AwesomeBump vs MeshCoat

AwesomeBump creates material textures from a single image, including normal, height, specular, ambient occlusion, metallic and roughness maps. It can convert normal maps to height maps and height maps to normal maps, as well as extract bump information from an image. Other tools include seamless texture creation, perspective transformation, real-time tessellation, grunge maps, material textures and bump-map mixing. The maker says 99% of image processing happens on the GPU, with parameters adjustable in real time. Images can be saved as PNG, JPG, BMP or TGA. The project is free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 or later, with support for Windows, Linux and macOS. The README links Windows 5.1 binaries for Windows 7, 8 and 10, and Linux builds for Ubuntu 18 and Ubuntu 14. Build instructions require graphics hardware supporting OpenGL 4.0; an OpenGL 3.3 build is available without tessellation. The README also warns that the current CMake script does not work.

MeshCoat is free 3D texture-painting software for game developers and 3D artists. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, operates locally, needs no account or subscription and loads textures from folders on disk. Brush strokes are mapped from 3D camera space into UV coordinates in real time with hardware-accelerated shaders. A non-destructive layer stack supports hiding, reordering, opacity changes, duplication, merging and live blending. Tools include brush, stamp, eraser, fill bucket, effects brush, eyedropper and face selection. Edge-wear and crevice-dirt generators provide real-time previews with colour presets. A screen-space stencil displays reference images for painting or decal projection, and a texture shelf browses local PNG and JPG files. MeshCoat imports OBJ, GLB and glTF models and exports composite maps as PNG. The maker says composite results update at 60 FPS, with 100-step undo and redo. The app is in development, contains no telemetry or network calls, and has no runtime AI or machine-learning models. It is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later and accepts optional contributions.