BumpMesh by CNC Kitchen

Live: https://bumpmesh.com
GitHub: https://github.com/CNCKitchen/stlTexturizer Author: Stefan Hermann

A browser-based tool for applying surface displacement textures to 3D meshes — no installation required.

Load an STL, OBJ, 3MF, or STEP file, pick a texture, tune the parameters, and export a new displaced STL ready for slicing.

Recent Updates

• Roughly 2× more triangles for the same memory — pipeline peak cut from ~660 to ~330 bytes per subdivided triangle, with bit-identical output
• STEP import (.step / .stp) via meshStep
• Save / load project files (.bumpmesh)
• Undo / redo history
• Part rotation gizmo
• Mesh diagnostics
• Smooth masking borders with selectable transition curves (linear, S-curve, ease-in)
• New languages: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, French
• 2–3× speed improvement
• 3MF export
• Mouse-wheel fine tuning of values
• Quality of life improvements

See the full changelog for every update since April 2026.

Features

Textures

• 101 built-in seamless textures in eight categories (geometric, patterns, organic, fabric, natural, grip, molded, tires): weaves, knurling, carbon twill, chainmail, scales, bark, wood grain, cobblestone, Japandi flutes and ripples, mold grains (sand matte, VDI spark erosion, leather, haircell), tire treads (touring, mud-terrain, truck rib, tractor, loader), Hero Patterns and more
• Texture Gallery — browse, search and filter the full catalogue in a side panel that takes the settings sidebar's place and stays open while you try textures on the model (click or arrow keys; the model spins on a turntable while you browse); star favorites to pin them in the panel grid, which grows by a row per 4 (saved in the browser)
• Custom textures — upload your own image as a displacement map, or an ideaMaker .texture file; uploads are kept under "Your textures" in the gallery (this browser only, and the browser may clear them at any time) where you can star, re-download or delete them
• Texture smoothing — configurable blur to soften the displacement map before applying

Projection Modes

• Triplanar (default) — blends three planar projections based on surface normals; best for complex shapes
• Cubic (Box) — projects from 6 box faces with edge-seam blending and smart axis dominance
• Cylindrical — wraps texture around a cylindrical axis with configurable cap angle
• Spherical — maps texture spherically around the object
• Planar XY / XZ / YZ — flat axis-aligned projections

UV & Transform Controls

• Scale U/V — independent or locked scaling (0.05–10×, logarithmic)
• Offset U/V — position the texture on each axis
• Rotation — rotate texture before projection
• Seam Blend Strength — softens hard edges where Cubic/Cylindrical projection faces meet
• Seam Band Width — controls blending zone width at seam edges
• Cap Angle (Cylindrical) — threshold for switching to top/bottom cap projection

Displacement

• Amplitude — scales displacement depth from 0 % to 100 %
• Symmetric displacement — 50 % grey stays neutral, white pushes out, black pushes in (preserves volume)
• 3D displacement preview — real-time GPU-accelerated preview toggle showing actual vertex displacement
• Amplitude overlap warning — alerts when depth exceeds 10 % of the smallest model dimension

Texture Layers

• Several textures on one model — up to four layers, each with its own texture, projection, size, height and painted surface; the sidebar always edits the highlighted layer, whose surfaces show in teal while everything else is grey
• Cover or add — a layer covers the layers below where it is painted, or adds its relief to them
• New layers start empty in Include Only mode with the fill tool ready: click the surfaces the texture should cover
• Layers, their paint and their textures are saved in .bumpmesh projects; Bake Textures flattens them into the mesh when needed

Surface Masking

• Angle masking — suppress texture on near-horizontal top and/or bottom faces (0°–90° threshold each)
• Surface painting — paint surfaces to exclude (orange) or exclusively include them
  • Circle brush, Precision mode (default) — refines the mesh under the stroke itself (after PrusaSlicer's paint-on tool), so the stroke edge is as fine on a 12-triangle cube as on a scan; the base mesh is never modified
  • Circle brush, Standard mode — marks every whole triangle the brush touches (highlighted while hovering), so a quick smudge selects the flat faces of a CAD model
  • Hardness (Precision) — a soft brush fades the mask out toward the rim for gradual texture borders
  • Single-triangle brush and bucket fill — flood-fills adjacent faces up to a configurable dihedral-angle threshold
  • Erase — hold Shift to undo painted surfaces
  • Clear all — reset the layer's paint

Mesh Processing

• Adaptive subdivision — subdivides edges until they are ≤ a target length; respects sharp creases (>30° dihedral)
• QEM decimation — simplifies the result to a target triangle count using Quadric Error Metrics with boundary protection, link-condition checks, normal-flip rejection, and crease preservation
• Mesh diagnostics — automatic checks for open edges and shell count, with advanced diagnostics and overlay highlights for problem areas
• Safety cap — hard limit of 10 M triangles during subdivision to prevent out-of-memory

