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Marmoset Toolbag - MASTER THREAD

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  • EarthQuake
    pix of the skin shader problem?

    spec sensitivity is pretty extreme in the app, so i dont know if that is actually an issue, generally for things like skin etc you want very very little specularity, a setting of 1 in marmo is basically full white, so something closer to 0.1 or 0.05 for skin is probably more realistic unless you need some overly stylized look, or you're going for some greased up sweaty porn star.

    if its something other than that, you know... show some images =D
  • I_R_Hopo
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    I_R_Hopo polycounter lvl 14
    I'm getting a really big problem with the engine. It seems as though it's compressing my textures that I apply to the meshes. I've tested it with the downloaded weapons on the first page and get the same problem. I'm using an uncompressed 2048x2048 TGA file on my gun, but in the engine it looks like a highly compressed jpeg (Grainy with that greenish pixeling effect compressed pictures get). If I use the texture in 3dsmax, this compression isn't there (But for some reason max won't display textures at their highest resolution and thus it looks horrible in max.). Now, along with this I'm also getting the same problem as fghajhe on page 41 of this thread. I'm using a Radeon 1600 pro video card if that helps, and I've run Marmoset off a fresh install and the config file hasn't been touched. Anyone know how to fix this? Thanks in advance!
  • EarthQuake
    Likely an issue with the 1600. show some images?
  • ScoobyDoofus
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    ScoobyDoofus polycounter lvl 19
    I guess I just needed a reboot or something because I loaded the same model, textures & material sets today to grab some screenshots, and it had self-corrected. Weird.
  • I_R_Hopo
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    I_R_Hopo polycounter lvl 14
    Sorry for getting back to you on this late EarthQuake. Here are two screenshots illustrating my problem. Also, for some reason my F12 screenshots in Marmoset are taken as completely black images... That's weird haha.

    In the first image you can see the problem with the greenish/compression coloring I was talking about. There should be no colors in that metal, just shades. It seems like it's compressed, although the diffuse resolution is higher than in Max. Also, the normal map is pixelated in places, but not so in Max.

    In the second picture you can see the same problem fghajhe was getting. It doesn't look the exact same, but it's just the lighting and geometry on this one. It gets more noticable in other places. Also note the odd coloring on the orange and brown bits. These are both flat colors on the diffuse.

    marmoset1.jpg
    marmoset2.jpg
  • EarthQuake
    IR: Video card is the only thing i can say, if you could try it on a different computer with a recent NVidia card, 8600 or better.

    I've got a request here for a test mesh from anyone that is able. I need an example mesh that shows the error when you mistakenly weld two verts together in UV space that shouldn't be. I'm pretty sure this is a max only bug when you have a weld tolerance too high as i've tried to replicate it in both modo and maya and its just not something the app will let you do.

    So anyone that already has a mesh like this which has shown errors in toolbag, or if someone can whip up a quick "broken" mesh as a test!

    thxxx
  • I_R_Hopo
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    I_R_Hopo polycounter lvl 14
    Yeah, Earthquake, it's definately my video card, or something with my computer. I ran over to my friends house and tried it on his, and it looked perfectly fine. No compressed textures, pixely normal maps, or strange white waves across the model.

    My computer is really bad :( My dad's been promising an upgrade for years, but maybe now that it's truly needed for something important he'll really get on it :P Oh well, I'll get a lot of modelling practice in the mean time, and maybe finally practice some basic drawing skills.
  • Hatred
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    Hatred polycounter lvl 18
    EDIT: error wrong thread :D
  • EarthQuake
    Hatred wrote: »
    EDIT: error wrong thread :D

    I was *really* confused when i read your original post like, man WTF is wrong with this guy, why is he asking for baking features in marmoset? =D
  • Hatred
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    Hatred polycounter lvl 18
    errors of multitasking :D while baking didnt saw that im already in the different thread :D
  • leon huo
    i have asked this promblem before,it is stripes problem like sayris's on page 40.My graphic card is also a radeon X1950gt.Is that because of my graphic card?Or has anyone a solution?thx!
  • Ben Apuna
    leon huo:

    Stripes? as in shadow stripes? Try this:
    Ben Apuna wrote: »
    First make sure your mesh is around the proper scale for Marmoset.

