Is there a place in one of the config directories to define which photoshop path it tries to use on launching. Seems to default to CS2 and crashes with a Error 48, but I want it to launch CS5 instead
Wont launch at all with CS2 installed. Just uninstalled
Ahh... oh well if you want to install it again(or anyone that has this problem, CS2 and CS5 installed) and use dDo on CS5 you just have to go to AppData/Local/Quixel and there should be a dDo.exe folder and inside it open the .config file inside with notepad and Change the Photoshop Path to the exe you want.
Just wanted to say that I was using the latest version of ddo and I still had problems with the viewer when using a mesh exported from max. The max meshes imported from max into modo and exported again worked.
been playing with this a bit, got deeper into making custom presets and fiddling with settings. Really digging it, though it also makes me cry on the inside that the magic is being taken away. Getting some good results!
quickie stupid rock, its not perfect, would want to do more on it, but is a great place to start! finishing would be simple
Teddy are there any tuts coming up, maybe even an explained walkthrough for character stuff, similar to the trailer? I've been playing around with it this evening and found a few good tricks myself, it seems to have a lot of potential but would love to find out what else it can do
If guys keep making awesome stuff like this you'll all be boned when people say you just sit and press the "make art" button. Amazing tool, looks like it could really expedite workflow for many assets.
Some wall test (!!). Didn't make any custom preset, didn't have custom color map baked (i just found old normal map from zbrush). About 10 mins of fiddiling.
Lazy gameart is already here and has been for ages, so maybe this will make the lazy stuff look better
This is one of my all time favourites, and while it wouldn't be fixed by ddo maybe the time saved from using it would allow someone to spend 30 seconds fixing things like this.
That's kinda what I was thinking, and is also a good point. I feel that as textures get larger and resolutions on monitors get higher (4k) the need for good textures will be paramount, I got a WQHD monitor recently and couldn't believe how much detail is missing in hd, I think the same will be of 4k, but to a greater extent and Ddo will be invaluable to production and saving time.
Has anyone made anything based off of a reference? I got a lot of cool looking results last night, but it doesnt seem very intuitive if you'd try and match a reference or surface. Most of the detail sliders are vague at best, and the preview is super sluggish currently.
This looks to be an amazing tool! I can't wait to see what people come up with using this... But I'm also afraid that everyones art is going to end up feeling the same.
I wanted to try to recreate the Incendiary grenade skin from Gears 3, since how dDo handles the psd and texturing the object is very, very similar to how I work anyway. Was able to get a pretty decent result after a little time, something that I feel is about 50-60% of what the texture would be in the end. It ended up making some areas of the mesh look a lot better! I had an ok material color map going in, but it wasn't perfect by any means. Made some edits to clean it up some - but if you go into dDo with a proper material color map set up it'll pay off.
Should we be rendering out our color maps with anti aliasing?
How does dDo handles its selections in this case, as the colors end up interpolated?
How does nDo bake out its selection maps?
How interoperable is nDo with dDo? Any special features in this regard?
Also, should we be baking out our normal maps in Unity tangents space for 3Do?
Wouldn't it be cool to just stick with the Worlds Space Normal Maps alone until necesary?
What I mean is, what if dDo handled Normals maps similar to, or in tandem with the Handplane Normal Map tool from Alec Moody.
This way, we could have the Normals maps automatically converted by dDo to the best tangent space for 3Do
And we could get the best output from which the cavity and curvature maps could be generated in dDo.
Then we could also have the quicksaver output Normals maps in the correct engine-formats/tangent-basis for whatever your project requires.
On the topic of the quick saver, is that based on QSM (Quick Save Maps) perchance? It has a lot of the same features and look to it.
Could it be extended to work with the CryTiff metadata/format like QSM?
Could we also get more control with options for texture map post-processing such as the sharpening option that is currently included?
Maybe dDo could even add in the option to run scripts or actions for each individual texture as in QSM? (BTW, QSM is also open source now)
dDo is such a time saver with its folder structure, its mask generator and its 3Do previewer, it would be awesome to have it go all the way in terms of texture map logistics and handling all the technical bits.
Lastly, awesome work! Thanks for this amazing tool.
PS. You guys should post links to where we can get your Youtube video's music, their really catchy!
@moose, does the dDo diffuse variant include any hand painted work, or just parameter tweaks inside presets?
