Marmoset Tool For [UE4]

aaronkaminer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X0glj1p1Kk (Repost from UE4 forum.)
NEW TEASER VIDEO:



LATEST IMAGE:




(ORIGINAL POST)
Hello all,

Recently I decided to start work on a personal tool that would help me achieve high quality renders from UE4 like I would typically get from Marmoset. I first ran across the "Showcase" blueprint by Osman. After seeing this in action, I wanted to see if I could create a fully featured version with an interface included. This would allow me to setup pre-calibrate environments and create master materials for different asset types (skin, prop, cloth, etc) and allow other artists to simply use the tool to achieve the best iteration. I thought this could be useful for 2 things primarily:

1) Create beautiful renders for portfolios/forums in an actual game engine with little effort and little required setup. 
2) Create pre-calibrate conditions for outsourcing and art direction. 

I have worked up a very quick prototype and thought I would share it here to see what people think. Nothing is set in stone and I look forward to community feedback to help me create a tool that UE4 users would enjoy using. (Its worth noting that Epic apparently has plans to upgrade view-port rendering options for at least the static mesh editor as soon as 4.13) 

Here is a list of current features:

- Load any actor for rendering
- Switch between hdr environments (similar to Osman's version)
- Add lights and adjust settings
- Select from multiple view modes. (Lit, Wireframe, Base Color, Ruoghness, Specular, Metallic, Normal, Material AO, Subsurface)
- Adjust env brightness
- Rotate env
- Setup turn table for lighting, env, and assets
- Set sky to color 
- Fully usable ui. Hide-able panes, drop down menus, revert icons, etc. 

I have a Trello board with a TON of features I plan to add. But before I get too far I wanted to share this and see if the community has any interest in helping me mold this for the market place. Here are a few screens. I will upload some vids soon so you can see turntables in action. (UI is probably a temp look. I may make it a bit more typical eventually.) Here are some of the big ones:

- Post processing pane with sliders for most all pp options
- Dynamic sliders from dynamically created material instances based of master material selection (skin, glass, cloth, etc)
- Rendering outputs. Pics, vids, etc.
- Camera settings







Hope you all like. I will be finishing this up and maybe releasing to UE4 market place. (Depending on how much interest is generated.)

aaronkaminer

SimonRiverin said:

very nice bro ! I am currently working on a new project and I was planning to use UE4. Would you mind to let me try it to showcase the assets of the Environment ?

I certainly do not mind you using it. However, it is not completely finished just yet. There are still a few major functionalities I need to incorporate before sharing it. I will keep you posted via the forums. I am also reworking the ui design as this was an early prototype that I am not too happy with. I am glad you like what you see so far!. 

3dReaper

This is awesome! I am definitely interested in seeing this in action.
Something with Marmoset's user friendly design aesthetic in UE4 would certainly help many newer artists. 

aaronkaminer

3dReaper said:

This is awesome! I am definitely interested in seeing this in action.
Something with Marmoset's user friendly design aesthetic in UE4 would certainly help many newer artists. 

Glad you think so. I am currently re-designing the UI to be a bit more familiar to people who use Marmoset. I would like to keep the interface as simple and intuitive as possible. 

Elrinion

There was a project like this for UE4 making the rounds some time ago. I actually use it to showcase stuff. It's pretty basic but it beats having to mess around with marmoset when you can just preview stuff directly in the engine you're working with in the first place.

gyuladzsi

I'd love to use this. It looks like Osman's site is down so I'm not sure where to get his BP, but the video demo looks good.  I've been struggling a lot with UE4 lighting and trying to figure out how to get something that looks the way I want it to using their tools. Nice thing about marmoset is it's very easy to understand whats going on with the lights by comparison.