    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.

    Sometimes rotating the light environment to a slightly different angle can help too.

    If none of that helps, it could possibly be your graphics card.
  • I_R_Hopo
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    I_R_Hopo polycounter lvl 14
    Also, try the fix that was posted in response sayris's problem. Not sure if you missed it or not, it was just a quick one post response from someone. Here it is:

    "Well i found out the problem was being caused by max's built in .obj exporter, i got the gw:OBJexporter and it works brilliantly!"

    If you're problem is the weird white band problem though (looks like waves across the model), that's a video card problem as far as I can tell.
  • PONRHartman
    hi, i dont know if this has been resolved yet, but i recently installed windows 7 and marmosets toolbag isnt working right, im getting this error, does anybody know how to fix this?

    errorbwwytepci.jpg
  • marlfox8
    i decided to install the toolbag in case i might need it even though i do 2d. i also get the error ponrhartman gets. i also cant start up the toolbag.ive followed the instructions on the readme doc and it still doesnt work.aaaahhh:-(
  • EarthQuake
    ^
    Likely that your computer/video card is too old/slow/crappy/etc to run it.

    If this is an issue that you have on win7 and not on your old OS, its probably a win7 issue, toolbag is not officially supported on win7 afaik.
  • xpressionist
    Hey. I'm not too sure why this is, firstly I had issues with my normal map in marmo, but I just need to invert my green channel as I'm coming from 3ds max. 2ndly, when I load a normal map in to the engine, it does not clear when I press the clear buttom. It clears from the rectangular browse form but not from view, it only changes when a new map is loaded. Other maps clear when I press the C button.
  • EarthQuake
    Hey. I'm not too sure why this is, firstly I had issues with my normal map in marmo, but I just need to invert my green channel as I'm coming from 3ds max. 2ndly, when I load a normal map in to the engine, it does not clear when I press the clear buttom. It clears from the rectangular browse form but not from view, it only changes when a new map is loaded. Other maps clear when I press the C button.

    Yeah as you said, just load a different texture instead. NM is a required texture(along with diffuse) and if you clear these or do not have anything loaded, its going to grab something random from memory(which may be the file you used to have loaded). If you want to use "no normal map" you can load a flat 127,127,255 image, or switch to the SimpleEnvironment shader(you'll lose spec this way tho).
  • xpressionist
    Ok I get it, that's very clear, thank you for that EarthQuake.
    One other thing though, is there a way of making sky environments for marmoset to use on imported models? Or a place to download them? Could they be like possibly made in a 3d editing program, i.e. 3ds max, exported then imported?
  • Ben Apuna
    Titus figured out how to make new light environments here's his post from earlier in this thread, it's a bit involved though...

    Here's a link to some of the new light environments that he made.
  • xpressionist
    Ahh! Ben you're amazing thanks. Yeup, read the post, quite a lot that needs to be done. Will stick with these extra lights plus the sun and tri light that came with marmoset, till I learn to use UDK/UE3 for own creative lighting. But this does help, thanks again.
  • Gooner442
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    Gooner442 polycounter lvl 6
    Hi all,

    Just looking for a little enlightening on what this Marmoset Toolbag can give me. I have researched but still a little confused (sorry I'm a noob!)

    I am looking for a realtime render, so I can work on my UV's in Photoshop and immediately see the results on the 3D model. Will this give me that or is it meant for other purposes? Some people have said that it makes their work 'better', how does it make it better, I can understand it makes the workflow easier but does it actually improve the render or texture quality?

    Thanks for your time

    Martin
  • hellkt
    Gooner442 wrote: »
    Hi all,

    Just looking for a little enlightening on what this Marmoset Toolbag can give me. I have researched but still a little confused (sorry I'm a noob!)

    I am looking for a realtime render, so I can work on my UV's in Photoshop and immediately see the results on the 3D model. Will this give me that or is it meant for other purposes? Some people have said that it makes their work 'better', how does it make it better, I can understand it makes the workflow easier but does it actually improve the render or texture quality?

