Marmoset Toolbag 2 | Feedback & Suggestions
mod
At Marmoset we value customer feedback very highly, Toolbag has grown substantially since the initial version 1 beta due in large part to feedback and support from the community.
Please use this thread to give us feedback about existing features and workflows as well as suggestions for what you would like to see in future updates.
If something has been requested already, do not hesitate to ask again. When a certain feature is requested frequently it lets us know that a large group of the community wants to see it implemented and helps us to prioritize additions.
Please use this thread to give us feedback about existing features and workflows as well as suggestions for what you would like to see in future updates.
If something has been requested already, do not hesitate to ask again. When a certain feature is requested frequently it lets us know that a large group of the community wants to see it implemented and helps us to prioritize additions.
Replies
Automatic mesh reimport/reload might be a nice feature. Or maybe a right click context menu to reload selected object. Unless I'm missing something, I have to delete the object hierarchy and then file, load (ctrl-b) the mesh.
Refraction certainly is something we plan on adding back in at some point. Unfortunately it got put on the backburner due to technical constraints (sorting will likely be a big problem with refraction). It is something we would really like to add though.
You are not missing anything, we haven't added an auto re-load feature yet.
Thanks for the suggestions guys, I've added them to the list here.
A disable toggle switch beside each texture map. So I don't have to X and reload the map to see a before/after texture was applied. This would also allow me to adjust the other maps without having to unload cause the map is distracting atm.
Maybe also beside the disable/enable toggle, could be a focus toggle that would turn off all the other texture maps for that material. Or double clicking the disable toggle would focus.
Just to be clear, I'm talking about the texture maps specifically, not the channels themselves. They would retain their settings and just look as if there's no texture loaded.
Thanks for the feedback!
Since I often work with the spec in the normal map alpha for contagion, so I would not have to save out a separate map for toolbag.
Like the gloss and metalness map you can choose what channel to use.
Yeah this is a very good idea, we'll look into it here. Thanks.
What I would like to see is the sub-dermis map affect the normal smoothing feature (like it does for the shadow blur). I've logged it as a bug in our system for now so hopefully we will take a look at it at some point. Would that suffice for you as well?
Ok cool, we are looking into that here.
So one thing that most people don't realize (and I didn't either until I talked to Andres about it a bit) is that the alpha channel of the subdermis map controls the strength of the skin shader globally, including the normal smoothing and shadow blur settings. So what you can do for now is:
1. Set your color (but not value/intensity) in the RGB channels of the subdermis map
2. Set the global intensity or fleshiness of the shader in the alpha channel of the subdermis.
We're looking into making the RGB channels control the normal smoothing and shadow blur intensity as well though, as the alpha channel this is a little redundant and most people don't know that it works like that. That way you will only need to set the one input, which should simplify the process.
marmoset only allows for up and down mouse movement. it isn't a deal breaker or anything, but would be cool to have the ability to move the mouse side to side as well.
We've been talking about this in house quite a bit, hopefully we can do some sort of zbrush integration at some point.
Yes, tessellation/displacement and the skin shader are not mutually elusive. With our modular shader you can create any number of combinations, including displacement or parallax with the skin shader.
To enable displacement, turn on subdivision (generally flat is what you want) and pick height from the displacement dropdown.
The skin shader is a diffusion shader, which can be swapped for lambert, microfiber, etc.
Whould be cool to open toolbag on second monitor and immediately see changes
after saving texture in photoshop.
Yeah I agree, this is one I really want to see as well. Its on our official todo list, so hopefully we can get it in sooner rather than later.
Thanks for the feedback!
It'd be super useful to not have to render a full turntable for models with no back side and such.
Thanks for the kickass software, by the way
Edit: And a way to frame selected objects would be cool, like F in Maya. Can't find a shortcut for it in the manual.
Edit2: If you guys could make some kind of isoline display option/Maya's smooth mesh preview wires for high poly meshes... I would worship you. Showcasing the wires for HP objects as it is now makes it look kind of messy.
Marmoset suggestions:
ZDepth output in alpha channel option for screenshots
Toggle button for post effects / map inputs
< > increment buttons for all sliders!
Mesh & Texture Auto-update
Higher sample rate option for local reflections (too Noisy/sparkly!) I'd gladly sacrifice some performance for superior quality.