So far I really like your setup, the panes will make it way easier to adjust things than hunting down the right parameters in UE, big time saver for me. I'd love to be able to change the backdrop, so you could have the lighting effect with, say, a gray background etc. Not sure if thats doable in UE4, I haven't dug that deep yet. Were you planning on having render/screencap buttons as well? If I could render the model with a transparent bg easily, that would solve that issue for me.

aaronkaminer

Elrinion said:

There was a project like this for UE4 making the rounds some time ago. I actually use it to showcase stuff. It's pretty basic but it beats having to mess around with marmoset when you can just preview stuff directly in the engine you're working with in the first place.

Yes, I think you are referencing Osman's "Showcase." It was an awesome tool. Hopefully this will take the concept one step further.

aaronkaminer

gyuladzsi said:

I'd love to use this. It looks like Osman's site is down so I'm not sure where to get his BP, but the video demo looks good.  I've been struggling a lot with UE4 lighting and trying to figure out how to get something that looks the way I want it to using their tools. Nice thing about marmoset is it's very easy to understand whats going on with the lights by comparison.

So far I really like your setup, the panes will make it way easier to adjust things than hunting down the right parameters in UE, big time saver for me. I'd love to be able to change the backdrop, so you could have the lighting effect with, say, a gray background etc. Not sure if thats doable in UE4, I haven't dug that deep yet. Were you planning on having render/screencap buttons as well? If I could render the model with a transparent bg easily, that would solve that issue for me.

Glad to hear it! I def. plan to make the backdrop solid color capable. I am also planning to use UE4's high-res screenshot system to capture renders and matinee (most likely) to capture video. I have been working on re-doing the UI and will likely post my efforts tomorrow. I will see about exporting an image with an alpha as well. Good idea!

aaronkaminer

New updates. All ui you see in the pics is fully functional. I plan to add quite a bit more before release. Here are a couple of new screens. I will capture a video soon. 

aaronkaminer

Also, here is the pp functionality I have so far. 

xChris

awesome, would love to see sliders for tesselation control, how you would test out and showcase materials in marmoset, and some kind of tile slider like substance designer to check for repeating patterns. Looking at how a material reacts already in-engine would be killer!

sziada

damn, this is looking cooler and cooler everytime, I see this

aaronkaminer

xChris said:

awesome, would love to see sliders for tesselation control, how you would test out and showcase materials in marmoset, and some kind of tile slider like substance designer to check for repeating patterns. Looking at how a material reacts already in-engine would be killer!

I do plan to create a master material that will do things like this. There will be check boxes and sliders you can use in order to tweak the look. (It will be just like using a material instance.) There are a few technical details I need to work out in order to get those settings saved and passed to an actual material that you could then use in a game for instance. In short, tessellation an tiling are def. coming soon!

gyuladzsi

Looking great, can't wait to try it out. I have no end to problems with lights in UE4, between the sky sphere and atmospheric fog there's always something a little off for me (thank god I'm a character artist not a level builder), so I'm looking forward to this for sure

crabeanticorps

Can't wait to try it !! good job  

Maximum-Dev

Finally someones doing it!
Please try to sell it on Gumroad as soon as you also submit to UE4 Marketplace. The UE4 Marketplace takes 1 to 2 months to publish an item and it's really hard to wait for this to come out!

Gazu

Hm, why just not load up the Advanced Lightning Map, some HDR Backgrounds from the Internet and there you have it.
You can also use the Post Process Volume to tweak the scene. Thats like Marmoset
I used this technique for my UMP and Super Shorty on my Artstation.

For better Anti Aliasing, use the High Resolution Tool x 3 and later scale down in Photoshop.

aaronkaminer

Gazu said:

Hm, why just not load up the Advanced Lightning Map, some HDR Backgrounds from the Internet and there you have it.
You can also use the Post Process Volume to tweak the scene. Thats like Marmoset
I used this technique for my UMP and Super Shorty on my Artstation.

For better Anti Aliasing, use the High Resolution Tool x 3 and later scale down in Photoshop.

