Mixos Paint vs Surface Labs

Mixos Paint is a browser-based tool for painting layered PBR materials onto 3D models, with brushes, geometry-driven smart masks, and live viewport updates. Layers support blend modes, opacity, and separate controls for color, height, roughness, and metallic channels. Smart masks can generate effects such as edge wear, curvature, grime, and cavity. The app imports GLB, glTF, FBX, and OBJ models, and lists 2,669 ready-made PBR materials; users can import their own material libraries. Painting is free without a time limit, but exporting finished texture maps requires a paid plan or license. Paid exports include PBR maps up to 4K and presets for Blender, Unreal, Unity, Godot, Cinema 4D, Maya, and Houdini. The free desktop app's Live Link streams changing maps to Blender, Cinema 4D, and Unreal. Pro costs $8.99/mo, Max costs $17.99/mo, and a Pro license costs $99 once. Mixos says editing runs on the user's device, but it has no certifications or uptime guarantee.

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.