Best 3D Painting Software for Freelancers

Blender is a versatile 3D creation suite that is both free and open source. It encompasses the complete 3D pipeline, which includes modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking, video editing, and even a 2D animation workflow. The platform features Cycles, an advanced unbiased path-tracer engine that delivers breathtakingly realistic renderings. With its extensive suite of modeling tools, users can easily create, modify, and edit their 3D models. VFX professionals have praised it as “likely the best tracker available in the market.” Blender also offers robust camera and object tracking capabilities, enabling users to import raw footage, track it, mask specific areas, and visualize live camera movements within their 3D environment—all without needing to switch applications. Furthermore, its high-quality rigging and animation features have led to its adoption in various short films, advertisements, television series, and feature-length movies, illustrating its widespread impact on the industry. As a result, Blender continues to be a go-to tool for artists and creators looking to push the boundaries of 3D visualization.

Construct vast universes, intricate characters, and breathtaking visual effects seamlessly. Animate realistic characters using advanced animation tools that captivate audiences. Design 3D models and environments effortlessly with the user-friendly modeling features of Maya® software. Produce lifelike effects, ranging from dramatic explosions to detailed cloth simulations. A cutting-edge visual programming workspace equipped with dynamic solvers allows for swift creation of stunning effects suitable for blockbusters. Utilize the Bifrost Graph Editor to assemble personalized graphs tailored to your project's needs. Generate remarkable effects—such as snow, sand, and swirling dust storms—with pre-made graphs at your disposal. Render intricate projects effortlessly with Arnold, a powerful tool designed to tackle challenges related to complex characters, environments, and lighting. With Arnold’s integration into Maya, you can preview high-quality results instantly and make rapid adjustments. Experience time savings through Arnold’s user-friendly interface and straightforward controls, enabling you to focus on your creative vision more effectively. Ultimately, this powerful combination not only enhances productivity but also elevates the quality of your artistic endeavors.

Ultimate Unwrap 3D, a standalone UV mapping program for unfolding and unwrapping 3D model, is a standalone software that allows you to map UV coordinates. It comes with an easy-to use UV coordinate editor and a standard set UV mapping projections, such as box, cylindrical, spherical as well as advanced UV map tools for difficult-to-map areas on a 3D model. The Pro version comes with a complete set of UV mapping editing tools such as straightening and aligning, packing and seaming. It is perfect for artists, professionals and game developers. It's also easy to use for beginners. Ultimate Unwrap 3D is compatible with over 100 file types, including FBX and DirectX. We support 3dsMax, Maya, SoftImage Cinema 4D Lightwave Modo Sketchup and many others! Interactive seam picking mode. Marking seams in 3D views. Repainting UVs to create texture atlases using multiple textures. AutoTD UV islands. Scales UVs by using the average texel densities.

Modo is an advanced 3D modeling and rendering platform specifically crafted to assist businesses in producing 3D designs while managing UV mapping and texturing processes. This robust toolset enables artists to animate, model, texture, and render with unparalleled flexibility, allowing for the seamless exploration and realization of creative visions. Modo® serves as your gateway to artistic discovery, equipped with features like rapid direct modeling, adaptable procedural modeling, the innovative MeshFusion Boolean toolset, and integrated sculpting capabilities, all harmonizing to create an unmatched modeling experience. By utilizing Modo’s user-friendly tools, you can escape the restrictions that stifle creativity, letting you concentrate on your artistic process rather than technical details. Whether you're shaping basic forms or crafting intricate designs, Modo empowers you to prioritize creation over construction. Moreover, the versatile tool assembly system allows you to build a customized collection of specialized tools by merging various operations, enhancing your workflow. With Modo, every task becomes simpler, enabling you to continuously uncover and implement new efficiencies in your projects while elevating your artistic capabilities.

