SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS - MechaPaint 2.0 is available now. Effortlessly paint and texture any 3D model, in 12 model formats, with an array of unique, artist-friendly tools. Explore infinite variations with novel and proprietary tools and workflows, like Real Paint Palette Matching, PhotoMesh, LightMesh, the Hair Brush, and the exclusive (and optional!) AI Brush.
MechaPaint is a standalone 3D model painter for Windows and macOS. Open a model you already own, paint on it directly in full PBR, and export for your game engine, your 3D printer or your paint bench.
Works with the apps you already use
MechaPaint opens 12 model formats: FBX, OBJ, GLB, GLTF, DAE, STL, PLY, 3MF, LWO, USD, USDA and USDC, plus 10 image formats including PSD, TGA, TIFF and EXR. Drag a file onto the window and start painting.
Model in any tool, from Blender to Maya, paint in MechaPaint, and export clean textures straight back onto your UVs. Change the model in your modeler, save over the same file, and Reload Model rebuilds every painted layer onto the new geometry.
LightWave files open natively, from LightWave 6 through today, with every surface a paintable part and your layers intact. iClone characters come in as FBX, ready to retouch faces, skin and clothing.
Finished work exports with presets for Unity and Unreal, as well as Roblox and Polytoria. MechaPaint even recognizes Maya, LightWave, Modo and 3ds Max project folders, so file dialogs open where your work already lives.
Real Paint
Real Paints is a color picker stocked with more than 13,000 real, purchasable paints from 38 brands: hobby lines from Vallejo, Tamiya, Citadel, Mr. Hobby, AK Interactive, The Army Painter, Scale75 and Reaper, hardware-store cans from Rust-Oleum and Krylon, and house colors from Sherwin-Williams. Pick any color and it ranks the 40 closest bottles, each with the catalog code you need to order it.
Palette Match takes it further. It puts the whole layer onto only the colors you have on hand, the swatches under the color wheel, the jars on your bench, or both, so every inch of the model can be painted by hand with real paint. Dithering fakes the in-between shades with speckle or crosshatch, the way a painter would. When you finish, Paint List hands you the shopping list, grouped by brand, most used first, ready to copy or save as CSV. Picked paints stand in the viewport as little glass jars, and a click on one loads the brush.
I have not seen another 3D painter connect the screen to the paint store like this. Of course, that only matters if the model on your desk ends up looking like the model on your screen, and that is exactly what it is built for.
Photographs
Photo Material turns one photograph into all six PBR channels, color, normal, roughness, metal, ambient occlusion and height, on the model in one undo step, with de-lighting, perspective correction and tiling repair built in. PhotoMesh turns a photograph into real displaced geometry, then a solid. LightMesh does the same for any grayscale image, reading brightness as height, with Height and Blur that update live while you watch.
Gradus Adeptus measures a known object in a reference photo and exports the model at its true real-world size as STL, GLB or FBX, ready for a printer. And Head In A Jar turns one photo of a face into a print-ready sheet that lines a mason jar. Put a lamp inside and the face floats in the glass.
Fur
The Hair Brush sets which way fur lies. Draw a few lines on the model, give each one a size, a strength and a lay for how flat the hair sits, and arrows on the surface preview the flow. Then MechaPaint grows the fur along it into its own layer. Fur that follows the body, parting at the spine and turning at the shoulder, is what makes a creature believable.
The optional AI Brush
The AI Brush stays off until you turn it on. When you do, aim a square at part of the model and click. MechaPaint photographs that patch, sends it to an image service, and paints the result back onto the model in exactly the same place. By default it sharpens the patch and adds believable material detail while keeping the colors you painted, and the instruction it sends is shown to you in full. Use Google's image service with your own key, billed per request, or point it at a ComfyUI server on your own machine and every click is free.
Built for where the model is going
Roblox gets SurfaceAppearance PBR sets, classic Shirt, Pants and T-Shirt templates, R15 clothing, a 15-part Studio body kit and Dynamic Head. Polytoria gets its official clothing template. Grass card sets export with presets for Unity, Unreal and Godot.
The Skybox and Panorama Painter lets you step inside a panorama and paint the sky from where the player stands, then export six engine-named faces, one panorama, or a 4x3 cross.
And more
Art Critic analyzes the viewport and reports on value structure and flatness. The Multiverse Brush paints one mesh with the surface of another. The Low Poly Brush builds a clean low-poly mesh over a high-poly scan. Streak runs paint downhill like thinned enamel, Glow paints bloom right into the texture, and Notes pin art direction to the model with arrows.
Availability: MechaPaint 2.0 is available now for Windows and macOS at mechapaint.com, and it is a free upgrade for everyone who already owns MechaPaint. It is a one-time purchase, currently half off. A free version runs the full application with watermarked exports.
We believe that MechaPaint's interface is its most important feature. Try it out, and let us know what you think!