Mari vs Wafer

Mari is a 3D painting package for high-resolution texturing and look development in visual effects, animation, and games. Artists can preview projection-paint changes in context before committing them across texture maps. Its UDIM workflow supports thousands of textures per model, with each texture up to 32K × 32K pixels; the Multi-Channel Paint node can paint up to eight streams at once. Mari’s Bakery bakes geometry maps, including curvature and occlusion, across multiple objects and UDIMs. Pipeline support includes OpenColorIO, OpenSubdiv, FBX, Alembic, APIs, and Python scripting, with shaders for 3Delight, VRay, Unreal, and Arnold. Listed systems are Windows 11 64-bit and Linux 64-bit (Rocky/RHEL 9). Mari Non-commercial limits exports to 4K and 16-bit per channel, disables Python scripting, and allows at most five objects at once. Foundry offers an unrestricted 30-day trial. Individual subscriptions cost $86 a month or $689 a year, subject to applicable taxes.

Wafer is 3D texture painting software for stylized, hand-painted, and NPR assets. Its drawing tools—including brushes, lasso clips, gradients, wet painting, and blur—work directly on 3D geometry. A non-destructive layer system includes paint and fill layers, editable masks, blend modes, and opacity controls. Artists can use 2D or 3D symmetry with independently configurable pivots, paint across multiple PBR channels, or define custom channel layouts for stylized shaders. Projects can contain multiple meshes, materials, and texture sets, with configurable channel packing for export. An integrated asset browser includes stencils, triplanar textures, brush alphas, HDRIs, decals, and stamps. The desktop download is free to try, but saving documents and exporting textures require a purchase. Indie costs $45, paid once; Studio and Studio (Floating) each cost $120 as a one-time purchase. Each listed plan includes one year of updates. Desktop purchases apply only to the listed Windows and macOS versions and are not compatible with the Apple App Store or other platforms.