    Thanks for your time

    Martin

    This tutorial could help you: http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/video-game-art/create-gorgeous-realtime-renders-of-your-game-art-using-the-marmoset-engine/
  • Gooner442
  • {scumworks}
    Having trouble when exporting from XSI. Keep getting these edges showing.

    edges.jpg

    I can fix it by importing into max, setting the right smoothing groups (minic whats done in XSI) and exporting.

    If I however import the .obj (from max) into XSI (and include user normals), then exporting it again (including user normals again), the lines are back.

    I've tried fiddling around with the geo.aprox (which generates 'hard edges/smoothing groups' based on angle), but with no luck. It should also be overwritting by 'user normals'.
  • leon huo
    Ben and I_R_Hopo,thanks for replay,i have tried you told me, but it still does not work,looks like thisff0965d978edff9579a33fc20156dd28.jpg,however,it showed correct when i open its own chairs in toolbag.f3c8bdff995f82b692e752b61b696dec.jpg
  • janice walton
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    janice walton polycounter lvl 17
    Im getting the same error with my model, the shadows looks completly square, and messed up.
  • Shatter
    NyneDown wrote: »
    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.

    You probably aren't watching the thread anymore but..

    I'm having problems as well, with an XFX GeForce 9800GT

    It crashes most of the time, all the buttons appear lower than they should(have to click above them), and navigation doesn't work. I'll probably try updating my drivers but I doubt that will work..
  • Ben Apuna
    leon huo:

    I've never seen that problem before. It's a really strange looking error. Have you tried loading a specular map as well as diffuse and normal on that object, turning on "use specularity? Sometimes Marmoset doesn't work right until you load all 3 types of texture maps.

    janice walton:
    Ben Apuna wrote: »
    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.

    Also make sure your channel mode set to PhongEnvironment instead of AnisotropicEnvironment. The last person with "squares" fixed it with this.

    Shatter:

    This might help you:
    Ben Apuna wrote: »
    Thanks for releasing such a cool tool to the public.

    I had some problems getting Marmoset to run at first as well. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled the newest version of OpenAL now Marmoset opens up just fine for me.

    I was also having problems clicking the buttons on the main menu, 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.

    It was probably because I am still using an old CRT monitor and my screen resolution is 1280 x 960 rather than the default 1280 x 1024.

    Importing OBJs works fine for me. Just for reference Marmoset likes to have objects with their "Y" axis up.
    Ben Apuna wrote: »
    @reiro:

    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
    

    Hope that helps.
  • dang87
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    dang87 polycounter lvl 12
    This has probably been asked before and i thought I heard that if you update your graphics card or something it could fix the button issue in Marmoset where instead of trying to figure out where to click to get the right button you could click somewhat closer. Maybe I heard wrong....any ideas?
  • Ben Apuna
    dang87:

    Please read the post just before your post. Updating the drivers is unlikely to solve the issue.
  • Shatter
    Ben Apuna wrote: »
    Shatter:

    This might help you:





    Hope that helps.

    Thanks! Changed the resolution in the tooluser.cfh and reinstalled OAL and it works now
  • dang87
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    dang87 polycounter lvl 12
    Ben Apuna wrote: »
    dang87:

    Please read the post just before your post. Updating the drivers is unlikely to solve the issue.

    Thanks, that was silly of me. Gotta get better observation skillz.
  • sasuki
    Dose anybody know how to make a turntable animation in Marmoset? :)
  • leon huo
    @Ben Apuna:
    thanks for the reply,i tried spec map added,but it still looked like that.it seemed like sayris have solved this problem on page 40 and 41,but he didn't explain in detail.
  • Ben Apuna
    sasuki:

    Check out this post.

    leon huo:

    One other thing I thought of. Do you have multiple UV sets on that model? Is the correct UV set being exported to Marmoset? Obj only supports one UV set, and I could see that error potentially being caused by trying to apply the object's intended normal map onto a UV set made for tiling a detail normal map.

