Possible to blend materials in Marmoset Toolbag 2?

stoli

Hello,

I have been unable to find a way to create blend shader inside of marmoset toolbag. What I mean by blend shader is that you have 2 materials and by controlling vertex alpha in 3d package you could adjust the blending. Something like in the image below from 3ds max. http://docs.cryengine.com/download/attachments/1048616/max_review.jpg?version=1&modificationDate=1269272488000&api=v2   

sergiomengual

stoli said:

Hello,

I have been unable to find a way to create blend shader inside of marmoset toolbag. What I mean by blend shader is that you have 2 materials and by controlling vertex alpha in 3d package you could adjust the blending. Something like in the image below from 3ds max. http://docs.cryengine.com/download/attachments/1048616/max_review.jpg?version=1&modificationDate=1269272488000&api=v2   

Nice idea! 

EarthQuake

Currently Toolbag 2 does not have a layering/blended material shader. This is something we may add in a future update though.

stoli

Thanks, That would be really awesome for viewing environments

Chimp

+1, Marmoset's fantastic for character and prop artists, but environment artists use this sort of thing a lot and we can't really use marmoset for beauty shots of our stuff.

Shaders wise, I'd say most definitely we need '2 Splat' Vertex Blend - this blends two 'materials' (sets of input textures) based on vertex alpha - this is very commonly used in environment art.

It would also be nice to have '4 Splat' Vertex Blend: this blends four based on vertex colour and alpha (rgba) - for presenting terrains etc.

Both of these should probably come with additional versions that use textures rather than vertex data. Ideally, you would supply some of the common bells and whistles like uv blend for distance (breaks up tiling) and height blending which is that effect where when the textures meet, they blend in a realistic manner.

A decal shader would be nice, depending on what kind of rendering you do. In addition to these commonly used ones, it'd be nice to see the ability to write our own happen, perhaps even work with the Shaderforge guy to support that as I understand a lot of people use it. though I'd still like to see the aforementioned shaders supplied out of the box.

We definitely need the ability to adjust the tiling and offset for every input individually.

The ability to import Speedtree assets would be fantastic, these are used widely across the industry and often it just doesnt make sense to import a scene without its foliage.

And animation playback, though I understand this is a big thing and there's many ways you could take it, all of which difficult. Would be nice if you went all out with a timeline and the ability to key in clips from fbxes with basic blends, controllable from said timeline, as well as doing basic animation within marmoset (for example, camera animation, allowing us to do panning and flythroughs etc). Big ask I know though. Particles too.

Really, what it comes down to isnt far off asking for a proper engine, even if only suited to presentation. In today's world with free, highly capable engines, all that would keep me in marmoset right now would be that its fast to set up. 

I do LOVE marmoset though, its one of those things that you grow along side and feel familiar with and it's high quality, its just lacking what I need atm.

Swaggletooth

I'd just like to chime in and say that 2 way blending (of some sort) would be really nice to have, there's so many times where AO simply isn't enough by itself but a blended material could make things look so much better.

That and terrain (or dirt in general) would make things look a lot better for environment pieces.

EarthQuake

Hey, thanks for the feedback guys. I can confirm that animation support is coming for Toolbag 3.

monkeyscience

Good suggestions, @Chimp. Could you describe "uv blending for distance" and "height blending" in more detail?

stoli

I could not find material blends yet but I saw that there was a support for custom shaders in Marmoset Toolbag 3. Is there a way to make blend shaders now?

Added link for example
http://docs.cryengine.com/download/attachments/1048616/max_review.jpg?version=1&modificationDate=1269272488000&api=v2

EarthQuake

stoli said:

I could not find material blends yet but I saw that there was a support for custom shaders in Marmoset Toolbag 3. Is there a way to make blend shaders now?

Added link for example
http://docs.cryengine.com/download/attachments/1048616/max_review.jpg?version=1&modificationDate=1269272488000&api=v2

Yes it is possible with custom shaders. @radiancef0rge has a prototype of that working, if you ask nicely he might show it to you.

Layered materials is on our todo list as well, it was something we wanted to get in for TB3 launch but didn't find the time, but we're still planing on adding it with an update at some point.

radiancef0rge

It's true I have been working on a custom shader for material blending, its in beta right now and will be released near December break hopefully. 
Heres a quick video of the features so far. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdIkBh9O4as

stoli

Looks really great, can't wait for the release :P

stoli

Is there any news regarding the release yet?

EarthQuake

@radiancef0rge is hording it to himself.

radiancef0rge

Hey @stoli check out the thread here for the latest updates on blended materials http://polycount.com/discussion/181390/material-blending-plugin-for-marmoset-toolbag-3