Soooo ive been playing with it, this is what ive done. I was goona start texturing this gun today and then i woke up and this magical program was here.
Question!! Does anyone know how to add new details, but constrain them to color callouts, as per the color map? I'm adding new detail tabs, but it applies them to the entire texture sheet.
Also... Cordell, you are a tough customer my friend!! I'm post my goodies soon enough
Question!! Does anyone know how to add new details, but constrain them to color callouts, as per the color map? I'm adding new detail tabs, but it applies them to the entire texture sheet.
Also... Cordell, you are a tough customer my friend!! I'm post my goodies soon enough
Use the materials tab rather than environment then you can select the colour you want and add properties just to that material
Darkmaster: You should be able to apply per material; my guess is you're trying to add the detail maps in the Environment tab. Stay in the Materials tab and add a detail layer there (below the material's diffuse/spec/gloss settings).
I've been working on a game set on Mars and I'm very excited with what dDo might mean for my art pipeline. Here's my very quick attempt at adding some wear and grunge on an existing diffuse map for a NASA power tool. I think it looks great and adds just a very subtle level of detail.
Question!! Does anyone know how to add new details, but constrain them to color callouts, as per the color map? I'm adding new detail tabs, but it applies them to the entire texture sheet.
Also... Cordell, you are a tough customer my friend!! I'm post my goodies soon enough
You gotta put the details to the specific material defined by the colour map. If you put detail thingos in the Environment tab, it applies to the whole texture.
+1 to using Marmoset as my previewer, although it REALLY annoys me that I have to manually put the gloss map in the alpha of my spec for marmoset, annoying compared to pressing shift+F# to qsave my diffuse out.
Here's something I did last night, you can tell the wood part is the shittest part because that's the bit I had to add myself (Overlaying a photo because I have no skills)
One thing I really, REALLY like about this tool is how easy it is to go back and make changes. For example, I noticed a mistake and had to change my AO/normal a bit, so I just stopped where I was in dDo, saved a preset, went back and fixed my problems, started a new dDo project with the new maps and loaded my preset. Bam.
Also really brilliant for getting spec/gloss maps done quickly and easily. When I have the money I'll be buying nDo2 and dDo.. make a bundle!
One other plus that comes to mind (From the perspective of someone greener than greentooth's teeth) is that I'm learning a lot of how the different maps come together for the final affect. I'm learning techniques by seeing what the program does and by being able to quickly and easily mess around with different affects / styles.
Thanks for the feedback guys. Alright, well here is my contribution to this thread!! Still not liking the way the wood is looking, but I'll keep messin around with it. Lemme know what ya'll think
Did a quick test on my rifle to add some dirt, dDo at the top mine at the bottom.
If I had the original files I would try and remake it from scratch using dDo.
it actually took me more time to take this screenshot below i think (may be beacuse i type slow)
roughly 10 mins inside dDo, may be another 5 minutes to export out the color mask before that only because i didnt have a proper color mask setup for this old asset.
so in total not more than 15 minutes.
i noticed that the skin part was getting some damage details even after i selected the color and assigned it a skin material. bug ?
also the normal map display is not accurate because i have this asset perfectly synced in udk, maya and max. i only see normal map errors here. may be obj is not importing normal data or something, i double checked my export settings and i am exporting with normals.
Still problems with 3d model showing up. Same setup.
- Tested export from Modo too
- Tested export with gw obj export from 3dsm Max 2012
- Teapot, cylinder with proper UVs etc
Obvious problems
- Object only shows after maps are created?
- Object load button of 3d view does not load mesh
- 3D view buttons hit test areas are obviously mis-aligned first time when view is opened, as buttons don't get highlighted when scrolled over. Clicking load will click buttons above. Closing and opening view fixes this.
- Closing Photoshop left dDo "in memory" and re-opening it crashed it. Happened couple of times
- First time when I generated map it didn't show up on model. Closed dDo and restarted PS and it
About exporting
- Now at least 2 test objects loaded, cylinder and teapot
- Teapot mesh of 3ds max does *not* display properly, it has collapsed verts in some faces, resulting in convex hull like look. Triangle export does not help.
Questions
- Should the mesh be viewable ASAP after it and normal map are loaded?
- Should I export .mtl file or does it matter at all - I guess not?
- Should object have material defined? I had material + map defined for all test objs
- What's the difference between x86 and 64bit versions? Should 64bit be used with PS 64bit version?
