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Marmoset Toolbag - MASTER THREAD

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  • Zwebbie
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    Zwebbie polycounter lvl 18
    I've got a problem here - I dare not guess where the problem actually lies, but perhaps someone here has an idea.

    The situation is this: I'm trying to export from Blender, and I've divided the model up so that every loose part is its own chunk.
    The screenshot on the left is what happens when I export that. Fancy! But there's the alpha sorting problem EQ mentioned in the documents, where anything alpha blended should be the last edited. When exporting from Blender, I found, it has to be the first one created. Since the hair chunks were created later, I figure I'd just duplicate the body and delete the original (so that the duplicate is created later than the hair).
    Which is where the right part of the image comes in, that's the result in Marmoset after exporting that. There's something funny going on with the faces and it seems to create them in odd locations. I've redone the process at least five times, and I get the same result every time. Even just duplicating all my original objects and performing the exact same export process results in this... only the original gets good results.
    Which sounds like a Blender problem, all in all, but I've re-imported the mesh and it's absolutely, hundred percent fine. Imported into Maya 2010, just as perfect. These odd faces only show up in Marmoset.

    CollarGirlInMarmoset3.jpg

    Does anyone have any idea what's going on? I'm clueless.
  • EarthQuake
    Could be maybe the wrong UV channel is exported creating some corrupt verts? not sure
  • Zwebbie
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    Zwebbie polycounter lvl 18
    I couldn't even add a second UV channel if I wanted to, let alone accidentally :) . Nevertheless, thanks for trying.

    I fixed the issue, though. If anyone's interested, the solution was to turn off Edges in the .obj export options. It's on by default, and it makes sure that edges that aren't connected to faces are still exported. I didn't have any, so I figured leaving it on wouldn't hurt, but apparently it did.
  • NyneDown
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    NyneDown polycounter lvl 11
    Hey Earthquake, is marmoset able to run using a GeForce 200 series graphics card?
  • EarthQuake
  • NyneDown
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    NyneDown polycounter lvl 11
  • Swarm22
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    Swarm22 polycounter lvl 15
    Ive got this problem with Marmoset. When I open it up and am at the main menu it gives me a hard time when selecting options. I have to click material editor 10,20,30 times sometimes for it to open and same will go with using some of the material options.

    Ive had Marmoset for a few months now and it has always been a problem that has kept me from wanting to use it. Is this an issue for anyone else?
  • Ben Apuna
    It's probably the fact that your screen res does not match the default resolution that Marmoset Toolbag runs in, which is 1280 x 1024.

    I was also having problems clicking the buttons, it seemed like the actual place to click each item was above the button itself. But after I changed the screen resolution in the toolUser.cfg with notepad all those problems went away.

    If you can't find the toolUser.cfg file then read below:
    Ben Apuna wrote: »

    Are you running Vista by any chance? with UAC on? If so try running Marmoset in administrator mode. Right click the Marmoset Toobag icon and click "Run as Administrator". That should allow Marmoset to create a toolUser.cfg file in the proper directory. I actually ended up not installing Mamoset to my OS/Apps drive because of this issue...

    If that doesn't work you could try to copy this to a blank text document (use notepad) and save it as "toolUser.cfg". Be sure to change the "Size" setting to whatever your monitor resolution is minus around 30 pixels in height for the windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen. I'm not sure if this will work for you though because the physics settings might be specific to my PC.
    WindowPosition 0    0
    Fullscreen     0
    Size           1280    930
    Gamma          1
    NoCompression
    VSync
    MSAA           4
    SSAO           0
    Anisotropy     4
    Graphics       2
    Difficulty     1
    MasterVolume   1
    SoundVolume    1
    MusicVolume    1
    HudColor       0
    GunReticle     0
    Language       0
    Subtitles            1
    
    // physx settings //
    PhysxThreading            1
    PhysxPPUSupport           0
    PhysxSimMaxIter          4
    PhysxSimMaxFreq          50
    
    // physx compartments //
    PhysxPPUCore             0
    PhysxRestrictedCore      0
    PhysxCPUCompartment      0
    PhysxPPUCompartment      0
    PhysxDynamicsCompartment 0
    
  • Swarm22
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    Swarm22 polycounter lvl 15
    Worked like a charm. Thanks Ben!
  • Tea Monster
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    Tea Monster polycounter lvl 13
    Swarm22 wrote: »
    Ive got this problem with Marmoset. When I open it up and am at the main menu it gives me a hard time when selecting options. I have to click material editor 10,20,30 times sometimes for it to open and same will go with using some of the material options.

