3DCoat vs Surface Labs

3DCoat is a desktop application for sculpting, retopology, UV editing, PBR texture painting, and rendering, available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its painting workflows include microvertex, per-pixel, and Ptex, alongside Smart Materials and textures up to 16K. Sculpting tools include voxel work without topological constraints, Boolean operations, and adaptive dynamic tessellation. Retopology can be automatic with user-defined edge loops or manual. AppLinks support model exchange with other 3D applications, and the product describes Photoshop layer exchange through keyboard shortcuts. A 30-day trial is followed by Free Learning mode, which has export restrictions and bars commercial use of exported work. That mode limits.3b projects to 20 sculpt objects and 10 layers, caps OBJ exports by workspace triangle counts, and watermarks textures above 512×512. The listed 3DCoat 2026 Individual Node-locked plan is €379 a month and includes 12 months of free updates. A license can be installed on two machines, but only one copy can run at a time.

Surface Labs is a node-based application for building procedural textures and materials by connecting operations in a graph. Its node library includes generators, filters, blends, transforms, normals, channel operations, and math nodes. A GLSL editor supports custom nodes that compile to the native Rust engine; the maker says most nodes render in under 2 ms. Desktop authoring supports up to 8192 × 8192 in 32-bit float, while iPadOS and Android are capped at 4096 × 4096. A headless command-line tool can evaluate graphs and export textures for batch work and CI. The built-in MCP server lets compatible assistants inspect and edit projects, render nodes, and export textures. It is opt-in, binds to loopback, requires a generated token, and rejects non-local Origins, but file arguments can access files available to the user account rather than staying within a project directory. A portable project file bundles materials, subgraphs, images, fonts, a preview model, and export settings. Surface Labs is free while in early access; its iPad build is distributed through TestFlight, where builds expire on the usual 90-day cycle.