For those who don’t know the tool: Pilgway makes 3DCoat for sculpting, retopology, UVs, painting and rendering. It connects to Blender, 3ds Max and Houdini (and LightWave) via applinks. 3DCoatTextura is the texture-focused sibling.
GPU paint, finally with nodes
3DCoat 2026 is now in public beta for Windows, and the big change is GPU Per-Pixel Painting. The new system adds a procedural Node System for UV-based, non-destructive texturing and lets artists create materials, masks and effects in a visual Node Editor. Parameters such as rust intensity, base color, glossiness and scratches remain editable during work, with real-time viewport feedback on the 3D model.
For artists who have spent years painting a layer, committing to it, regretting it, duplicating it, hiding it, naming it “final_final_02_nowforreal_b”, and then crying softly , this is the headline feature. The workflow moves more of the material logic into editable graphs. The development thread labels the build as an early beta and says it is not recommended for production environments. Believe the developers when they say that!
What the Node System does
The system uses GPU nodes and dynamic compilation into optimized shaders based on NodeGraph Language, or NGL. Procedural operations, mathematical operations and noise generators run directly on the GPU. That matters for texture artists because procedural work can become very chatty. Every mask, noise, curvature blend and dirt pass adds another little gremlin to the stack.
The documentation lists a full Node System with Node Editor, Node and Object Inspectors, Node Graph, NGL, GPU Nodes, Filters, Masks, Materials, Modifiers and Volumes. The GPU Texturing documentation also lists Per-Pixel Painting and PBM Channels.
The docs describe PBR texturing in 3DCoat around Albedo, Depth, Glossiness and Metalness channels. Painting can modify multiple material channels with one brush stroke. The new node system now sits beside that painting logic, rather than replacing the idea of channel-based texture work.
New smart materials, new smart masks
The 2026 beta introduces NGMaterials, NGMasks, NGModifiers and NGFilters. NGMaterials are procedural smart materials. NGMasks generate procedural wear, dirt and scratches. NGModifiers and NGFilters handle geometry deformation and procedural post-processing of current layers. The new materials support approximately 30 channels.
Procedural texturing in a painting app is always a balancing act. Artists want control without turning every barrel, robot arm or old pipe into a PhD in graph management. The Object Inspector tries to keep that sane. Parameters can be pinned from the node graph to general object or layer controls, so a material can expose useful sliders without making the artist dive into the full graph every time.
The UI adds a Node Editor, Node Inspector and Object Inspector. Node header colors are now category-based in the 2026-03 NS Beta. New nodes are created at the position where the right mouse button opened the menu, not where the cursor happens to sit when the menu action finishes.
Layers still matter
The new graph workflow does not remove the old layer habit. The beta adds the ability to select multiple painting layers, move selected layers within the painting layer tree, and group, hide, unhide, duplicate or delete them.
In GPUPPP mode, layer masks use brightness rather than relying exclusively on transparency. Normal Map Support appears in node-based materials in the 2026-03 NS Beta. A crash when clearing the Node Graph in the Node Editor has been fixed, and rectangle or CTRL selection of multiple nodes has also been fixed.
The 2026-02 preview also allows image reading and writing formats to be replaced via Python extension. Objects created by C++ functions from Python scripts will not be garbage collected by Python, avoiding double freeing.
Fabric, fur and soft displacement
The 2026-03 NS Beta adds a Soft Displacement property. The changelog describes it as a displacement effect designed to work with a normal map. It shifts vertices without affecting shading, reduces its shadow impact by half, and uses the normal map to define pixel orientation for shading.
SoftDisplacement combined with Sheen can simulate fur, while FWSNormal defines its direction. For PPP texturing, Show Displacement Mesh must be enabled and tessellation must be configured.
Retopo and modeling also get crumbs
The headline belongs to 3D texture painting, but the beta also touches retopo and modeling. The 2026-03 NS Beta adds an option in the Retopo and Modeling Room: Switching Pen Mode to Rectangle After the Select Transform Activated. Polygon Tree has been improved for speed with large files.
The Sculpt Room gets speedups for Blob tool filling in Smart Hybrid and a new lasso placement option for the Blob tool in Smart Hybrid. Live booleans get a crash fix when unghosting. STL import fixes address overly small scale on import.
3DCoatTextura’s learning mode keeps saving and loading in the internal .3b format, with a limitation of 10 layers and render watermarks. OBJ export remains available with limits: 4000 triangles from the paint room and texture export up to 512 by 512 without watermarks, or higher resolution with watermarks. Commercial use is not allowed for that free learning-mode output.
Pricing, because artists own wallets
The official 3DCoat buy page lists 3DCoat 2025 Individual Node-locked at €379, VAT not included. It is a permanent personal license, allows commercial use, works as a platform-independent license and includes 12 months of free updates.
The same page lists subsequent updates at €45 from month 13 onward after purchase, or €90 from month 25 onward if the €45 upgrade was not made, with another 12 months of free updates.
Bottom line
The best news is not just “nodes”. The useful news is that the system connects to painting layers, masks, smart materials and viewport feedback. That is where texture artists actually live.
The caution flag is equally clear. The build is beta, Windows-only in its current public form, and explicitly not recommended for production environments. Test it, break it, report the boring bugs, and do not bet a delivery on it yet. The graph may be shiny, but the deadline goblin remains undefeated.
https://3dcoat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/34175-3dcoat-2026-gpuppp-development/