Valid point. Here is my opinion. The advanced lighting map is a great tool. My goal here is to combine the functionality of the material instance editor and the advanced lighting map (plus lots of other cool features) with a clean ui that is intuitive and easy to navigate. Many artists in the industry use Marmoset as a way to preview their assets because of the staging Marmoset provides and the easy to use interface. However, often times we notice that the asset can look quite different in other game engines no matter the efforts made to match the rendering and material configuration. For this reason I prefer to work directly in the game engine the asset will eventually be rendered in. Sure, people who are familiar with the editor could achieve all of this by using the robust tool-sets UE4 provides us, but this should streamline things significantly. For those who are not well versed in all that ue4 has to offer, this could be a great way to quickly preview their work in engine also. You are correct that this could all be achieve in other ways. My hope is that bringing all of the functionality I can into one interface will streamline the process for people and make it easy to create high quality renders as well as previs game assets in pre-calibrated and customizable environments. Who knows, maybe Epic will integrate it eventually and make it much more awesome! 

aaronkaminer

gyuladzsi said:

Looking great, can't wait to try it out. I have no end to problems with lights in UE4, between the sky sphere and atmospheric fog there's always something a little off for me (thank god I'm a character artist not a level builder), so I'm looking forward to this for sure

Thank you for the kind word my friend. I am honored you would like to use this to showcase/previs your art! I hope this tool will simplify things for you. 

aaronkaminer

Maximum-Dev said:

Finally someones doing it!
Please try to sell it on Gumroad as soon as you also submit to UE4 Marketplace. The UE4 Marketplace takes 1 to 2 months to publish an item and it's really hard to wait for this to come out!

I will definitely try to get it to everyone as quickly as possible! I am not sure the best method just yet. I will certainly consider your proposed approach should the marketplace take too long. 

Gazu

I understand. Yeah you could put the main things from the Post Process Volume and other cool Stuff in a clean UI which allows quick and visible changes.

aaronkaminer

Test render with the new features. About 1 min of tweaking. Still lots to do.. but its useful already. 
(Art provided by AlexThrelkeld.)

Maximum-Dev

I'm curious, are you not going to expose more parameters to your post process UI? maybe an "Advanced" mode ?

alexthrelkeld

Looking really great. Can't wait to try it out!

aaronkaminer

Maximum-Dev said:

I'm curious, are you not going to expose more parameters to your post process UI? maybe an "Advanced" mode ?

I am planning to expose all of the PP parameters within this UI. Are there others you would like to see implemented beyond what UE4 currently offers?

Maximum-Dev

aaronkaminer said:

Maximum-Dev said:

I'm curious, are you not going to expose more parameters to your post process UI? maybe an "Advanced" mode ?

I am planning to expose all of the PP parameters within this UI. Are there others you would like to see implemented beyond what UE4 currently offers?

If you are going to include all those that'd be great. Thanks.

Maximum-Dev

Sorry I forgot to mention this, if you manage to save lighting presets that'd be really helpful!

Seeberg

Can't wait to try this out, really amazing stuff here!

aaronkaminer

Maximum-Dev said:

Sorry I forgot to mention this, if you manage to save lighting presets that'd be really helpful!

What sort of lighting presets would you like to see? Different stage lighting setups?

aaronkaminer

Aeseeberg04 said:

Can't wait to try this out, really amazing stuff here!

Thanks. Will be posting updates tonight or tomorrow. I have added lots of new features and have nearly finished it up. Mainly polish and bug fixing at this stage. I will probably do an upgraded version post release with more features.  

fauxNormal

This looks 'Epic'. Need this in my life. :pleased:

tac0m

^ I second that. I have wanted something like this for a long time. I apologize if you've already answered this question (quickly skimmed through the comments). Did you create this with code or with blueprints like a pro? Either way, this is an impressive tool that I'm sure people will use. Just like people jumped on  board to tools like xnormal, substance, quixel and yes... Even that ancient tool called CrazyBump haha.

Keep up the great work dude

ZacD

I wonder if it would be easy to also take a scene from this project and make an html5 project that's reasonable sized for webviewing like Marmo Viewer or SketchFab. 

aaronkaminer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X0glj1p1Kk

LaurentiuN

Looks great man!!!!

aaronkaminer

s1dK said:

Looks great man!!!!