I usually don't have any kind of problems with software and it seems like there is still some work to be done with compatibility, but as it seems to be working just fine for most of the people, I bet those issues will be fixed.
OBJ too can be quite complex format, math-surfaces and NURBS and all kinds of stuff supported, but I guess you only deal with polygonal meshes
5 - 10 minutes in dDO ( Mainly tweaking colors to match my original Assets)
Obviously the dDo diffuse on the pillar is lacking alot of color tones in comparison to my original final texture. But for literally 5 minutes its really great - another 15 mins spent on the texture would be almost identical.
Tbh my favourite feature for this product is the specular and gloss controls
Thanks Teddy and everyone involved! will purchase on release.
So let me get this straight, this is really used so you can quickly get a good spec map out and have some base colors and base detail to work with, right? After that it would be beneficial to go in and start adding texture details that the program cannot generate (like wood grain, etc).
So let me get this straight, this is really used so you can quickly get a good spec map out and have some base colors and base detail to work with, right? After that it would be beneficial to go in and start adding texture details that the program cannot generate (like wood grain, etc).
Bit late to the party here but can someone explain to me exactly what this does cos its not very clear from any video or documentation
basically it takes your normal map and a colour map, and automatically creates diffuse, spec and gloss textures, usually using a preset that emulates a certain look.
what it's meant for is to enable the artist to focus on defining the material as what it's supposed to be, instead of spending countless hours on adding dirt and grime, which is repetitive stuff you don't learn anything from anyway. This way, you can spend less time achieving the same (and most of the time even better) result.
basically it takes your normal map and a colour map, and automatically creates diffuse, spec and gloss textures, usually using a preset that emulates a certain look.
what it's meant for is to enable the artist to focus on defining the material as what it's supposed to be, instead of spending countless hours on adding dirt and grime, which is repetitive stuff you don't learn anything from anyway. This way, you can spend less time achieving the same (and most of the time even better) result.
Cool, thanks. Yes I am extremely tired of adding grunge and grime layers and trying to give material definition. Are there any tutorial videos? I thought I found one on the site but I've lost it now. Would be a lot better to see practical demonstrations than having to read about it.
Still problems with 3d model showing up. Same setup.
- Tested export from Modo too
- Tested export with gw obj export from 3dsm Max 2012
- Teapot, cylinder with proper UVs etc
Obvious problems
- Object only shows after maps are created?
- Object load button of 3d view does not load mesh
- 3D view buttons hit test areas are obviously mis-aligned first time when view is opened, as buttons don't get highlighted when scrolled over. Clicking load will click buttons above. Closing and opening view fixes this.
- Closing Photoshop left dDo "in memory" and re-opening it crashed it. Happened couple of times
- First time when I generated map it didn't show up on model. Closed dDo and restarted PS and it
About exporting
- Now at least 2 test objects loaded, cylinder and teapot
- Teapot mesh of 3ds max does *not* display properly, it has collapsed verts in some faces, resulting in convex hull like look. Triangle export does not help.
Questions
- Should the mesh be viewable ASAP after it and normal map are loaded?
- Should I export .mtl file or does it matter at all - I guess not?
- Should object have material defined? I had material + map defined for all test objs
- What's the difference between x86 and 64bit versions? Should 64bit be used with PS 64bit version?
I usually don't have any kind of problems with software and it seems like there is still some work to be done with compatibility, but as it seems to be working just fine for most of the people, I bet those issues will be fixed.
OBJ too can be quite complex format, math-surfaces and NURBS and all kinds of stuff supported, but I guess you only deal with polygonal meshes
I have all these problems with the newest version as well.
Now when I import 3ds max exported meshes my meshes will have all their verts be extruded/collapsed toward a single point (the origin maybe, but it was offest a little.) so that much has changed.
Here's the diffuse. The UV is pretty much automatic with some welded UV islands. Couldn't bother making a proper UV, seeing as dDo doesn't care how it looks.
I'm seriously considering creating a full environment from the concept this cryochamber is based on while livestreaming.
I played with this last night. Thank you guys for making innovative tools!!
I played with it for a quiet a bit, wasnt exactly happy with the look of the presents i find them a bit noisy, yet the masks created are so useful for me. People are complaining that now "everything will look the same" as far as people using this tool. Yeah..problably. But people who know what they are doing will get the most out of this tool.
