Affordable alternatives to Marmoset?
polycounter lvl 2
Does anyone know of any alternatives to Marmoset Toolbag that is more affordable for a solo/indie user?
I know about Keyshot, but that's waaay out of my budget at $400 or so, and I think i remember reading somewhere that Marmoset is tied to your computer by Hardware ID (or that might have been keyshot, can't remember)
I just recently spent £150 on the Allegorithmic indie pack, and although google converted 130$ to about 77£, i'd rather not do that again so soon, so i was wondering if anyone here knew of any alternatives.
Thanks.
I know about Keyshot, but that's waaay out of my budget at $400 or so, and I think i remember reading somewhere that Marmoset is tied to your computer by Hardware ID (or that might have been keyshot, can't remember)
I just recently spent £150 on the Allegorithmic indie pack, and although google converted 130$ to about 77£, i'd rather not do that again so soon, so i was wondering if anyone here knew of any alternatives.
Thanks.
Replies
Also apparently Quixel will have a prb viewer for free but I could be wrong on that. The power of marmoset though is not just the quality, but also the convenience and options that go along with it.
The old method would be to just toss it into a game engine though, and those are readily available for fairly cheap.
Well, i suppose i could wait until i'm more proficient with ZB and have something worth rendering.
Other than that, game engines will probably be your best bet. It's not all bad though, the UE4 material editor is incredibly powerful and if you plan on making high quality environments in UE4, then chances are you'll want to make heavy use of it.
While Toolbag 2 is an incredible convenience, I don't think it's necessary.
What about the Xnormal built-in model viewer ? It is of course a bit limited feature wise, but if all you need is to display your textured models it might actually be enough ...
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If so, wouldn't the viewports from the Allegorithmic indie pack be sufficient? Iirc, they don't support post effects though...or is there some other reason it's not advisable for anyone to just use those?
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http://apps.exchange.autodesk.com/MAYA/en/Detail/Index?id=appstore.exchange.autodesk.com%3Aappautodesk00aefbx00aereview%3Aen
I haven't used it myself yet so I can't talk about ease of use or if it's good at all, but it looked interesting and promising and seems like it uses the same tech as new Maya viewports I think.
It's by Autodesk, it's free and for Windows 7 and I think Win8 version is for the "Tablet UI".
I mentioned keyshot so no-one else would :P as, like i said, it's way out of my budget.
I suppose i could try using Mental Ray Standalone, but, not sure if i have to pay for that.
A good example is the Dota2 shader support. Previewing an asset in the Dota importer is quite convoluted since it is tailored for the import of an actual game asset (this involves a proper export with very specific conventions, creating "dummy" containers for each test, being limited by in-game cameras, textures being automatically downscaled and compressed, and so on). In comparaison, loading up (and more importantly, re-loading/updating) an asset in Toolbag2 takes mere seconds, and allows for much more scrutiny for review.
Plus, it's great for non engine-specific portfolio pieces too !
Then just use that?
Marmoset is a great looking engine and very convenient, but imo UDK4 looks as good and offers a whole lot more besides.