    Ive had Marmoset for a few months now and it has always been a problem that has kept me from wanting to use it. Is this an issue for anyone else?

    I'm having that problem. I'm on Win 7. I modded my cfg file, I set it to 'Run as Admin.' and I'm still getting the same issues. It's difficult to select stuff. I did get the thing loaded and I'm going through the tutorial and I'll see if I can get anything out of it. It feels really flaky and I'm not really sure that when I click on a button, that I'm actually selecting what I'm pressing!
  • Rang3r1
    I'm having that problem. I'm on Win 7. I modded my cfg file, I set it to 'Run as Admin.' and I'm still getting the same issues. It's difficult to select stuff. I did get the thing loaded and I'm going through the tutorial and I'll see if I can get anything out of it. It feels really flaky and I'm not really sure that when I click on a button, that I'm actually selecting what I'm pressing!

    Did you set your screen resolution in your .cfg file to reflect your current screen resolution?
  • Ben Apuna
    Just to make sure as this could happen to anyone:

    After changing the Size value to match your screen resolution in the toolUser.cfg, did you make sure to save it as a ".cfg" file and not a ".cfg.txt" Notepad might try to do that by default...
  • wdcstudios
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    wdcstudios polycounter lvl 8
    The Toolbag is great, took me a few days of playing with option to get the model to export correctly and maps adjust to look right but I happy with it. Again great tool and thanks for making it available.
    attachment.php?attachmentid=180479
    attachment.php?attachmentid=180480
  • fullofclovers
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    fullofclovers polygon
    I can't seem to load another mesh in without it being assigned to textures of a mesh I previously imported. In the material settings theres nothing assigned yet old textures show up on my mesh. I tried created a new material then deleting the old one.

    Not sure if this came up on here, I just don't want to dig through 43 pages to find the answer. Thanks.
  • wdcstudios
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    wdcstudios polycounter lvl 8
    fullofclovers - do you have multiple mesh chucks in your mesh chunk list? I so you just need to "save as" the default material to create multiple materials.
  • fullofclovers
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    fullofclovers polygon
    I only have one mesh loaded with one UV assigned to it. Here is an example; although the correct normal is assigned, its not loaded into the normal map slot. Yet it shows up on the mesh. And any other object I import in displays the same map from whatever meshes normal map was assigned previously. I tried assigning a new material within Marmoset and deleting the old one already. I can't seem to figure out whats causing this.

    marmo.jpg
  • Ben Apuna
    Marmoset won't display your mesh correctly if you don't actually assign a material with textures loaded in it. In other words it's perfectly normal for it to not work properly until you apply some textures to the material.

    I also suggest you don't use the default material ever, always make a new material for each object you import. That way you can save it's settings if you need to load it up again in the future, sadly saving a material doesn't save textures so you need to reload them every time.
  • EarthQuake
    Ben Apuna wrote: »
    sadly saving a material doesn't save textures so you need to reload them every time.


    If this is happening, you need to make sure your model/textures are nested inside of BASE/. Materials save correctly, but the paths are relative not absolute
  • Ben Apuna
    Thanks for letting me know EarthQuake. I had all my textures just outside the base directory in the toolbag directory the whole time, so close yet so far away...
  • fullofclovers
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    fullofclovers polygon
    Thanks for the tip Ben. What had happened was I saved over the default material. I just re-extracted and its all good now :) .
  • Jeremy-S
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    Jeremy-S polycounter lvl 11
    I'm getting these weird squares on all my models, I don't know how they got there, and they don't want to leave. I've checked that all my tga's are uncompressed, I saved all the files to the BASE folder, I've done everything I can see to do, but these squares are driving me nuts. Can anyone help me out? Thanks.


    15rlc8m.jpg
  • Ben Apuna
    That's really strange. So these squares show up on all of your models no matter what textures are applied? I ask because if this wasn't Marmoset I'd say you've got a wrong normal or spec map applied.

    The first thing that stands out to me is that you don't have "use culling" checked on. Though I would be surprised if that fixes it.

    Those squares almost look like a shadow problem but not quite, it can't hurt to make sure. To do that make sure your mesh is around the proper scale for Marmoset, scale has a big impact on how Marmoset will display shadows your object.

    Go to the render tab in Marmoset and toggle the box labeled "show scale reference" on. Now you should see a human figure which is about the right size you want to be importing your objects into Marmoset.

    You can also slide the "shadow distance" slider under the render tab back and forth to see if that helps. For best results you want the shadow distance setting to be just close enough + one or two steps more than necessary for the shadows to show up at all.