Return of Scale Ref
CLUT support for post (import/export)
Pixel Width for Wireframe(greater than 1!)
Bugs:
Text in Menu’s blurry when fullscreen
Secondary Anisitropic reflection causes transparent speckles in screenshot output.
Yes I should be able to whip that up. Actually, I might write up a quick tutorial covering glass.
Thats in now, CTRL+F for frame selected and CTRL+SHIFT+F for frame scene. You can also find it in the view menu.
We looked into catmul-clark sub-division but unfortunately the conclusion was it would be too slow for realtime. This is something we could look into again, however, it won't likely be any time soon.
Thanks for the suggestions
Do you mean in the viewport or in captures? A workaround that I do is to max out sampling and render very, very high resolution and then size down. The higher resolution you render, the better SSR looks.
Unfortunately we looked into this and it isn't something that D3D11 does natively (line drawing) so we would have to create our own implementation which probably isn't worth it.
Bugs:
I'm not seeing that here, you mean ctrl+enter fullscreen mode yeah? Can you get me a screenshot or something that shows the effect or more detailed instructions for reproducing it (including os, gpu, and screen res)? Also be sure you're running at your monitor's native res.
Can you post some screenshots or better yet an example scene that shows this? I'm not seeing it on my end.
Oh, my bad. Completely missed that. Cheers.
Yeah alright, that makes sense.
there are a lot of features in 3DO that marmoset is missing (lens flares, dirty lense, HDR specularity etc.) are you planning on transfering those over to marmoset? and if yes, when will that happen?
especially the HDR specularity influences the material behavior a lot.
the workflow from DDO to marmoset is supposed to be synched but right now its pretty far from it.
Thanks for the feedback, I'm going to break this down a bit as its a rather complex topic.
First off, TB2 most certainly does have HDR specular reflections, to be honest I'm not sure why this is even an option to turn off in 3Do (its always on in TB2). I think the big difference you're seeing there is due to the fact that by default, 3Do uses image based lighting along with a dynamic directional light, so out of the box you're probably seeing more lighting contrast.
In TB2 by default you only have IBL when you start a new scene, however, you have much more freedom to set up your lighting exactly how you want, you can add directional lights by clicking on the HDR panorama preview or manually add directional, spot and point lights to your scene from the scene menu, and even load your own HDR panoramas for IBL.
We are currently working on adding some new post effects, we've got curves for color grading and chromatic aberration in (see progress here: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2134985#post2134985). We will likely look into adding more lens effects like lens flares in the future as well.
If the goal is matching from one engine/app to another, I would advise against turning on a bunch of post effects. Even if/when we do add similar post effects, the implementation will be different, so the results still are not going to match exactly. This applies to 3Do (Which is Unity), Toolbag, UE4, Crytek, etc. In addition to that, while post effects can be nice for final presentation renders, I would advise turning them off when you're actually creating art content, as post affects are going to alter how your materials appear and may result in you making specific tweaks that look good under a certain heavily post-ed environment that don't work in other environments, generally, your preview environment should be as neutral as possible. The only exception I would really say is local/screen space reflections in TB2 and UE4, which I would say should be on most of the time unless performance is an issue.
If your end goal is rendering in TB2, I would use the cross-app mode and preview your results directly in TB2, that's going to give you the most accurate representation. More on that here: http://quixel.se/usermanual/quixelsuite/doku.php?id=toolbag2. If you're using the metalness workflow and GGX, this will give you an accurate preview of what your materials will look like in UE4 as well (again, as long as the lighting is the same/similar and not counting post effects). More on TB2->UE4 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZnPKtxIuss
Also Quixel Suite currently doesn't correct for the GGX gloss curve, but they plan on adding that in the next version. So if you're using GGX in TB2, or exporting to UE4/Crytek, your gloss maps won't look quite right.