This tool does everything i already did, which i had actions for set up. So now, it really saved me 30 or an hour of work. By putting all the color maps into solid color layers, and adding certain grime and leak masks in there. So that makes me pretty happy! My only true complaint is that it taxes my computer so much. To where i couldnt copy and paste anything into photoshop anymore. Anyone else getting this issue?
Raul: Yeah, it does wear on my computer as well both at home and work, I am afraid to use the preview feature when adding material details because I am afraid it will crash my pc or photoshop, with all those blinking windows and stuff
This tool is fantastic! Now obviously its best suited for indie teams and large studios who don't have time to pencil in details, but I wouldn't use this tool for anything more than a learning tool personally.
It's great at sort of teaching you what you need in order to communicate a material well. Its great how it breaks everything down. Just by using the tool once I've learned a bit about what you need to make metal look like metal in a test I did. I still don't think this tool is better than doing it all manually, but if you loosely follow dDo's method of creating texture maps and try to create a unique set of texture maps on your own, you're set!
Great job quixel guys!
dDo is great for teaching artists how to effectively communicate materials, and it's great for helping small teams who need the efficiency that dDo provides.
This looks really impressive, few quick questions though:
1) Someone mentioned above that it takes a normal map, does it absolutely need a normal map to work? I don't have a lot of experience yet generating those.
2) How powerful of a computer do you need for this to operate efficiently?
solid tool, this is going to speed up a lot of productions methinks. Also I think theres going to be a SHITONNE of models with basically the base settings with a few tweaks coming out after this is released. Like a flood. I think it will become obvious who uses it almost stock standard, and call the texture done.
Kinda like those old 3dsmax photographic metal textures that used to appear on absolutely everything back in the day.
What will the future of art competitions be for the texture side of things ? I can see entries just using this to create their textures....
I'm surprised this is coming from you Hazard, very surprised indeed.
A shite texture will always be shite, you do alot of character, especially naked ladies, explain to me how this tool could benefit a lazy person in making a quick texture for a naked lady that would be acceptable in any form (other then say a cheap Eastern MMO on a budget)?
The answer is it won't, you still need to sculpt, you will still need to bake, you still will need to make your own skin texture and the list goes on.
All this tool will do is allow to saaaay, make your Roughness map right off the bat (Gloss) if you have the proper maps to feed it, and tweak it while still having access to a powerful image editor with a viewer.
It's not taking control away from you or allowing auto-generation (Crazybump had this years ago), it simply allows you to gain access to more 'mundane' tasks in a consolidated format.
I'll be damned if I have to sit another day infront of my PC, with Photoshops almost archaic tools, as I have to manage 10 different layers for one Group, with mutiple export/import in a shader/engine when this tool is doing all of that with sliders in one small box.
Replies
Ahh... oh well if you want to install it again(or anyone that has this problem, CS2 and CS5 installed) and use dDo on CS5 you just have to go to AppData/Local/Quixel and there should be a dDo.exe folder and inside it open the .config file inside with notepad and Change the Photoshop Path to the exe you want.
Just wanted to say that I was using the latest version of ddo and I still had problems with the viewer when using a mesh exported from max. The max meshes imported from max into modo and exported again worked.
quickie stupid rock, its not perfect, would want to do more on it, but is a great place to start! finishing would be simple
That's kinda what I was thinking, and is also a good point. I feel that as textures get larger and resolutions on monitors get higher (4k) the need for good textures will be paramount, I got a WQHD monitor recently and couldn't believe how much detail is missing in hd, I think the same will be of 4k, but to a greater extent and Ddo will be invaluable to production and saving time.
Ain't that the truth. I guess bare models are better than those draped in garbage textures, so they're doing our eyes a favor in that regard.
This tool looks like it might be pretty cool for speeding along to a good base texture. Looking forward to downloading and trying this one out.
I wanted to try to recreate the Incendiary grenade skin from Gears 3, since how dDo handles the psd and texturing the object is very, very similar to how I work anyway. Was able to get a pretty decent result after a little time, something that I feel is about 50-60% of what the texture would be in the end. It ended up making some areas of the mesh look a lot better! I had an ok material color map going in, but it wasn't perfect by any means. Made some edits to clean it up some - but if you go into dDo with a proper material color map set up it'll pay off.
How does dDo handles its selections in this case, as the colors end up interpolated?
