YMA Painterly Brings a Painterly Look to 3D in Houdini and Cinema 4D

80 Level covered Theo Daley’s YMA Painterly shader collection and its creation process on 21 October 2026. Designed for Cinema 4D and Houdini users, the toolset aims to give 3D geometry a brushstroke effect and a painted look. Different editions of the collection are listed on Gumroad.

What’s included in the collection?

YMA Painterly comes with 12 custom shader materials, each based on a different brush style. The set also includes 12 hand-crafted, 4K tileable painting textures. These textures and shader controls let users change the scale and effect of the brushstrokes on a model’s surface.

For color, users can work with up to four different colors, including a base color and accent colors. Colors aren’t limited to the surface color: in the workflow described by the creator, selected colors can also be applied to reflective areas. Settings such as contrast and the weight of colors in the mix can also be controlled in the shader.

How does normal control work?

Daley’s approach uses the model’s object-space normals and processes them alongside the hand-crafted textures. The collection includes a slider for normal strength. Setting it to zero returns the surface to its normal geometric appearance; increasing it allows for more pronounced painterly details.

Controls are available through shader nodes and an interface. This means settings such as color, brushstroke scale and normal effect can be changed while rendering, according to the creator. The toolset also supports the OpenPBR pipeline. Daley says the node setups have been tailored to the way different software and render engines work.

Which software can it be used with?

YMA Painterly is available for Cinema 4D with Redshift and Octane, and for Houdini with Redshift. The Houdini edition is also said to work in Solaris. The choice should therefore match the 3D software and render engine in use; users shouldn’t assume that the same engine options are available for every application.

Daley says the collection has been tested in projects and on render farms. However, the source doesn’t specify software versions, system requirements, licensing terms or pricing. Before purchasing, users should check the current terms for the relevant edition on Gumroad and confirm compatibility with their render setup.

Impact on architectural and visualization workflows

Teams looking for an illustrative, sketch-like or painted surface effect rather than a photorealistic presentation may find shaders like these useful for concept frames and stylized presentations. Having color and normal settings within the shader can make it easier to try different visual approaches on the same geometry; this is a potential workflow benefit based on the collection’s features.

That said, the source doesn’t mention direct integration with specific architectural software or presets for particular scene types. Before purchasing, users should confirm compatibility with their Cinema 4D or Houdini version, their Redshift or Octane setup, and the license scope. Since pricing and hardware requirements are also not provided, it isn’t possible to draw firm conclusions about cost or performance.