The 20 Best 3D Texturing & Painting Softwares
An application to generate normal / ambient occlusion / displacement maps. It can also project the texture of the highpoly model into the lowpoly mesh.
Stable release: 3.18.10 / October 2014
Operating system: Windows
License: Free
Generate a Normal, Derivative, Displacement/Height, Ambient Occlusion, Concavity and Convexity maps in around 5 seconds on a modern mid-range GPU.
Stable release: 1.0 / December 2013
Developer: Knald Technologies
Operating system: Windows Vista, Windows 7 & Windows 8 (64 bit)
License: Commercial
Lets you extract all the possible maps from a single image: this now includes PBR channels such as base color (or albedo), metallic, roughness but also normal, height, specular, curvature, AO etc.
Stable release: 3 / September 2014
Developer: Allegorithmic
Operating system: Windows and Mac OSX
License: Proprietary
A stand-alone application for the creation and editing of UV texture coordinates for 3D polymeshes and subdivision surfaces.
Stable release: v2.08.05 / November 2014
Developer: headus (metamorphosis) Pty Ltd
Operating system: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
License: Trialware
A specialty Windows UV mapping tool for unfolding and unwrapping 3D models.
Stable release: 3.50.06 / November 2014
Operating system: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7/8
License: Proprietary
Maya provides high-end character and effects toolsets along with increased productivity for modeling, texturing, and shader creation tasks.
Stable release: 2015 / April 15, 2014
Developer: Autodesk, Inc.
Operating system: Windows 7, OSX 10.8, RHEL 6.2, Fedora 14, CentOS 6.2
License: Trialware
3D modeling software provides a comprehensive modeling, animation, simulation, and rendering solution for games, film, and motion graphics artists.
Stable release: 2015 SP2 / 20 March 2014
Developer: Autodesk Media and Entertainment
Operating system: Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1
License: Trialware
A 3D animation application that contained various computer graphics tools. Softimage 2015 is the last release of the software.
Stable release: 2015 / April 14, 2014
Developer: Autodesk
Operating system: Microsoft Windows, Linux
License: Trialware
Offers fully integrated modeling, sculpting, painting, effects and animation tools in one cohesive, easy-to-use content creation package, with the added bonus of unlimited network rendering capabilities.
Stable release: 801 / 25 April 2014
Developer: The Foundry, Visionmongers
Operating system: Windows, Linux, OS X
License: Trialware
A free and open source 3D animation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline.
Stable release: 2.72b / October 21, 2014
Developer: Blender Foundation
Operating system: Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD
License: GNU General Public License v2 or later