    You can also try to increase the resolution of the shadows. To do that press the "~" or "`" key to bring up the command line then type in the command "set render.shadows.res 4096" and hit enter. Keep in mind this setting requires a fairly decent graphics card to work right. Other power of two numbers work here as well, so 2048 and 8192 are fair game, I've never tried to go higher than that though.

    In the end though I'm not sure it's a shadow problem at all, that's what usually causes all of my problems.

    I hope that helps and good luck.

    EDIT:

    Wait a minute! I think I see what's wrong, you've got your channel mode set to AnisotropicEnvironment set that to PhongEnvironment.
  • roosterMAP
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    roosterMAP polycounter lvl 12
    im gonna start using this now. lol
  • Jeremy-S
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    Jeremy-S polycounter lvl 11
    Hey Ben, thanks for the reply. You're right, the model is WAY too big right now, and most importantly, changing the channel mode to PhongEnvironment worked like a charm! :D Man, I feel so much better now. I thought I was doing something really wrong with a file somewhere, and would look retarded for asking, so I didn't ask, even though I've had this problem since the ComiCon contest. :)

    Thanks again, man, MUCH appreciated

    [EDIT] And yeah, after scaling it down a lot, the shadows are working much better now.
  • tdunlavey
    This is going to sound really stupid, but I just started using the marmoset toolbag -- and how do I save / render out images? And, if you simply use the "printscreen" function, then how do you make the viewport larger? The working area my model sits in is very small... Thanks!
  • Psyk0
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    Psyk0 polycounter lvl 18
    -f12 will outpout a TGA in the "\toolbag_deploy" folder

    -To change the size of the window go to "\toolbag_deploy\base\interface"
    Open toolUser.cfg, change the line size to something like:
    Size 1580 950
  • tdunlavey
    Lol, thanks. What a newb qustion, and I was just too lazy to browse the thread... XD
  • Ben Apuna
    Pressing the spacebar will hide the UI effectively maximizing the viewport.

    Also you can bring up the console with the "`" key and type in the command "set screenshotres 4096" for some really big screen grabs when using the F12 key.
  • NyneDown
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    NyneDown polycounter lvl 11
    So I got a new PC, built to handle everything I throw at it (except heavy blunt objects) and as soon as I installed Marmoset...I started having issues. I think it had something to do with the PhysX driver because it seemed like a graphics issue more then anything. I thought it was a virus of some sort at first, but ruled that out after running a couple of virus scans that came up clean. I re-installed Windows 7 to start from fresh, since at that time I only had PS and Zbrush installed on it so no big loss, and now everything seems to be working fine. I want to re-install marmoset and give it a shot but I'm afraid my PC is gonna take a shit again. Has anyone had this issue after installing any of the divers? I have a GeForce 9800GT graphics card so I'm not even sure if I need that PhysX driver.
  • stocko2k
    trying to bring my character into marmoset but it has 2 sets of uv's 1 for the head 1 for the body as its to be imported to unreal. when i export from max i attach everything and open in marmoset but i cant get the model to accept both textures.

    so is there a way to import 2 meshes at once so i can apply both textures or can someone talk me through applying both textures to a single mesh
  • EarthQuake
    stocko: you need to have 2 separate "objects"/"chunks" in max when you export, these should show up in marmo, and then you can apply 2 different materials.
  • johanz
    My marmoset doesn't work.
    When I press material editor, nothing happens, I minimize and maximize, it enters material editor, but in there no option works. All I can do is rotate the camera.
  • johanz
    My marmoset doesn't work.
    When I press material editor, nothing happens, I minimize and maximize, it enters material editor, but in there no option works. All I can do is rotate the camera.
  • Ben Apuna
    johanz:

    It's probably that your screen res does not match the default resolution that Marmoset Toolbag runs in, which is 1280 x 1024.

    Check this post out for more info.
  • Rang3r1
    Well boys, what can you tell me about this? I get a weird lighting error, where only the front half is lit, and is lit incorrectly, and I have some weird uv/normal errors. I tried inverting the green channel and un-inverting it, I still get the errors on the pistol grip and everywhere else. Import from max.

    Sorry about photobucket compression:

    aksu_errors.jpg
  • Ben Apuna
    Make sure you've got "use culling" checked on under the material tab.

    Double check the scale of your object. Go to the render tab in Marmoset and toggle the box labeled "show scale reference" on. Now you should see a human figure which is about the right size you want to be importing your objects into Marmoset.