    When I try to export an Obj from Modo to Marmoset it will often export with the "wrong" UV set, then I have to go back delete every UV set but the one I want and re-export the Obj to get it to work correctly.
  • Serp
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    Serp polycounter lvl 17
    The normals are coming out funny. Can anyone help? I've tried it exporting it with gw exporter aswell. Made sure normals are selected in the exporters. Alos I updated my graphic drivers.

    normalsk.jpg
  • Serp
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    Serp polycounter lvl 17
    I fixed it. I inverted the green channel in Photoshop.
  • jlomax
    Has anyone been getting an issue were the ui does not always function ? When I click on any of the buttons or tabs sometimes they do nothing at all:(
  • Ben Apuna
    jlomax:

    Scroll upward and check out my response to Shatter and dang87 that should take care of it.
  • bluekangaroo
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    bluekangaroo polycounter lvl 13
    alright Im having some real issues here that I cannot figure out for the life of me. My first time using the toolbag so please bear with me.

    problems_01.jpg


    so that is the short version of my problems. The longer version is I originally baked a tangent space map but I kept getting shading errors and issues with lighting and insanely strong unwanted specularity. As a workaround to this I decided I'd just bake an object space normals map since after loading up some of Earthquakes assets they looked great (so I know for sure my drivers are up to date and are not an issue).

    But as you can see everything is looking great except for the funky flipped lighting on the other side. I went through the thread trying to find if someone had a similar issue but so far it looks like I'm the first, or maybe I missed it.

    Here is my normal map, baked from max tho

    ak_object_normals.jpg

    and my obj if anyone doesnt mind loading it up quickly:

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5559441/ak_lopoly_03.rar
  • Serp
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    Serp polycounter lvl 17
    Isn't it looking different on the other side because of the light direction? You can change the light direction by holding shift and moving it around.

    Also I think your tangent map wasn't appearing correctly because it was baked in max. I think you needed to invert the green channel for it to show correctly in Marmoset.
  • bluekangaroo
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    bluekangaroo polycounter lvl 13
    no thats not the problem at all. I tried inverting the green channel and all that does is reverse what I have shown above. and the light direction does not move around the model like it should. Its like it is locked to one side and when I shift drag the light all it does is rotate it around the model on the y axis and refuses to switch to the other side
  • EarthQuake
    OS maps from max need a more complex conversion than just inverting a channel, you've gotta invert something, and swap some channels as well.... there is a solution in this thread somewhere tho!

    http://boards.polycount.net/showpost.php?p=909611&postcount=214
  • jmiles
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    jmiles interpolator
    hey guys..

    having issues w/ the ed.. for some reason, the editor seems to open correctly, but when I click on the material editor, i get a black screen. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling OpenAL, downloading new versions of the toolbag itself, installing new graphics card drivers, and setting up thetoolUser.cfg script to see if that would fix my issues.. still getting the black screen.. I even tried all the hot keys. the editor worked for me before while i was working on my model of Sonic.. but now it doesn't.. just kinda strange. any input you guys might have would be really helpful. thanks..

    marmosetissues2.jpg

    marmosetissues.jpg
  • Ben Apuna
    Hmm... not sure what's going on here. One possibility, try hit the spacebar to see if the UI is just hidden.

    Is this in Vista? Run as Administrator?

    I noticed you are trying to install it on and run it from the Desktop, don't do that. Put it into a proper drive somewhere.

    Otherwise maybe you got to uninstall and do some sort of registry clean or something. Then reinstall.

    Good luck.
  • ivan0v
    Can we render with an alpha mask for the image? i couldn't find.
  • Ben Apuna
    Not exactly but you can fake it.

    Check out this post or this one.
  • jmiles
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    jmiles interpolator
    @ Ben Apuna- yeah, I've pressed the space bar to try to get the UI back.. still a black screen.. by drive, do you mean simply run the app from a folder saved somewhere on my main hard drive?.. because I will need to look into that.. i'm pretty sure i've done that but i'm still getting the same issue.. i'll see when i get home
  • Ben Apuna
    Yeah that's what I meant. I vaguely remember having trouble trying to run/install Marmoset on my desktop. Though it was so long ago it could have easily been something different.
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