EbSynth vs Gaea

EbSynth is VFX software for retouching, rotoscoping, and stylizing video. You provide a guiding video and keyframes, then it carries visual changes through the sequence with a texture-synthesis algorithm. Listed uses include painting over footage, retouching or colorizing video, and adding painterly texture to animation. The optional Generate Image feature creates keyframes with SDXL 1.0. The Free plan costs nothing and includes core functions, 720p export, and MP4 output. Pro costs $20 a month and adds 1080p and 4K exports, PNG with alpha, and priority processing. Studio costs $200 a month per seat, with local processing, command-line access, a Windows desktop app, and footage kept on your machines. Web rendering temporarily uploads videos and keyframes, then deletes them after returning results.

Gaea is a Windows terrain design application for VFX, games, and virtual production. It builds terrain from procedural forms, imported data, or hand-drawn elements, then applies simulations for erosion, debris, glaciers, rivers, snow, and vegetation. It can produce terrain-aware color, textures, masks, material zones, vegetation data, and flow maps. Exports include heightfields, meshes, point clouds, textures, masks, and other terrain data. Bridges connect Gaea with Unreal Engine and Houdini; the Gaea2Houdini plugin requires a Professional or Enterprise license. Gaea also offers node-based compositing and a hybrid render engine.

The Community Edition is free for non-commercial use. The listed perpetual-license prices are $99 a month for Indie, $199 a month for Professional, and $299 a month for Enterprise; each is described as a one-time price. Gaea requires Windows, an AVX2-capable CPU, and at least 16 GB of RAM. CPU-only operation is supported; GPU compute needs CUDA 12.5 or higher or HIP 6.0 or higher.