AwesomeBump vs Surface Labs

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.

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.