Paint 3D models like you would IRL
MechaPaint is a new way to paint and texture 3D models. Let the app handle the details. You just paint! I built it after years in the game industry because I wanted a more direct way to texture and paint 3D models and environments. Import, Paint, Export. Nothing complicated. Everything it does is aimed at one thing, making your 3D models look like you want them to look.
A new 3D art tool, made by human artists, for human artists
A lot has happened. Here is what it can do now.
MechaPaint started as a way to paint right on a 3D model. Today it also repairs scans, slims heavy meshes, weathers it with snow, sand and rust, grows fur, scales and feathers, and builds whole terrains. Pick a topic, or just scroll.
Turn a lumpy scan into a clean, square model
Phone scans and AI models arrive soft, noisy and a little crooked. I built a whole toolbox of brushes that fix the shape itself, right on the model, while your quads, UVs and paint stay exactly where they were.
- Smooth - Brush away scan noise. Relax lifts points out of creases, and Trim shaves raised gunk perfectly flat.
- Scalpel - Lasso a stray fin or a floating speck. MechaPaint slices along your line, cuts it away and caps the hole with clean quads that carry the texture.
- Flattener and Corners - Square up a wall with one click, then drag down an edge for a perfect 90 degree corner.
- Mesh Patch - Paint over a hole, press Save, and Weld stitches it in so the part is watertight again.
- Build Up and Mesh Drag - Fatten a leg the scan pinched thin, or pull points along a plane with a soft falloff.
- Level - Click three points on the floor and the whole model sits perfectly level.
Heavy mesh in. Clean, light quads out. Your paint comes along.
Brush over a model with PolyShave and the mesh thins out right where you paint, building tidy quads as it goes. Keep Texture means every merged face carries the exact paint that was under it.
- PolyShave Grid - Reduce a stroke into an even grid of quads that follows the flow of the surface.
- Repair and Lines - Brush a triangulated download and the quads come back. Draw guide lines to set which way they run.
- Decimate - Click a part and every edge loop that can go, goes, with the shape held exactly.
- Poly Line - Click two points for a brand new edge, with the faces under it rebuilt.
- Color Wireframe - Triangles red, quads blue, larger polygons purple. Read your topology at a glance.
Bringing the quads back to a triangulated model might be a first for a painting app! What really matters is that a model you bought or downloaded becomes a model you can edit and animate again.
Snow on the roof, sand in the corners, rust through the paint
Weather lands where weather really lands. Snow settles on the tops, sand banks into the corners, and rust eats up through the paint you already laid down.
- Snow - Paint color onto every upward face, or Pack real snow geometry that exports with your model.
- Sandstorm - Dust the tops, spatter the sides, and pile real sand into the corners.
- Moon and Mars dust - A regolith pattern with tiny craters and rock bits, plus Moon, Mars, Desert and Earth colors. Pick From Model matches the ground in one click.
- Rust that breaks through - Grow on Model rusts the surface you painted, with chipped bare metal and streaks in Color, Rough, Metal, Normal and Height.
- Sandpaper, Reveal Metal and Dirt - Wear the corners first, chip edges to bare steel, and fill every crevice with grime.
Grow fur, scales and feathers right onto your creature
Each Factory is one page of knobs with a live preview. Make a tile, or press Grow on Model and it wraps your whole creature, following the body the way real skin does.
- Scale Factory - Lizard, snake, croc and dragon scales, plus dinosaur hides, hadrosaur pads and folds, American alligator and a croc belly leather band.
- Fur Factory and the Hair Brush - Draw root to tip lines on the model and the fur lies along them.
- Feather Factory - Feathers built from knobs, grown onto the body to follow your Hair Brush lines.
- Rust Factory - Rust, pitting and streaks as a tile or grown right on the model.
- Lock a part - Lock the eyes or the teeth and every Factory paints neatly around them.
I built the dinosaur hides from photos of real painted figures. The point is that your creature gets the pebbled, layered skin collectors look for, in a few clicks instead of a few days.
Build the ground, drive the roads, then print it at HO scale
Give your terrain a real size, anything from an ant mound to a mountain range 500 km across. Sculpt it, terrace it, run roads over it, then export it at true model railroad scale for your 3D printer.
- Strata - Draw areas on the ground, give each a level up to 20, and press Generate for clean stepped terraces.
- Roads - Banks, gutters, level crossings and concrete overpasses. Road Ride Mode puts the camera on the road and drives it for you.
- Crater - Start on a Moon Surface, Mars Plain, Impact Site or Battlefield, then press craters in seven looks, from a fresh bowl to a central peak with terraces.
