Compare the Top 3D Painting Software for Mac as of February 2026

What is 3D Painting Software for Mac?

3D painting software enables users to apply textures, colors, and materials directly onto 3D models, simulating real-world painting techniques in a virtual environment. These tools allow for detailed surface painting, including shading, UV mapping, and material editing, enabling artists to create realistic or stylized textures for characters, objects, and environments. 3D painting software is commonly used in industries like video game development, animation, visual effects (VFX), and product design to add visual detail and realism to 3D models. Some advanced features include dynamic brush tools, layer management, and real-time rendering to see how the paint interacts with lighting and surfaces. Compare and read user reviews of the best 3D Painting software for Mac currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    Blender

    Blender

    Blender Foundation

    Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline. Cycles is Blender’s built-in powerful unbiased path-tracer engine that offers stunning ultra-realistic rendering. Blender’s comprehensive array of modeling tools make creating, transforming and editing your models a breeze. VFX professionals say: “Probably the best tracker in the market”. Blender includes production ready camera and object tracking. Allowing you to import raw footage, track the footage, mask areas and see the camera movements live in your 3D scene. Eliminating the need to switch between programs. Thanks to the high quality rigging and animation tools, Blender is being used for numerous short films, advertisements, TV series and feature films now.
  • 2
    Maya

    Maya

    Autodesk

    Create expansive worlds, complex characters, and dazzling effects. Bring believable characters to life with engaging animation tools. Shape 3D objects and scenes with intuitive modeling tools in Maya® software. Create realistic effects—from explosions to cloth simulation. A new visual programming environment using dynamic solvers enables you to create blockbuster-worthy effects quickly. Build custom graphs using the Bifrost Graph Editor. Create stunning effects—from snow and sand to dust storms and explosions—with ready-to-use graphs. Render your most complex projects with Arnold. Arnold is built to manage complex characters, scenery, and lighting challenges. Arnold is integrated with Maya, so you can see high-quality previews and iterate changes quickly. Save time with Arnold’s artist-friendly UI and simple, intuitive controls.
  • 3
    Modo

    Modo

    Foundry

    3D modeling and rendering platform designed to help businesses create 3D drawings and configure UV mapping and texturing workflows. Modo’s powerful and flexible 3D modeling, animation, texturing and rendering toolset empowers artists to explore and develop ideas without jumping through technical hoops. Modo® is your starting point for creative exploration. With fast direct modeling, flexible procedural modeling, the award-winning MeshFusion Boolean toolset and built-in sculpting tools all working together, Modo’s modeling moxie is unmatched. Free yourself from creativity-killing constraints, with Modo’s intuitive, artist-friendly toolset. From roughing out volumes to creating highly detailed forms, Modo lets you focus on creation, not construction. Build your own kit of specialized tools by combining different operations, with Modo’s flexible tool assembly system. With Modo, every job you do becomes easier, as you continually develop new efficiencies.
    Starting Price: $65 per month
  • 4
    Mudbox

    Mudbox

    Autodesk

    3D digital painting and sculpting software. Create beautiful characters and environments with Mudbox. Sculpt and paint highly detailed 3D geometry and textures. Mudbox® 3D digital sculpting and texture painting software gives you an intuitive, tactile toolset. Create highly detailed 3D characters and environments using an intuitive set of digital tools based on real sculpting techniques. Paint directly on your 3D assets across multiple channels. Add resolution to a mesh only in areas that need it with an artist-friendly, camera-based workflow. Create clean, production-quality meshes from scanned, imported, or sculpted data. Bake normal, displacement, and ambient occlusion maps. Get effective, brush-based workflows for polygons and textures. Bring assets from Maya into Mudbox to add detailed geometry. Send characters from Maya LT to Mudbox for sculpting and texturing. Then transfer your model back to Maya LT. Take your 3D assets and environments from first draft to final frame.
    Starting Price: $7 per month
  • 5
    3DCoat

    3DCoat

    3DCoat

    3DCoat is the one application that has all the tools you need to take your 3D idea from a block of digital clay all the way to a production ready, fully textured organic or hard surface model. Today 3DCoat is available to learn at 300+ Universities, colleges and schools worldwide. 3DCoat is one of the most advanced software applications for creating detailed 3D models. Where other applications in this market segment tend to specialize in one specific task, such as Digital Sculpting or Texture Painting, 3DCoat provides High-End capability across multiple tasks in an asset creation pipeline. These include Sculpting, Retopology, UV Editing , PBR Texture Painting and Rendering. So it can be called a 3D texturing software and 3D texture painting software and 3D sculpting program and Retopology software and UV mapping software and 3D rendering software all combined. In short, 3DCoat removes the need to purchase (and learn) multiple specialty software titles.
    Starting Price: $49 one-time payment
  • 6
    ZBrushCoreMini

    ZBrushCoreMini

    ZBrushCoreMini

    Enjoy a true ZBrush experience as you take your first steps into the exciting world of digital sculpting with ZBrushCoreMini. ZBrushCoreMini is designed for new artists of all ages, with a streamlined interface that lets anyone jump right in and start sculpting immediately. ZBrushCoreMini is all about sculpting. Start with a simple sphere or a stone block, then use a select group of the most popular digital sculpting brushes from ZBrush to add or remove material and simply create! ZBrushCoreMini frees you to explore your imagination. Once you are happy with your creation, it also provides an exciting new way to share your work with others, through the iMage3D format. On any website, this will simply appear as a regular 2D image. But other users of ZBrushCoreMini can open the file in full 3D! And with 3D printers increasingly coming into their own, ZBrushCoreMini includes the ability to export your model for real-world printing.
    Starting Price: $39.95 per month
  • 7
    Bforartists

    Bforartists

    Bforartists

    Bforartists is a complete, free and open source 3D suite to create 3D content. It offers you the full 3D art pipeline to create game graphics, prerendered movies and stills. From modeling, sculpting, texturing, rigging, animation, rendering, up to post processing. Bforartists stands for Be For Artists. A reminder to develop for the user, not the programmer. Bforartists is a fork of the popluar open source 3D software Blender. Developed by some 3D enthusiasts to make Blender even better. The primary goal of the Bforartists fork is to deliver a better graphical UI and a better usability. This means a complete switch in the usage philosophy. Away from the hotkey and speed centered usage. Towards a user friendly and intuitive graphical UI. Bforartists is fully compatible with the Blender files and addons. Every feature that works in Blender should also work in Bforartists. And we are always up to date with the newest Blender version. The toolset is the same.
  • 8
    Cheetah3D

    Cheetah3D

    Cheetah3D

    Cheetah3D is a powerful and easy to learn 3D modeling, rendering and animation software which was developed from the ground up for Mac. So jump right into the world of computer generated imaging, create 3D artwork for your next iPhone game or make your first animated character. With a full set of polygon, subdivision surface and spline modeling tools the artists can focus on creating, safe in the knowledge that Cheetah3D has a breadth of features for the task. Cheetah3D makes modeling in 3D a breeze for new and experienced users alike. Character rigging is part of the seamless animation system of Cheetah3D where just about every property of an object can be animated. Breathe life into a character for your next iPhone game or animate an architectural fly-through by the powerful animation system built into Cheetah3D. Cheetah3D smoothly integrates the industrial strength Bullet physics engine to simulate rigid body and soft body dynamics.
    Starting Price: $99
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