Mudbox is a powerful software for 3D digital painting and sculpting, enabling artists to craft stunning characters and immersive environments. With its tactile toolset, users can sculpt and paint intricate details on 3D geometry and textures. This software, Mudbox® 3D, offers an intuitive interface that mimics real-world sculpting techniques, allowing for the creation of complex 3D characters and settings. Artists can paint directly onto their 3D models across various channels, enhancing the texturing process. The camera-based workflow allows for the addition of resolution only in specific mesh areas, making it an artist-friendly option. Users can produce clean, production-ready meshes from a variety of sources, including scanned, imported, or sculpted data. The software supports the baking of normal, displacement, and ambient occlusion maps, streamlining the texturing process. Effective brush-based workflows are available for both polygons and textures, promoting efficiency and creativity. Artists can seamlessly transfer assets from Maya into Mudbox to enrich their geometry with detailed features. Moreover, characters can easily be sent from Maya LT to Mudbox for sculpting and texturing, and then transferred back to Maya LT for final adjustments. This integration allows creators to elevate their 3D assets and environments from initial concepts to polished, high-quality final frames, showcasing the full potential of their artistic vision. Ultimately, Mudbox serves as an essential tool for artists seeking to bring their imaginative worlds to life.

Adobe Substance 3D Painter features advanced smart materials, intelligent masks, and integrated baking tools, along with a cutting-edge real-time viewport. Elevate your artistic abilities beyond traditional 2D mediums and unlock new creative opportunities. Infuse your artwork with vitality using Substance Painter, which allows for the use of adaptable smart materials that realistically reflect wear and aging on any object. You can also delve into versatile mask presets that seamlessly conform to various shapes and utilize customizable brushes that can be altered on the spot. Navigate your asset freely, rearranging windows to craft your ideal workspace while immersing yourself in a comprehensive texturing journey. The non-destructive workflow of Substance Painter encourages you to experiment boldly, with the reassurance that you can revert to previous versions if necessary. You’ll always have a clear path back to your previous designs. Paint with innovative smart brushes, employ projection techniques, and even harness particles to enhance your creativity. Additionally, you can quickly extract and bake materials from a 3D model in mere seconds thanks to our GPU-accelerated baking capabilities, making the process both efficient and effective. Every feature is designed to give you maximum flexibility and control over your artistic vision.

We offer Megascans, Bridge, and Mixer, which together form a distinctive library of 3D assets along with two essential applications designed for creating 3D art. Our platform enables a vibrant community of users to craft stunning 3D visuals for various industries, including video games, film, and architectural visualization. Established in 2011 by Teddy Bergsman and Waqar Azim, Quixel was driven by the ambition to enhance the speed and efficiency with which creators design digital spaces, providing them with a vast and continually growing repository of 3D components and user-friendly tools to streamline their creative endeavors. If you possess an Unreal Engine license, you can easily log in with your Epic Games account to enjoy unrestricted access to the Megascans library via Bridge. We continuously scan thousands of 3D and 2D assets tailored to your immediate requirements, allowing you to concentrate on unleashing your creativity. With its exceptional quality and extensive range, Megascans transforms the creative process into an enjoyable experience for leading AAA and VFX studios around the globe, reinforcing the idea that high-quality resources can inspire greater artistic expression.

Transitioning from procedural to meticulously hand-painted textures, Mari offers a boundless 3D painting experience. Mari® empowers artists with advanced capabilities to manage intricate assets through intuitive 3D painting tools that unlock their creative potential. By supporting UDIM workflows, users can efficiently handle numerous high-resolution texture maps while benefiting from a projection-based painting system that enables pre-commit edits, contextual previews, and 2D refinements. This flexibility liberates artists from constraints related to resolution and complexity. With non-destructive layer and node graph systems, Mari facilitates the creation of desired aesthetics while providing a vast array of procedural options. The Materials System simplifies generating less complex, high-volume assets or serves as a foundational step for crafting standout hero assets. Furthermore, Mari includes a comprehensive Python API and robust OCIO color management support, making it a versatile tool for modern 3D artists. Overall, Mari represents a fusion of power and creativity, ensuring that artists can bring their visions to life without limitations.

Forger offers an easy-to-use multi-touch interface along with a diverse array of tools, enabling users to craft 3D models for various purposes such as films, gaming, or 3D printing, and even experience them through augmented reality. Whether you’re a seasoned professional in fields like filmmaking or game design, or an aspiring artist, Forger empowers you to explore your creativity and realize your concepts. This app provides the flexibility to sculpt whenever inspiration strikes—whether you're on the move, relaxing at home, or waiting in a queue. You can utilize your keyboard, the Apple Pencil, or simply your fingers to manipulate your designs. Forger serves as a portable sculpting studio and includes features such as background and reference image support through "ImagePlane." Additionally, it supports image customization for brush tips, various masking techniques, and a brush preset system that allows iPad users to store and share their unique presets. This ensures that you have everything you need to create stunning 3D works right at your fingertips.

