CraftPBR vs Material Forge
CraftPBR
craftpbr.comMaterial Forge
animatemesh.comSide by side
| Figure | CraftPBR | Material Forge |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $19/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · AI Texture Generators | 7.9 (#9) | 7.6 (#11) |
| Intended users | The site describes the Free plan as for hobbyists and prototyping, Pro as for working artists and indie developers, and Studio as for high-volume professionals and small studios. | AnimateMesh describes its audience as creators, indie teams, and developers building stylized characters, creatures, prototypes, and game assets. |
| Maps | Its material set includes albedo, normal, roughness, and height maps; exports also include metalness and derived ambient occlusion. | The page offers generation options for base color, normal, roughness, metallic, and emissive maps. |
Plans
CraftPBR
- FreeFree
- One-time credit pack$9.99, paid once
- Pro$19 a month
- Studio$39 a month
In their own words
CraftPBR
CraftPBR is a web tool for generating tileable PBR material sets from text prompts, with reference-photo generation available on Pro. A set includes albedo, normal, roughness, and height maps; exports also include metalness and derived ambient occlusion. The browser generator uses WebGPU, and the site says materials can be generated in under eight seconds. Users can adjust tiling, roughness, and normal strength, then preview materials on a sphere, cube, or cloth. Export presets are listed for Unreal, Unity, Godot, and Blender, with PNG as the export format. Community materials can be browsed, downloaded, forked, and remixed; published materials are free, remixable, and credited. Free-plan materials appear in the public Community library, while Pro projects can remain private. The Free plan provides 10 credits per month for 1K materials. Pro costs $19 a month and Studio costs $39 a month; a one-time credit pack costs 9.99 USD once. Monthly credits reset each cycle and do not roll over, while credit-pack credits never expire.
Material Forge
Material Forge is a web-based AI creator for PBR materials used with Unreal Engine 5. A surface photo, concept frame, or sample image can guide generation of base-color, normal, roughness, metallic, and emissive maps. The interface shows a cost of 20 credits for each selected map. Controls cover tint, brightness, desaturation, metallic, roughness, normal intensity, clearcoat, opacity, UV scale, rotation, offset, panning, emissive effects, and edge glow. A 3D material preview is available, and complete setups can be saved in a browser-local gallery. Material ZIP exports contain material_config.json, generated texture maps, a preview PNG, and a reference image when supplied. The UE5 plugin connects through a local listener at 127.0.0.1:7842 and places assets in /Game/MaterialForge/. Setup requires enabling the Python Editor Script Plugin and adding two downloaded files to Content/Python/. A UEFN listener workflow places assets under //MaterialForge/. The Free plan costs nothing, with 100 monthly credits and one concurrent generation.