Easily Add Texture to Your 3D Prints with the Free BumpMesh Web Tool

Modeling textures on to surfaces through traditional means is surprisingly difficult to do, but everyone wants the ability to give a 3D print texture. The usual workaround is to produce texture through slicer tricks, which is exactly what “fuzzy skin” does. However, that is very limited, which is why Stefan from CNC Kitchen created the BumpMesh web tool to make texturing super easy.

I’m excited to write about this, because BumpMesh is the kind of tool that the 3D printing community has been desperate to get for many years. It is open-source, free to use, and accessible online, so there is nothing to download. And in my testing, it performed very quickly.

Here’s how it works: you upload your 3D model in STL, OBJ, or 3MF format. Then you select one of the 24 built-in textures that are available right now or upload your own texture in the form of a grayscale height map. From there, you can tweak the settings for smoothing, depth, scaling, projection modes, and more. You can choose to apply texture to the entire model, specific faces, and even detailed areas with the brush tool.

After you’re happy with the texture, you can export an STL to pop into your slicer software.

I don’t see a way to apply multiple different textures to the model, but a workaround is to apply the first texture, export the model, import that model, apply the second texture, and repeat until you’ve achieved the desired result.

There are all kinds of built-in textures to get you started. There are simple grid patterns, simulated brick and wood textures, and much more. And if there isn’t a suitable texture, you can always find one online or create your own.

If you do any 3D printing at all, you’ll definitely want to bookmark BumpMesh for your future projects.