    You can also slide the "shadow distance" slider under the render tab back and forth to see if that helps. For best results you want the shadow distance setting to be just close enough + one or two steps more than necessary for the shadows to show up at all.

    I'm not sure about the UV error thing. Double check the UVs in your 3d app, Marmoset hates UV faces with 0 area.
  • EarthQuake
    yeah, if you've got some verts mistakenly welded together on your uvs, you will get that sort of error. 99% chance that is the problem. Its a funny thing, because even if you TRY to do this in maya, you cant(weld tolerance will only affect border edges, not weld 2 non connected edges together) i was trying to make a test case for this to solve the bug, but you have to use max just to do it. lol
  • stocko2k
    @earthquake

    so i dont attach the 2 meshes just select them and do an export selected ok cool shall give that a try
  • obeyurnapster
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    obeyurnapster polycounter lvl 9
    hi guys !
    i had a beta version of win 7 and my toolbag worked well !!!

    ive bought Win 7, and re-instal toolbag, but it doesnt work anymore : this is what happen when i launch it :

    100223105448645041.jpg

    any idea? :(
  • Rang3r1
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    yeah, if you've got some verts mistakenly welded together on your uvs, you will get that sort of error. 99% chance that is the problem. Its a funny thing, because even if you TRY to do this in maya, you cant(weld tolerance will only affect border edges, not weld 2 non connected edges together) i was trying to make a test case for this to solve the bug, but you have to use max just to do it. lol

    So what you are trying to say is go in and do a .01 weld of my uvs? I'm using max. The issues with the smoothing groups is max is fucking up my model on the export to .obj. I have no idea how to fix this...
  • obeyurnapster
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    obeyurnapster polycounter lvl 9
    ok it was a problem with nvidia drivers
  • EarthQuake
    Rang3r1 wrote: »
    So what you are trying to say is go in and do a .01 weld of my uvs? I'm using max. The issues with the smoothing groups is max is fucking up my model on the export to .obj. I have no idea how to fix this...

    Yeah if you had 2 verts really close in your uvs, and welded with a tollerance of 0.1 and the got welded together, that would break your shit in marmo, but likely not show up in max as an error. So find out the area that is doing that, select the verts connected the to the faces that are fucked up and check the uvs in that area.
  • stocko2k
    ok so i would hunt through the 44 pages but i got 15 pages in and started to lose the will to click so quick question.....

    how do i set alpha maps? i have an alpha on my characters hair but cant for the life of me figure out how to set an alpha up in marmoset
  • Ben Apuna
    Put your alpha texture in your diffuse texture's alpha channel, be sure to save it as a 32bit uncompressed TGA.

    Then load the diffuse texture into your material's diffuse map slot.

    That should do it.

    If not there are a few Blend Modes under the material tab that you can switch to such as Alpha and Premultiplied Alpha.
  • EarthQuake
    after you have your 32 bit texture loaded, you can use the alpha threshold slider to adjust alphatesting, or as ben says, set a blend mode
  • mikezoo
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    mikezoo polycounter lvl 14
    it looks like some people have managed a cleaver workaround to render turnTables in marmoset editor. Apparently by useing the animation editor then capturing w/ Fraps.

    Can anybody share any of their success's in doing this? I would love to see how it turns out.
    I have to render out quite a few turnTables in the next couple weeks and Iam really not sure which program I should use. Unreal, maya, or attempt Marmoset.
  • Ben Apuna
    mikezoo:

    If you got Maya 7, 8, or 9 there's an exporter included in the \Marmoset Toolbag\toolbag\exporter\ directory. Also check out this post from earlier in the thread.
  • mikezoo
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    mikezoo polycounter lvl 14
    thanks ben!

    marmoset looks so good, I gotta try this.
  • ironbearxl
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    ironbearxl polycounter lvl 18
    I'm getting some bad edges when using alpha (32-bit .tga):
    alpha_mset.jpg
    I used a simple gradient (0-255) on two planes to test, does the viewer only do 1-bit alpha?
  • Mrskullface
    So I am able to render stuff and mess with everything but at 6.5 FPS

    Before I do anythign it runs at 60 FPS then once I go into the editor to mess around it suddenly drops to 6.5 without loading anythign up. When I do load something up it just stays at 6.5 FPS. Oh and I also get the warning that I don't have the proper system reqs.

    my system specs:

    win XP 64 Edition

    Intel Core 2 CPU
    6700 @ 2.66Ghz
    2.67 Ghz 4GB Ram

    video card is a Nvidia Quadro 1500fx
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