3D Viewer

• Orbit / pan / zoom controls
• 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse — fly the view with the puck in Chrome and Edge: push/pull to zoom, slide to pan, tilt and twist to orbit (connects after the first touch of the puck)
• Wireframe toggle — visualise mesh topology
• Section view — cut the model open with a plane to see which inner surfaces (holes, cavities, the inside of hollow parts) get textured, and mask them right through the cut; X/Y/Z snap, flip, and drag handles to move or tilt the cut
• Mesh info — live triangle count, file size, bounding-box dimensions
• Grid & axes indicator — X = red, Y = green, Z = blue
• Place on Face — click a face to orient it downward onto the print bed

File Support

• .STL — binary and ASCII
• .OBJ — via Three.js OBJLoader
• .3MF — ZIP-based format (via fflate decompression)
• .STEP / .STP — CAD B-rep files, tessellated in-browser by meshStep with coarse / standard / fine quality presets

Export

• Downloads a binary STL with displacement baked in
• Progress reporting through subdivision → displacement → decimation → writing stages
• Configurable edge-length threshold and output triangle limit

Other

• Light / Dark theme — respects OS preference, persisted per browser
• Multilingual — English and German UI with auto-detection

Usage

1. Open index.html in a modern browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari).
2. Drop a model onto the viewport or click Load STL… (supports STL, OBJ, 3MF).
3. Select a texture preset from the sidebar (or upload a custom image).
4. Choose a projection mode and adjust UV scale, offset, rotation, and amplitude.
5. Optionally mask or exclude surfaces with the angle sliders or paint tools.
6. Click Export STL to download the displaced mesh.

Note: All processing runs entirely in the browser — no data is uploaded to any server.

Project Structure

index.html            # Main entry point
style.css             # Styles (light / dark theme)
logo.png              # Favicon & header logo
CNAME                 # Custom domain (bumpmesh.com)
textures/             # Built-in JPG/PNG displacement map images (101 textures) + thumbs/
js/
  main.js             # App bootstrap & UI wiring
  viewer.js           # Three.js scene / camera / controls
  stlLoader.js        # Binary & ASCII STL parser
  presetTextures.js   # Built-in texture presets (categories, credits, default favorites) + custom upload
  textureGallery.js   # Favorites grid + Texture Gallery side panel
  customTextures.js   # "Your textures": uploaded maps kept in this browser (IndexedDB)
  sidebarToggle.js    # Collapse / expand tab for the right-hand sidebar (settings or gallery)
  previewMaterial.js  # Three.js material for live & displacement preview
  previewPipeline.js  # 3D-preview mesh build (runs in previewWorker.js)
  mapping.js          # UV projection logic (7 modes)
  displacement.js     # Vertex displacement baking
  subdivision.js      # Adaptive mesh subdivision
  decimation.js       # QEM mesh decimation
  meshIndex.js        # Shared vertex welding + integer-pair hash maps
  exclusion.js        # Face exclusion / inclusion painting
  exporter.js         # Binary STL export
  i18n.js             # Translations (EN / DE)

Run Locally

All processing runs entirely in the browser — no backend or build step is needed. You just need a local HTTP server because browsers block ES module imports and texture loading from file:// URLs.

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/CNCKitchen/stlTexturizer.git
cd stlTexturizer

Then start any static file server from the project root. Pick whichever you have installed:

Python (3.x)

python -m http.server 8000

Python (2.x)

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

Node.js (npx, no install needed)

npx serve .

PHP

php -S localhost:8000

Open http://localhost:8000 in your browser and you're ready to go.

Tip: Any static server will work — the app has no server-side dependencies. After updating a local copy, hard-reload once (Ctrl+F5 / Cmd+Shift+R): most simple servers don't send cache headers, so the browser may otherwise mix new and old files.

Docker / Podman

docker compose up -d      # or: podman-compose -f podman-compose.yaml up -d

Serves the app on http://localhost:8080. To change the port or container name, copy .env.example to .env and edit it.

Dependencies

Loaded via CDN (jsDelivr) — no build step or npm install needed:

All dependencies are MIT-licensed.

Texture Credits

• Textures marked HP in the gallery are based on Hero Patterns by Steve Schoger, licensed under CC BY 4.0. The SVG patterns were rasterised and converted to seamless heightmaps.
• Textures marked CC0 come from ambientCG and Poly Haven and are in the public domain (CC0 1.0). Thank you to both projects.
• Textures marked FF (Basket, Brick, Bubble, Crystal, Leather 2, Weave 3) were made with Filter Forge.

License

GNU AGPL v3.0 — see LICENSE.