What are the best programs to create procedural textures?

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Development

What are the best programs to create procedural textures?

9

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Considered

147

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Recs.

Nov 1, 2023

Last
Updated

9 Options Considered

Best programs to create procedural textures	Price	Platforms	3D
-- Blender	Free	Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD	Yes
-- Material Maker	FREE	Linux, Windows, MacOS	Yes
-- Substance Painter	20$/m	-	-
-- Neo Textures	free	-	-
-- Quixel Mixer	Free / paid	-	-

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score 31 · Answer 1

Blender

Top Pro

Node based modeling support

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, FreeBSD

3D:Yes

Graphics:OpenGL 1.4 (Blender 2.76 and earlier), OpenGl 2.1 (Blender 2.79), OpenGL 3.3 (Blender 2.8+)

Technology:C, Python

See All Specs

Top Pro

Python extensibility

Blender embeds Python 3, which can be used to write add-ons, tools, extend the interface, rig characters and automate tasks. See More

Top Pro

Has a good rendering engine

Blender runs the Cycles path tracing engine under the hood. Cycles is a very powerful rendering engine capable of full path tracing (light fall off, caustics, volumetrics). It is mostly compatible with OpenCL and CUDA rendering, and is implementing mycropolygon displacement features. The upcoming release has a viewport engine called EEVEE whereby you can see and interact with your work in render mode in real time! See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Blender is licensed under the GPL. See More

Top Pro

Coherent and streamlined workflow / internal use logic

The trick with Blender is to get used to its usage philosophy, as it keeps consistent through all the application. Once you get it, every feature or addition is learnt naturally, almost effortlessly. See More

Top Pro

Wide import and export format support

Support lots of modern 3D formats including DAE and FBX - ideal for game developers. See More

Top Pro

Powerful animation suite

Blender provides a full rigging system, and automates animation by interpolating between keyframe positions. See More

See All

score 36 · Answer 2

Material Maker

Top Pro

One-click PBR material export to pupular game engines

Material Maker allows exporting materials ready to use in Unreal, Unity, Unity HDRP and Godot instantly. See More

Top Con

No proper funding and development

Maintained by author rodzill4 as a hobby, the project doesn't have any serious structure or long-term funding whatsoever. See More

ResoluteAdikia's Experience

Very powerful node-based procedural seamless PBR texture generation software. Open-source and completely free to use, based on the free and open-source Godot game engine. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, Windows, MacOS

3D:Yes

Graphics:OpenGL 3

License:MIT License

Top Pro

Full GPU acceleration

All the nodes are actually shaders, so Material Maker works as fast as your GPU. For complex operations like blurring a buffer is used, but you can add a buffer node yourself to further optimize the texture generation. See More

Top Con

UI needs work

Using the node editor with a very complex graph gets difficult - using node groups is recommended to mitigate this problem. See More

Top Pro

Free as in Freedom

Open-source and completely free to use. See More

Top Con

Export to

Top Pro

Powerful nodes

Material Maker has a lot of interesting nodes that together allow artists to create amazing materials. You'll find many nodes similar to what Substance Designer offers. See More

Top Con

Should aim at a more professional goal

The project should consider becoming serious, and aim for not just indie but more professional users because that's the only thing can keep a project prevail. See More

Top Pro

Easy to create new nodes

All nodes are made in GLSL and are editable. See More

Top Con

Lack of learning resources

Top Pro

Inputs are functions

This means that nodes can use sub input graphs as part of their behavior to make complex stuff like raymarching or fractals. See More

Top Con

Lack of course or training

Given different workflow from Substance, there should be courses on different aspects. See More

See All

score 7 · Answer 3

Substance Painter

Top Pro

Allows you to paint in full 3D

Since Substance Painter allows users to paint in full 3D, it can be used not only to paint full textures, but can also paint masks which can then be used in other tools (like Substance Designer) for material filter generators (like the ones used to make edge wear and dirt) See More

Top Con

Expensive and impossible to run without an expensive graphics card

The free trial is the only thing free. You'll have to pay a lot of money for the full version, and even if you do get it, you will have to pay for an expensive graphics card to use it, which means a lot more money flying out of your wallet and/or bank account. See More

Top Pro

Painting and procedural editing of textures

Top Con

Cannot export in a procedural format

You can not export substance (sbsar) files in Painter. See More

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score 11 · Answer 4

Neo Textures

Top Con

No longer being developed

Neo Textures is no longer being developed. The project seems to be abandoned. See More

Top Pro

Powerful control on procedural nodes

Can easily modify all of the multipliers and alligorithm values of procedural generation. See More

TactfulFangfeng's Experience

its quite powerful! See More

Top Con

Doesn't support PBR

Neo Textures was created before PBR was a thing, and it's based on the deprecated Diffuse/Specular rendering pipeline, which is no longer used. See More