Embark on a genuine ZBrush journey as you step into the vibrant realm of digital sculpting with ZBrushCoreMini. Tailored specifically for budding artists of any age, ZBrushCoreMini features a user-friendly interface that allows anyone to start sculpting right away. Focused entirely on the art of sculpting, you can begin with a basic sphere or a stone block, then utilize a carefully curated selection of popular digital sculpting brushes from ZBrush to artistically manipulate material and bring your vision to life! ZBrushCoreMini empowers you to unleash your creativity. Once you're satisfied with your artistic piece, it also offers an innovative method to showcase your work to others through the iMage3D format. This format presents your creation as a standard 2D image on any website, but other ZBrushCoreMini users can access it in full 3D! Moreover, with the rise of 3D printing technology, ZBrushCoreMini enables you to export your model for physical printing, allowing your digital designs to come to life in the real world. This unique feature opens up new avenues for artists to share their creativity beyond the digital realm.

3ds Max provides an extensive and adaptable suite of tools for crafting high-quality designs while allowing for complete artistic expression. It enables the creation of expansive game worlds and the visualization of detailed architectural projects. You can intricately model both interiors and objects, as well as animate characters and features, incorporating visual effects seamlessly. With the integrated Arnold renderer, you can enjoy a robust experience that effectively manages intricate characters, scenes, and special effects. Time efficiency is enhanced through centralized creative tools that facilitate interactive light mixing, color adjustments, and lens effects on rendered images. The user-friendly interface and straightforward controls accelerate your workflow, enabling quicker iterations and the production of high-quality renders and variations. 3ds Max empowers you to optimize your workflow through automation, giving you more freedom to focus on creative pursuits. Additionally, it can serve as a powerful compute engine to amplify content creation, further enhanced by the ability to expand existing workflows via user-friendly APIs. This flexibility allows artists to push the boundaries of their creative potential.

The integration of 3D design software with touch-responsive haptic devices revolutionizes conventional craftsmanship by allowing for the creation of organic, digital designs tailored for personalized production. This technology enables the crafting of sculpted forms that can be specifically designed to conform to the human body, while also incorporating intricate aesthetic and functional elements that traditional CAD systems may struggle to achieve. It guarantees that designs are optimized for various manufacturing processes, including additive, subtractive, or formative methods. With an intuitive haptic interface, users can seamlessly shift from traditional handcrafting to a more advanced digital design approach. Geomagic® Freeform®, recognized as the leading organic hybrid design software in the industry, empowers designers to tackle complex precision challenges in manufacturing, facilitating the management of intricate tasks within existing scan-to-print or CAD-to-manufacturing workflows. Additionally, Geomagic Sculpt™ streamlines the organic design-to-3D printing process, offering efficient tools for quick development. Meanwhile, Geomagic Freeform goes further by equipping users with an extensive range of advanced design features, including a robust set of sculpting tools for detailed design work, making it a versatile choice for professionals seeking to enhance their creative capacity. This combination of technology not only elevates the design process but also opens new avenues for innovation in custom manufacturing.

3DCoat is a comprehensive application that equips users with all the necessary tools to transform a digital block of clay into a production-ready, fully textured model, whether organic or hard-surfaced. Currently, it is taught in over 300 universities, colleges, and educational institutions around the globe. As one of the most sophisticated software solutions for crafting intricate 3D models, 3DCoat stands out in a market where many competitors focus on a single function, such as digital sculpting or texture painting. Instead, 3DCoat excels across a wide array of tasks within the asset creation pipeline, encompassing sculpting, retopology, UV editing, PBR texture painting, and rendering. This versatility allows it to be regarded as a multifaceted tool, serving as 3D texturing software, 3D texture painting software, a 3D sculpting program, retopology software, UV mapping software, and 3D rendering software all in one. Consequently, users benefit from a streamlined experience, eliminating the need to invest in and master multiple specialized software packages. Overall, 3DCoat simplifies the workflow for artists and creators in the 3D modeling sphere.

