texture to change the look and change the surface.
This can all get pretty complicated
There’s UV‘s
There’s dedicated texture programs like Substance Painter or Mari.
And there’s just a bunch of ways to accomplish the same thing in every each one of these programs.
Just to go back to zbrush for a bit, you can ‘paint’ on the textures using brushes (I think I remember you saying something about clay surfaces).
Here’s ‘clay brush’
BUT, you lose that ability to easily animate it, like in C4D.
So…
Just a matter of what you want the end goal to be, because each program can get their in their own way.