I hope this helps, feel free to let me know if you would like any of this explained in more depth.
i made a couple screenshots to demonstrate my problem(s) with the specular reflections especially on the latex. the view angles and FOV's are slightly different, but i think you get the picture.
first the 3DO screenshot, only post effect is sharpen:
reflections look pretty bad-ass.
now the same cubemap ("Overcast Hillside" i think) in marmoset, again only sharpen:
i added a directional light, with a color and intensity similar to the one in 3DO, or as close as i could get to that. i used blinn-phong and activated all the horizon smoothings and everything. i exported my maps for marmoset 2 using DDO
lastly a marmoset shot without the directional light and using mirror as reflection model in marmoset:
i was able to get a little closer to the 3DO image using blinn-phong and mirror as secondary reflection, but i didn't want to cheat for this example.
i played around with the skybox exposure and size for quite a bit, but it always seems to lack the contrast it has in 3DO.
the last idea i had was to manually increase contrast in the cubemap using photoshop, but then i thought that this can't be the solution and either i am doing something wrong or theres something wrong with marmoset.
as you can see there is all sorts of detail going on even in the shadows in the 3DO shot, where the marmoset reflections look completely flat and even mirror reflections dont come close to the 3DO reflections.
my problem is not that the result doesn't look good in marmoset, its that i get better results in 3DO.
But 3DO in turn lacks a lot of options that i need to present my model.
seeing that you created both tools i am not sure why it's so hard for me to even get close to the 3DO render quality using marmoset.
So, the sky you have loaded in TB2 is an ambient overcast sky, this means the sky content itself is very neutral doesn't have a whole lot of contrast. One thing you can do is adjust the child light brightness to make your dynamic light brighter.
So here are some images to illustrate my point.
If I pick the same overcast sky that you do:
Looks flat, right? Now, lets try a sky with more lighting contrast
We can up the contrast further by placing dynamic lights on the hot spots
Ambient IBL Contrast can also be increased by adjusting the threshold and scale settings in the sky light properties
Overall contrast can be adjusted with the per-camera post effects options as well, here I've bumped up the exposure, sharpness and contrast in post.
There are a variety of ways to get more lighting contrast in TB2.
Now, to clear something up. Quixel's 3Do is not a Marmoset product. It is based on Skyshop, which is our set of shaders and IBL tools for Unity, however, it has been heavily modified by Quixel to create their 3Do tool. Its not something we put together or even really have access to the details of what changes/additions they've done.
i gues i was mistaken concerning 3DO and your relation to all that.
I'd like to request a picture-in-picture box that I could move around in the viewport. It would be great to have the small view set to my render camera, leaving me free to fly around the scene adjusting lights without flipping active view for the whole viewport. And/or sliders for TranslateXYZ for scene objects in the side panel. Sometimes you just gotta be picky about getting that one little spot to catch a little more light just right.
Oh, and looking through lights as a camera would also rock.
Thanks for the feedback! One thing, we do have XYZ sliders and numeric inputs for all objects, click on an object and expand the transform module at the top of the object properties. If this isn't what you mean, could you expand on what you would like to see?
Sorry no, not yet. Auto mesh update/mesh replace is something we plan on doing though, but no ETA yet on when that feature will get in.
1. toolbag 2 does not seem to store the window size/dimensions from the last session, always opens up in a small window on my machine. normal/intended behaviour? i used to be able to adjust this in TB1 in a config file.
2. when sharing TB2 scene files with others working with different path structures, toolbag shows texture slots as empty for texture files it cannot find. worse, when you drag a file into the slot, it resets sliders to some default values. it would be better if it kept the filename (and possibly thumbnail?) of the texture stored originally but displayed as greyed out and kept slider positions when you feed it a texture.
Lights don't have sliders for translation, only value boxes. It would be nice to have them; in my case I was adjusting a spotlight out of view and it only needed a nudge or two and a slider would have helped.
oh thanks for the reply, good to know!
This is not possible currently but I have added it to the suggestion list.
Yeah, that's expected.
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll add these to the list as well.
Ah yes I see, you are correct we only have sliders for rotation, not movement. I'll add this to the suggestion list too.
add more feature for the outlinner is possible ? Lock or Freeze, and -why not- a research field ?
Thanks for your work ! Very great software !
Thanks for your feedback, I'll add it to our suggestion list. Just one question though, what do you mean by research field?
For justify ; work a mecanical model required lot mesh.
i am not sure what you are trying to say, but if you want to apply a post processing filter, you have to select your camera in the object list on the left.
Yep, it's a French/English word...
Thanks
Reed
That's certainly do-able, not sure how i can prioritize it just yet though. But i do like the idea!