MeshCache Studio

Brekel MeshCache Studio

Review, annotate, compare and convert mesh cache sequences with ease.

MeshCache Studio is a dedicated viewer and conversion tool for animated 3D mesh sequences.
Whether you’re reviewing cloth simulations, checking facial performance captures, debugging physics caches, or preparing assets for delivery — MeshCache Studio gives you instant playback, professional visualization, and powerful export options without the overhead of a full DCC application.

Drop in your Alembic, OBJ sequence, PC2, MDD, PLY or USD files and start reviewing immediately.

 

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Supported File Formats

• Import: Alembic (.abc), OBJ sequences, PC2, MDD, PLY, USD/USDA
• Export: Alembic, OBJ sequences, PC2, MDD, PLY, USD
• Supports both constant topology and varying topology sequences.

Features

Playback & Navigation

• Drag & drop your file to instantly view it
• Fast, responsive playback with intelligent frame caching
• Frame-by-frame stepping, auto-play, and timeline scrubbing
• Variable speed control from 0.01x to 10.0x with smooth frame interpolation
• Linear and Catmull-Rom cubic interpolation for smooth slow-motion on fixed-topology sequences

3D Viewport & Rendering

• Hardware-accelerated rendering
• Configurable front-face, back-face and background colors
• Ambient Occlusion shader
• Soft Shadows
• Wireframe overlay with customizable colors
• X-Ray / Fresnel mode for see-through visualization
• Velocity heatmap coloring to visualize per-frame displacement
• Cinematic post-FX: HDR / ACES tonemapping with bloom, depth of field and vignette
• Screen-space motion blur from per-vertex and camera motion
• Onion-skin ghost trails of neighbouring frames for visualizing motion arcs
• Per-vertex color display (when available in the file)
• UV-mapped texture display (when available in the file)
• Built-in default grid UV texture, custom static texture, texture sequence or video options
• HUD overlay with frame number, FPS, vertex/triangle count and bounding box
• Y-up and Z-up coordinate system toggle

Annotation & Review

• Add text notes and visual markup to specific frames
• Drawing tools: freehand pen, arrows, circles, rectangles and text labels
• Customizable stroke color and thickness with undo support
• Camera position saved per annotation and auto-restored on navigation
• Export annotated contact sheets as PNG or JPG with custom grid layout and title

Sequence Comparison

• Load two sequences side-by-side for synchronized review
• Overlay mode with color-tinted blending
• Displacement heatmap showing per-vertex differences between sequences

Crop Volumes

• Box, cylinder and sphere crop primitives
• Per-volume keep-inside or keep-outside, multiple volumes combined as union
• Direct manipulation in the viewport via translate / rotate / scale gizmo handles
• Sidecar JSON persistence with auto-save and external-edit reload
• Baked into exports for variable-topology formats (OBJ, PLY, Alembic, USD)

Mesh Transforms

• Flip normals, mirror UVs, translation (X/Y/Z), rotation (X/Y/Z degrees), uniform scale
• All transforms baked into exports and instantly applied in the 3D viewport

Video & Image Export

• Export to MP4 (H.264)
• Turntable video export for rotating previews
• Contact sheet export with annotation markup

Mesh Conversion & Export

• Convert between different file formats
• Configurable export of normals, UVs and vertex colors (where applicable)
• Frame range selection and FPS retiming with interpolation
• Sequence numbering options for file-per-frame formats

Command-Line / Batch Mode

• Headless conversion without GUI for pipeline integration
• Automate format conversion across large batches
• Ideal for render farms and studio pipelines

General

• Texture mapping support for meshes with UVs
• Topology graph visualization (number of vertices & triangles) for variable-topology sequences
• Windows shell integration (right-click context menu, default app association)

Privacy & Licensing

• No subscription — perpetual license
• No cloud processing — all data stays on your machine
• No login required
• Free trial — preview the first ~1 second clean (later frames & exports are visually distorted until licensed)

System Requirements

OS: Windows 10/11 (64-bit)
OS: MacOS (Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) only)
GPU: Direct3D 11 capable graphics card on Windows, Metal on macOS
RAM: 4 GB minimum, 16 GB+ recommended for large sequences
Disk: SSD recommended for fast sequence loading

	Wireframe overlay shader to check mesh topology / density. Separate front/back colors (and option to flip normals for display & export)
	XRay shader to check mesh internals
	Velocity heatmap shader to check which vertices are moving the most
	UV map visualization with built-in or custom texture. Plus ability to flip U and/or V (for display & export)
	Image sequence and video texture support
	Side by side comparison mode for two different mesh caches
	Overlay comparison mode for two different mesh caches
	Displacement heatmap mode for two different mesh caches
	Draw annotations with comments on different frames, accompanying camera viewpoint is stored. Ability to save annotations to contact sheet in PNG or PDF file format, for sharing feedback.