Thanks for the kind words! 

aaronkaminer

ZacD said:

I wonder if it would be easy to also take a scene from this project and make an html5 project that's reasonable sized for webviewing like Marmo Viewer or SketchFab. 

Not sure.. but that would be awesome!

aaronkaminer

tac0m said:

^ I second that. I have wanted something like this for a long time. I apologize if you've already answered this question (quickly skimmed through the comments). Did you create this with code or with blueprints like a pro? Either way, this is an impressive tool that I'm sure people will use. Just like people jumped on  board to tools like xnormal, substance, quixel and yes... Even that ancient tool called CrazyBump haha.

Keep up the great work dude

This is made entirely with blueprints. I am glad you like what you see so far! Check out the teaser video I posted at the top and let me know what you think!

Maximum-Dev

aaronkaminer said:

Maximum-Dev said:

Sorry I forgot to mention this, if you manage to save lighting presets that'd be really helpful!

What sort of lighting presets would you like to see? Different stage lighting setups?

For example I put a specific HDRi image in there, a directional light with a value of 3.14 and a skylight with a value of 0.25, maybe a couple point lights here and there then save this as a preset. When loading the preset it'd set the same HDRi and other lights with their values automatically so we wouldn't need to redo it.

Just like we do it normally in engine. We can have multiple lighting setup for an environment (for example 6 suns and 6 skylights) and only have 1 sun and 1 skylight active at one time by turning the rest off. I know this is probably too much to ask but it helps for fast switching between different lighting setups. It's totally fine if you're not going to include it. The tool is already very valuable as it is.

sziada

Its happening!!!!

NoRank

Pretty amazing job! Looking forward to see this complete. Keep up the nice job dude!

aaronkaminer

Maximum-Dev said:

aaronkaminer said:

Maximum-Dev said:

Sorry I forgot to mention this, if you manage to save lighting presets that'd be really helpful!

What sort of lighting presets would you like to see? Different stage lighting setups?

For example I put a specific HDRi image in there, a directional light with a value of 3.14 and a skylight with a value of 0.25, maybe a couple point lights here and there then save this as a preset. When loading the preset it'd set the same HDRi and other lights with their values automatically so we wouldn't need to redo it.

Just like we do it normally in engine. We can have multiple lighting setup for an environment (for example 6 suns and 6 skylights) and only have 1 sun and 1 skylight active at one time by turning the rest off. I know this is probably too much to ask but it helps for fast switching between different lighting setups. It's totally fine if you're not going to include it. The tool is already very valuable as it is.

Ah, I see what you mean. I do plan to have several lighting environments that can be added to any hdri configuration and then saved. Not sure if I can make it so that you can customize a scene and do this since it is operating off of a standard ue4 level. You could, however, save several levels. Let me look into this and see what I can do. Great idea! 

Grusti

I wanna buy it soooooooooo bad! 

aaronkaminer

IlyaIvanovArt said:

I wanna buy it soooooooooo bad! 

You will be able to soon! I am working hard to get this ready to launch! Just final features and polish (as mentioned before.)
I really want to make sure to pack all that I can into this before release so the community we be able to utilize it for a wide variety of purposes! 

WileyArt

this looks awesome!

tac0m

teaser looks great. Can't wait to test this out. I started a new character specifically to test in this when it comes out

furiouslul

Looking good. I was making one too until I saw this just now, haha.

Leinadien

So this is like marmorset just uses the unreal engine instead?

Jaston3D

This is going to be great especially for those in the industry that assemble something in engine with decals ,or blueprint an asset together but then when its time to put some stuff in your portfolio  you got to get great shots of your work but loose the cool in-engine things you did to it that you cant do in marmoset. So excited to make use of this!

Maximum-Dev

How is it going?
Are there any problems or everything's fine?
It's scary to find this thread going silent haha.

aaronkaminer

Leinadien said:

So this is like marmorset just uses the unreal engine instead?

Basically, yes. Its for previs/rendering art within ue4!