impcat (short for Interactive Miniature Painting Catalogue) is a simulator for photorealistic painting results on gaming and tabletop miniatures.
This tool gives you a variety of miniature images with individually customizable body sections, that you can paint with colours you own or perhaps wish to purchase. It works with predefined colour palettes, using names and values as promoted by their manufacturers.
To achieve a high quality result the system simulates a four step painting process:
Base colouring, layering, shading and highlighting.
Features:
- A set of 6 built-in miniatures, by Artel "W", with up to nearly 30 individually paintable sections
- A set of built-in colour palettes, as well as additional palettes from our DLC server (around 1000 paints to choose from, and growing)
- A file handling system for importing custom image and paint templates (visit impcat.de/faq for instructions)
- Access to a growing online library of free DLCs (visit impcat.de/about for full list of contents)
- An automated complement recommendation mode that lets you select a base colour and then automatically applies harmonizing layer, shade and highlight paints, which you can then customize at will.
- A photorealistic simulation of the applied paints.
- A shopping list generator that collects the data of all applied colours and gives you the links to the corresponding shop pages
- Saving and loading options for your colour configurations
- A colour creating tool, for creating opaque and metallic paints of any colour you like
- A colour mixing tool, for testing mix results of your paints
- A randomizer, for getting colour scheme inspiration by letting impcat ramdomly distribute a set of colours across the model
Great for what it is but recent update broke functionality
kalmryde
A recent update on the iPad version made it such that I can no longer select zones on the model with my Apple Pencil. This is a critical bug and is a major deterrent to using the app. If you can find the time, PLEASE FIX IT 🙏As many have already stated, this app is awesome. So many of us in the hobby suffer from paralysis analysis and are hesitant to paint because we don’t know what we want. Similarly there are folks that want to sketch out their ideas ahead of time. This app lets you do both. Is it perfect? No, but it’s paving the way and definitely on the right track. I’m glad it exists and I’m an avid user. My feedback for the developer (speaking as one dev to another) is its clear the UI/UX was designed by a dev. My recommendation would be to find yourself a solid UI designer, and this app could go from good to absolute greatness!
Great tool for experimenting with color schemes
Joe8463927
As someone who is very indecisive about color schemes and wants to get them just right before painting a whole army, this app is fantastic for me. The rendering looks very realistic and I think it gives you a great look at what a scheme would look like on the model. I love that I can make small tweaks in the app without having to paint multiple test models just to see how something will look.As some other reviews have alluded to, it definitely does take a bit of setup to get up and running. That said, once the initial setup is done you don’t have to worry about it again. If you have trouble with setting it up, the impcat subreddit has lots of useful resources and has been helpful for me with any questions I’ve had.I absolutely recommend this for anyone who likes to fine tune their paint schemes!
Buyer Beware
komowoyo
App is probably not what you think it is. I suspect most people who pay and download never actually use it for the purpose they downloaded it for. I assumed it was going to be an easy process. Select the models I want to paint from a list. Maybe download them. Paint in the app and see what I like before committing to a color scheme.That is NOT what this app does. It is a powerful tool when used properly, but it is not intuitive or user friendly. You will need to go out of your way to source the files yourself, and download them to the files app. It’s a pain in the rear. Just paint the minis. Skip the app.As you can see by a “developer response” to another users review the dev team doesn’t seem to take criticism kindly and do not respond in the most professional manner. Another reason to save your money.
It’s gotten better since the old reviews
Helalien
So even after reading the reviews I decided to give this thing a shot. I happen to have found it via a google search which let me to a page to read about and and gave me the instructions on how to get the files I was looking for from impcat’s redit page. Once I did that it was fairly simple to use. Even the uploading the file it required to use wasn’t hard unless you just don’t know much about technology. All in all the app is what you think it is it helps you plan out your paint scheme without wasting hours on painting to just figure out you don’t like the pattern you made.
Age restriction specifications update
Version 1.2.1
The developer, Design Bench - Immersive Agency, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
Design Bench - Immersive Agency
Size
20.7 MB
Category
Productivity
Compatibility
Requires iOS 18.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 18.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 18.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 15.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
