What is Marmoset really for...? (or am i just dumb)
polycounter lvl 9
Hello, i have experience with hipoly worklow for pre rendered games, movies etc. But im not really that experiences with "low poly" graphics for real time applications (3D games, etc.) And im not really sure what Marmoset toolset is for :-)...? Yes a total newbie question. Its not really a modeling software, its not animating software, its not really a "renderer", not in comparison to Vray , Corona renderer etc. You can render there sure, but i dont think its comparable to Vray and what you can do there or in any other "REAL" renderer... You can bake maps there (in Marmoset) but so you can do in much specialised (i believe?) and more dedicated software like Xnormals, Substance painter or Designer etc...
So im struggling to understand what mormoset toolbag is really MAINLY for...? Or is it in its name - that its not really any kind of speciliazed software but a "compilation" of different "smaller" tools or tasks that you can do (better) elswhere and here (in marmoset) its all just in one place...?
Im really struggling to understand what is this software meant for and what is it mainly used for...? And why not use more specialized more feature and "full grown adult" softwares (like Vray)...
Can please someone help me to understand that? What is this software meant for and what is it mainly used for...? Whats its speciality? Where does it fall in 3D graphic pipeline... whats its unique "selling point", what it can do (better) than no other program can...?
Thank you.
Replies
I also switched over to using it for baking because I have so much control over individual object cages and the bake preview will update in real time, I can get nice, accurate AO bakes as I don't have to explode my mesh for baking, you can bake out pretty much every kind of map you will ever need. Plus, it's super simple to set up bakes as long as you set up everything correctly in your chosen 3D modelling software first (i.e. naming conventions etc.)
Marmoset may not be a "REAL" renderer like Vray, but it is a real time renderer
It's a real-time renderer, which means: what you see is what you get. The viewport and lighting systems are fully dynamic, so you can make adjustments to your scene, materials, lighting, etc, and see it instantly, rather than wait for an offline render to update or lighting to compile in a game engine.
Toolbag's real-time nature and standardized physically based rendering workflow make it a great companion for game artists sending their work to Unreal, Unity, or any other game engine that uses a PBR system. The modular material editor makes it easy to set up all the common map types to preview your assets before sending them off to the game engine. Toolbag is a lightweight and easy to use app, so you don't have to load the full game engine when you're previewing your asset.
A lot of game artists use Toolbag for final quality renders for their portfolios as well. Rendering quality is not on par with traditional offline ray renderers such as Vray, but it's possible to get excellent results in Toolbag, and we have users who use it for arch-vis, product design, and things of that nature, but our primary users are game artists. Image quality is something we're committed to improving with future releases as well. Being a real-time GPU-based renderer, image quality is limited somewhat to the current capabilities of GPUs, but GPUs are getting better all the time, so you can expect image quality in Toolbag to improve as the hardware gets better.
While a number of applications have baking tools these days, we feel that ours are the best. Real-time preview, advanced editing features (skew painting to correct skewed detail, cage sculpting), fast GPU baking, bake groups & quick loading (match high and low meshes via names to prevent intersection errors, no need to explode), and dozens of outputs make it an extremely powerful and flexible baking tool set. Learn more about baking in Toolbag here: https://marmoset.co/posts/toolbag-baking-tutorial/