How does nDo bake out its selection maps?
How interoperable is nDo with dDo? Any special features in this regard?
Also, should we be baking out our normal maps in Unity tangents space for 3Do?
Wouldn't it be cool to just stick with the Worlds Space Normal Maps alone until necesary?
What I mean is, what if dDo handled Normals maps similar to, or in tandem with the Handplane Normal Map tool from Alec Moody.
This way, we could have the Normals maps automatically converted by dDo to the best tangent space for 3Do
And we could get the best output from which the cavity and curvature maps could be generated in dDo.
Then we could also have the quicksaver output Normals maps in the correct engine-formats/tangent-basis for whatever your project requires.
On the topic of the quick saver, is that based on QSM (Quick Save Maps) perchance? It has a lot of the same features and look to it.
Could it be extended to work with the CryTiff metadata/format like QSM?
Could we also get more control with options for texture map post-processing such as the sharpening option that is currently included?
Maybe dDo could even add in the option to run scripts or actions for each individual texture as in QSM? (BTW, QSM is also open source now)
dDo is such a time saver with its folder structure, its mask generator and its 3Do previewer, it would be awesome to have it go all the way in terms of texture map logistics and handling all the technical bits.
Lastly, awesome work! Thanks for this amazing tool.
PS. You guys should post links to where we can get your Youtube video's music, their really catchy!
@moose, does the dDo diffuse variant include any hand painted work, or just parameter tweaks inside presets?
It's pretty damn nifty!
Also... Cordell, you are a tough customer my friend!! I'm post my goodies soon enough
Use the materials tab rather than environment then you can select the colour you want and add properties just to that material
+1 to using Marmoset as my previewer, although it REALLY annoys me that I have to manually put the gloss map in the alpha of my spec for marmoset, annoying compared to pressing shift+F# to qsave my diffuse out.
Here's something I did last night, you can tell the wood part is the shittest part because that's the bit I had to add myself (Overlaying a photo because I have no skills)
Another pic:
http://i.imgur.com/WSdcO.png
diffuse:
http://i.imgur.com/v2v53.png
One thing I really, REALLY like about this tool is how easy it is to go back and make changes. For example, I noticed a mistake and had to change my AO/normal a bit, so I just stopped where I was in dDo, saved a preset, went back and fixed my problems, started a new dDo project with the new maps and loaded my preset. Bam.
Also really brilliant for getting spec/gloss maps done quickly and easily. When I have the money I'll be buying nDo2 and dDo.. make a bundle!
One other plus that comes to mind (From the perspective of someone greener than greentooth's teeth) is that I'm learning a lot of how the different maps come together for the final affect. I'm learning techniques by seeing what the program does and by being able to quickly and easily mess around with different affects / styles.
Thanks for the feedback guys. Alright, well here is my contribution to this thread!! Still not liking the way the wood is looking, but I'll keep messin around with it. Lemme know what ya'll think
(Concept by the legendary Artyom Vlaskin)
If I had the original files I would try and remake it from scratch using dDo.
roughly 10 mins inside dDo, may be another 5 minutes to export out the color mask before that only because i didnt have a proper color mask setup for this old asset.
so in total not more than 15 minutes.
i noticed that the skin part was getting some damage details even after i selected the color and assigned it a skin material. bug ?
also the normal map display is not accurate because i have this asset perfectly synced in udk, maya and max. i only see normal map errors here. may be obj is not importing normal data or something, i double checked my export settings and i am exporting with normals.
Still problems with 3d model showing up. Same setup.
- Tested export from Modo too
- Tested export with gw obj export from 3dsm Max 2012
- Teapot, cylinder with proper UVs etc
Obvious problems
- Object only shows after maps are created?
- Object load button of 3d view does not load mesh
- 3D view buttons hit test areas are obviously mis-aligned first time when view is opened, as buttons don't get highlighted when scrolled over. Clicking load will click buttons above. Closing and opening view fixes this.
- Closing Photoshop left dDo "in memory" and re-opening it crashed it. Happened couple of times
- First time when I generated map it didn't show up on model. Closed dDo and restarted PS and it
About exporting
- Now at least 2 test objects loaded, cylinder and teapot
- Teapot mesh of 3ds max does *not* display properly, it has collapsed verts in some faces, resulting in convex hull like look. Triangle export does not help.