- Hachure maps - Old engraved battlefield maps come in as real hills and valleys.
- True scale out - HO, N, O and Hot Wheels 1:64, in millimeters. You design in meters and the rails land at true HO gauge.
Turning a hachure map into terrain might be an industry first! What matters is that a map you love can become ground you can paint, build on and hold in your hand.
About 2,900 PBR materials, 13,000 real paints, one search box
Everything you can pick lives in one Library. It sits first on the right and opens at every launch, so the material you want is always one search away.
- Little globes - Materials, gradients and Factory presets all show on lit spheres, so you see how each one sits on a surface.
- Real Paints - Match the brush to a bottle you can buy, scan a barcode, and get a shopping list of every paint you used.
- Sci-fi decals - Hazard stripes, stencil text, HUD marks, insignia, tech panels and battle damage.
- Instant - The lists ship inside the app and thumbnails are saved on disk, so the grid fills the moment you open it.
Start from a leaf, a rug, a photo or a moon
New Project opens a whole shelf of starting points. Each one hands you something ready to paint in one click, so you spend your time on the fun part.
- Leaf - Pick a leaf photo and MechaPaint traces the outline, then stamps a two sided leaf with a midrib, 2 to 24 veins, a twig, and Fold and Droop to bend it.
- Fabric - Rugs, round rugs, flags and curtains, draped on the floor, in a window or flying in the wind.
- PhotoMesh and LightMesh - Turn a flat photo into a textured model, or push artwork into a deep relief.
- Skybox and Panorama - Six faces, equirect or a 4 by 3 cross, at up to 4k.
- And more - Terrain, Crater, 2D Canvas at any size, Dynamic Head and Icon Builder.
What You Can Do With MechaPaint
Color and full PBR, painted right on the model. 12 model formats in, textures and models out.
One window, the whole job
From a grey model to a finished one, without opening a second app. Here is what is inside, grouped by the job you are doing.
Paint On The Model
Brushes with pressure, layers with 26 blend modes, symmetry, clone, selections and masking tape. Strokes cross UV seams like they are not there. The painting tools
Full PBR
Color, normal, metallic, roughness, ambient occlusion and height. Pick a material and paint with it like a color. PBR painting
Hard Surface & Mecha
Mecha Line panel lines, Skeleton cutouts, PBR decals that wrap around edges, and Track stripes. The detailing tools
Wear & Weathering
Sandpaper wears corners first, Reveal Metal chips to bare steel, Dirt finds every crevice. Aging a model
Fur, Scales, Vines, Fabric
Generators that grow fur, dragon scales and ivy right onto your model, and drape your pattern on a flag or rug. The generators
Fix What You Were Given
Rebuild UVs in one step, paint models with no UVs, see every mesh fault painted on the model, and finish AI generated models. UV and mesh tools
Real Paint Colors
Over 13,000 real hobby paints from 38 brands, a bottle barcode scanner, and a shopping list of every paint you used. Real Paints
Out To Anywhere
12 model formats in. FBX, GLB, OBJ, STL and LWO out, with PBR texture sets named for Unity, Unreal, Godot, Blender and Roblox. True-scale exports for printing. Formats and specs
Three steps between "ugh, this asset" and "done"
There is no project setup, no material graph to wire, no baking rig to configure before you can lay down a stroke. Drop a model in and start painting.
Import
Drag a model onto the window, or paste one. Existing textures load onto the base layer, every material slot becomes an independently paintable submesh, and nothing on disk is touched.
Paint in 3D
Work on the surface, not the flat map. Strokes land where you put them, across seams, across islands, across submesh boundaries, even on a model that is mid-animation. Painting on a moving mesh may well be a first for 3D painting. Of course, that only matters because it lets you paint the pose your audience will actually see. The UV bookkeeping is MechaPaint's problem, not yours.
Export
Write PNG or TGA textures per submesh, merged or as a full PBR set, at whatever resolution you need, or the whole model as FBX, GLB, OBJ, STL or LWO. Drop them straight back into Unity, Unreal, Godot, Blender, Roblox, or your slicer.
Whatever you build in, you're covered
Model in Blender, build in Unity, generate in Meshy, or design Polytoria clothing. Pick your tool for a guide to the round trip, with tips written for that pipeline specifically.
Roblox and Polytoria get dedicated, purpose-built tools: the official avatar bodies, template guides, and one-click upload-ready clothing export, so what you paint is what uploads. I am actively expanding both. See the avatar tools.