ZBrush is a groundbreaking software for digital sculpting and painting that has transformed the 3D modeling landscape with its robust features and user-friendly design. Featuring a sleek interface, ZBrush equips digital artists with the most sophisticated tools available today. It boasts a suite of functionalities developed to enhance usability, resulting in a creative experience that feels remarkably intuitive and fosters artistic expression. Capable of handling up to a billion polygons, ZBrush empowers you to design without limitations, driven solely by your creativity. The software utilizes a circular design philosophy, enabling its menus to operate in a fluid, non-linear manner that enhances the interaction between 3D models, 2D graphics, and 2.5D Pixols in innovative ways. ZBrush provides everything necessary for swiftly conceptualizing a 2D or 3D idea and seeing it through to completion. Furthermore, users can achieve lifelike renders directly within ZBrush, augmented with dynamic lighting and atmospheric effects, thus enhancing the visual quality of their projects. This comprehensive suite makes ZBrush an essential tool for both amateur and professional artists alike.

Maxon's BodyPaint 3D serves as the premier solution for producing intricate textures and distinctive sculptures. Eliminate the frustrations of UV seams, imprecise texturing, and the repetitive switching to your 2D image editor. Embrace a seamless texturing experience that empowers you to swiftly apply highly detailed textures directly onto your 3D models. Additionally, BodyPaint 3D is equipped with an extensive array of sculpting tools, enabling you to transform a basic object into an exquisite piece of art. By utilizing BodyPaint 3D to apply complete materials onto your 3D creations, you'll instantly observe how the texture aligns with the model's contours, how bump or displacement responds to lighting, and how transparency and reflection interact with their surroundings. You can forgo the hassle of transferring textures between different environments, as you will always have an accurate representation of the texture, allowing you to focus on enhancing its appearance. This level of integration ensures that your creative process becomes more efficient and enjoyable.

Cheetah3D is a robust and user-friendly software designed for 3D modeling, rendering, and animation, specifically created for Mac users. Dive into the realm of computer-generated imagery and craft stunning 3D visuals for your upcoming iPhone game or design your very first animated character. Equipped with a comprehensive array of polygon, subdivision surface, and spline modeling tools, artists can concentrate on their creative process, knowing that Cheetah3D offers an extensive range of features to support them. This software simplifies 3D modeling, making it accessible for both beginners and seasoned professionals. The character rigging functionality is integrated into Cheetah3D's fluid animation system, allowing nearly every attribute of an object to be animated effortlessly. Bring your characters to life for your next mobile game or create captivating architectural fly-throughs using the powerful animation capabilities embedded in Cheetah3D. Moreover, Cheetah3D seamlessly incorporates the robust Bullet physics engine, enabling realistic simulations of both rigid and soft body dynamics, enhancing the overall visual experience. With its innovative features and user-centric design, Cheetah3D stands out as an essential tool for artists and developers in the field.

An ideal solution for kids and those without design expertise to craft in 3D, this innovative tool features a straightforward interface that resembles a cube and offers an array of engaging tools reminiscent of a building game. Users can easily access a VR view, project images or text onto their creations, and even engrave designs, making it both fun and educational. With essential features designed for immediate use, it requires no prior training, allowing anyone to dive right in and utilize basic tools for tasks like hammering or reconstructing. Paint your 3D models with a diverse color selection, and effortlessly generate logos or text with just a single click, starting from an .stl or .obj file for precise modeling. Additionally, sculpting shapes is made easy by using images or photos, and you can quickly manipulate your designs with functions to copy, paste, move, resize, flip, or combine elements in just a click. Enhance your model by adding rounded shapes or more .stl and .obj files, and select parts of your object to work on by color. You can also project images or text onto your model and use them as decals! Moreover, educators can create student accounts via a teacher dashboard without needing email addresses, allowing them to monitor the students' creations in real time. This tool not only fosters creativity but also enhances collaborative learning experiences.

Bforartists is an all-encompassing, freely available, and open-source 3D software suite designed for the creation of 3D content. It provides a comprehensive 3D art workflow suitable for producing game graphics, pre-rendered films, and images. This includes everything from modeling and sculpting to texturing, rigging, animation, rendering, and post-processing. The name Bforartists encapsulates its philosophy of prioritizing the needs of artists over those of programmers. It is a derivative of the well-known open-source 3D application Blender, created by a group of 3D enthusiasts aiming to enhance the original software. The main objective of the Bforartists project is to offer an improved graphical user interface and enhanced usability, shifting focus from a hotkey-centric approach to a more intuitive and user-friendly design. Bforartists maintains full compatibility with Blender files and add-ons, ensuring that any feature functioning in Blender is also available in Bforartists. Additionally, the software keeps pace with the latest Blender updates, ensuring that users benefit from the same toolset. In essence, Bforartists represents a significant step towards making powerful 3D tools accessible to everyone.