Questions
- Should the mesh be viewable ASAP after it and normal map are loaded?
- Should I export .mtl file or does it matter at all - I guess not?
- Should object have material defined? I had material + map defined for all test objs
- What's the difference between x86 and 64bit versions? Should 64bit be used with PS 64bit version?
I usually don't have any kind of problems with software and it seems like there is still some work to be done with compatibility, but as it seems to be working just fine for most of the people, I bet those issues will be fixed.
OBJ too can be quite complex format, math-surfaces and NURBS and all kinds of stuff supported, but I guess you only deal with polygonal meshes
Looks awesome Mattias!
(Based on a concept by Dennis Chan.)
Man, this presentation took longer than the entire texture. ^^
I can't wait to when I have the time to play around with this tool
Obviously the dDo diffuse on the pillar is lacking alot of color tones in comparison to my original final texture. But for literally 5 minutes its really great - another 15 mins spent on the texture would be almost identical.
Tbh my favourite feature for this product is the specular and gloss controls
Thanks Teddy and everyone involved! will purchase on release.
Am I getting this correctly?
Thanks.
That sounds about right.
basically it takes your normal map and a colour map, and automatically creates diffuse, spec and gloss textures, usually using a preset that emulates a certain look.
what it's meant for is to enable the artist to focus on defining the material as what it's supposed to be, instead of spending countless hours on adding dirt and grime, which is repetitive stuff you don't learn anything from anyway. This way, you can spend less time achieving the same (and most of the time even better) result.
Cool, thanks. Yes I am extremely tired of adding grunge and grime layers and trying to give material definition. Are there any tutorial videos? I thought I found one on the site but I've lost it now. Would be a lot better to see practical demonstrations than having to read about it.
I have all these problems with the newest version as well.
Now when I import 3ds max exported meshes my meshes will have all their verts be extruded/collapsed toward a single point (the origin maybe, but it was offest a little.) so that much has changed.
Here's the diffuse. The UV is pretty much automatic with some welded UV islands. Couldn't bother making a proper UV, seeing as dDo doesn't care how it looks.
I'm seriously considering creating a full environment from the concept this cryochamber is based on while livestreaming.
What I would like is a ability to use the selection tools in Photoshop and add that as a new material layer on the fly.
I played with it for a quiet a bit, wasnt exactly happy with the look of the presents i find them a bit noisy, yet the masks created are so useful for me. People are complaining that now "everything will look the same" as far as people using this tool. Yeah..problably. But people who know what they are doing will get the most out of this tool.
This tool does everything i already did, which i had actions for set up. So now, it really saved me 30 or an hour of work. By putting all the color maps into solid color layers, and adding certain grime and leak masks in there. So that makes me pretty happy! My only true complaint is that it taxes my computer so much. To where i couldnt copy and paste anything into photoshop anymore. Anyone else getting this issue?
It's great at sort of teaching you what you need in order to communicate a material well. Its great how it breaks everything down. Just by using the tool once I've learned a bit about what you need to make metal look like metal in a test I did. I still don't think this tool is better than doing it all manually, but if you loosely follow dDo's method of creating texture maps and try to create a unique set of texture maps on your own, you're set!
Great job quixel guys!
dDo is great for teaching artists how to effectively communicate materials, and it's great for helping small teams who need the efficiency that dDo provides.
1) Someone mentioned above that it takes a normal map, does it absolutely need a normal map to work? I don't have a lot of experience yet generating those.
2) How powerful of a computer do you need for this to operate efficiently?
A shite texture will always be shite, you do alot of character, especially naked ladies, explain to me how this tool could benefit a lazy person in making a quick texture for a naked lady that would be acceptable in any form (other then say a cheap Eastern MMO on a budget)?
The answer is it won't, you still need to sculpt, you will still need to bake, you still will need to make your own skin texture and the list goes on.
All this tool will do is allow to saaaay, make your Roughness map right off the bat (Gloss) if you have the proper maps to feed it, and tweak it while still having access to a powerful image editor with a viewer.
It's not taking control away from you or allowing auto-generation (Crazybump had this years ago), it simply allows you to gain access to more 'mundane' tasks in a consolidated format.
I'll be damned if I have to sit another day infront of my PC, with Photoshops almost archaic tools, as I have to manage 10 different layers for one Group, with mutiple export/import in a shader/engine when this tool is doing all of that with sliders in one small box.