Top Pro

Faster than Substance Designer

Top Con

Lot of bugs

Top Pro

Open-source

Neo Textures editor is a free and open source project available on SourceForge. See More

See All

score 9 · Answer 5

Quixel Mixer

Top Pro

Really easy to use

Incredibly simple to use since everything renders and happens realtime. See More

Top Con

Seems to still be in beta

Many features missing, like layer deletion. See More

score 15 · Answer 6

Filter Forge

Top Pro

Not only a Photoshop plugin, has a lot of other hosts

Top Con

Slow development cycle

New versions come fast enough, but for example, the beta version of 7 doesn't have a lot that 4 didn't have. See More

Top Pro

Several filters

Filter Forge includes a lot of filters and each of them has several presets. Filters are grouped into different categories (Organic, Patterns, Creative, Distortions, Photo, etc...) so it's easy to locate them. See More

Top Con

No free tier

Filter Forge is not free. The basic edition (cheapest one) is $149. It does go on sale regularly though for around $30. See More

Top Pro

Large online library of filters

The website has thousands of filters available for download. This is the only thing that makes the basic edition feasible. See More

Top Con

Hefty price tag

Its $399 for the professional version, whereas a big competitor used by large studios is only $149. See More

Top Pro

Standalone application or PhotoShop plugin

Filter Forge can be used as both a standalone application and as a plugin for PhotoShop. See More

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score 7 · Answer 7

Substance Bitmap2Material

Top Pro

Generates several outputs from a single image

B2M generates any output that you may need from a single image automatically (base color, normal, metallic, roughness, ambient occlusion). See More

Top Con

Comes at a price

Sets you back over 100 dollars. See More

Top Con

Not a complete tool

B2M will only allow you to create a normal map from an existing image. You cannot create a custom texture from scratch with it. See More

See All

score 6 · Answer 8

Substance Designer

Top Pro

Native integration with many game engines

It has the ability to export sbsar files, these can be put into most game engines allowing in engine tweaking of procedural content. See More

Top Con

Expensive

The pricing starts at $20 for the indie license and $100 for the pro license. See More

Top Pro

Ability to create custom substance files

Substance designer allows users to create custom substance files, it offers a lot of power with a mix of workflow of working with procedural textures and bitmaps. See More

Top Con

Not good for painting textures

Substance designer is not very powerful when it comes to painting textures, while there are 2D painting tools, they are not very good. See More

See All

score 4 · Answer 9

MapZone

Top Con

Discontinued

MapZone is a discontinued procedural texture creator for windows. (Web page is discontinued but you can download from Dropbox or Google Drive.) See More

Top Pro

Resolution independent

All maps will be resolution independent because of procedural techniques which MapZone uses. So you can work at a decent resolution, resize when done and you have a higher resolution texture immediately. See More

Top Pro

Map focused

MapZone focuses on maps which are the core components of any texture. Your diffuse and normal maps created with it match perfectly. And because it's not linear and all are related to each other, if the diffuse is modified then all the other maps will sync automatically. See More

Top Pro

Well Desinged

Straight forward usage with nodes and masks, along with mostly customary logic. See More

See All

9 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Blender

My Recommendation for Blender

Node based modeling support

Python extensibility

Has a good rendering engine

Free and open source

Coherent and streamlined workflow / internal use logic

Wide import and export format support

Powerful animation suite

My Recommendation for Material Maker

My Recommendation for Material Maker

One-click PBR material export to pupular game engines

No proper funding and development

Full GPU acceleration

UI needs work

Free as in Freedom

Export to

Powerful nodes

Should aim at a more professional goal

Easy to create new nodes

Lack of learning resources

Inputs are functions

Lack of course or training

My Recommendation for Substance Painter

My Recommendation for Substance Painter

Allows you to paint in full 3D

Expensive and impossible to run without an expensive graphics card

Painting and procedural editing of textures

Cannot export in a procedural format

My Recommendation for Neo Textures

My Recommendation for Neo Textures

No longer being developed

Powerful control on procedural nodes

Doesn't support PBR

Faster than Substance Designer

Lot of bugs

Open-source

My Recommendation for Quixel Mixer

My Recommendation for Quixel Mixer

Really easy to use

Seems to still be in beta

My Recommendation for Filter Forge

My Recommendation for Filter Forge

Not only a Photoshop plugin, has a lot of other hosts

Slow development cycle

Several filters

No free tier

Large online library of filters

Hefty price tag

Standalone application or PhotoShop plugin

My Recommendation for Substance Bitmap2Material

My Recommendation for Substance Bitmap2Material

Generates several outputs from a single image

Comes at a price

Not a complete tool

My Recommendation for Substance Designer

My Recommendation for Substance Designer

Native integration with many game engines

Expensive

Ability to create custom substance files

Not good for painting textures

My Recommendation for MapZone

My Recommendation for MapZone

Discontinued

Resolution independent

Map focused

Well Desinged

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