normal textures/materials or substance painter?

My question may not say what i want exactly but let me start by saying that question came in my head when i wanted to make a horror game but the models just looked…normal or even modern which doesn’t fit with the “horror” theme and specially the walls they just looked normal until someone told me to purchase a substance but they were alittle expensive to buy alot but then i saw that they have 2 things called substance design and painter so i guess the design is designing the texture from scratch and the painter is what i want im pretty sure but is it worth it specially to add stuff like grim or dirt? Sorry if the question is posted in the wrong place but people confused me when i asked them

Thank you

There are many, many ways to create textures, but typically you have three steps:

  1. Gather reference material: Google image search.
  2. Collect source images: Take/download photos (textures.com and a ton of other sites), generate stuff procedurally in Substance designer or Filter Forge. From wallpapers to grime and mold, get whatever you can.
  3. Mixing the images into textures by layering and blending them, until you have something you like. Gimp, Affinity Photo, Photoline, Photoshop, pick the one you like and can afford.

There are many tutorials on YouTube, ArtStation, Gnomon workshop and great many other places where you can learn the ins and outs of texture creation for physically based game engines.

What i just want is an easy software to mask or layer dust or grime or anything because other than that honestly i wont go deeper than that or if i want to i would download a texture from textures.com or something. Do you have any recommendation software?
Thanks

I switched form Photoshop to Photoline (https://www.pl32.com) and never looked back. It’s affordable, flexible and (to me) intuitive. Doesn’t have all 7 gazillion features of Photoshop but has the ones I need (and a ton more).
And you can try it for 30 days.