toolbag contest + wish list
polycounter lvl 11
Okay, cg.tutsplus.com is running a contest where you can win one of three free copies of toolbag. I think polycount should be able to easily dominate, if you guys are interested 
http://cg.tutsplus.com/articles/contests-and-giveaways/win-1-of-3-marmoset-toolbag-v1-01-licenses-in-our-july-competition/
Second, I'd like to open up this thread to wild ideas for toolbag. We've enjoyed working on it, and we'd like to continue adding features in free updates. Some ideas we are playing with in our heads right now:
-8monkey
http://cg.tutsplus.com/articles/contests-and-giveaways/win-1-of-3-marmoset-toolbag-v1-01-licenses-in-our-july-competition/
Second, I'd like to open up this thread to wild ideas for toolbag. We've enjoyed working on it, and we'd like to continue adding features in free updates. Some ideas we are playing with in our heads right now:
- Video capture (would write an uncompressed video file that users could compress on their own for distribution later)
- Customizable skin shader, with skin gradients and sliders and such
- Configurable bokeh shape for different lens apertures (circle, hexagon, square, smiley face, others). Combine with some DOF artifact fixes
- 3D stereo rendering (for use with cyan/red glasses)
- Depth blurred shadows (shadows get blurrier farther from the shadow caster)
-8monkey
Replies
1. Import more than one mesh, for us environment artists.
2. Vertex blending of textures with an additional modulate map: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66952&highlight=snow
Seriously though: i owuld love to see stereo make it in interlaced mode too (since i own a 3d monitor)
LENS FLARE NOTED lol
Support for diffusely convolved cubemaps via reflections (per-pixel cubemap mip selection) would be real nice. blurry metals ftw.
Some type of vertex-color driven wind system (for vegetation, cloth, etc). Would be useful for videos of these types of assets, and many of these types of systems are common so previewing could be useful if flexible enough (configurable channels?)
Dynamic surface modulation (snow, frost, moss, wet&rain)
More Non-photorealistic rendering support (light-warping via 2D ramp, half-toning)
I also really really agree with a better skin shader...good idea.
customizable lens flares / glares and stuff would be neat..though not all that useful. maybe good for getting those specific "lens" looks though...can certainly help enforce some themes. example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4
if you center that around "all kinds" of 3d files, e.g. fbx/collada.. (http://assimp.sourceforge.net/ could come handy) it would be a great help and something you can sell plugin-based.
As in core-engine, and the various plugins to load/isntance multiple assets, to manipulate assets (paint blend-maps), draw particles in the scene...
... that would have been my plan for a luxinia based editor at least hehe.
just have to watch out that you don't end up too engine centric. and keep everything very clean and fast-loading.
something that allows people to abuse your toolbag for their own projects and doesn't require "heavy weights" such as UDK, sandbox... question is if there is really a market for that given so many free options (unity eidtor, udk...)
@cman2k: diffusely convolved cube maps is already how it does the lighting, and it does now support per-pixel mip selection for specular, giving you the blurry metals
@danimal: the new version has a feature where if the window is minimized, the cpu usage drops to almost 0. It's only while the window is open and rendering that the cpu usage is high.
I like the cook-torrence idea, as well as NPR rendering. We keep getting feedback that folks want a scene setup kind of tool for multiple meshes, more than just a mesh previewer. That would be a big addition, but it is possible and we'll think about that for like a version 1.5 or 2.0 or something.
- A snapshot button, which would take a render/snapshot with an alpha in the alpha channel. The current workflow of taking a screenshot and keying out the background is not ideal, especially with bloom effects that mess up the silhouette.
- Some more control over the light: Instead of the light simply orbiting the center, the ability to move the light in 3D space. Ability to add color to the light, and the ability to add multiple lights.
- SSAO would be incredibly awesome, the current method of exporting multiple uv sets and baking a separate AO map is very time consuming for a simple AO effect for a portfolio shot.
- Better shadows, I seem to get artifacting on large/complicated meshes.
- Ability to save an asset, textures, and render settings into a single file so that you could load up that file and everything would display as intended without having to adjust anything.
- Ability to load multiple objects to set up a scene, instead of being restricted to mesh chunks.
- Support for glow maps.
Have you downloaded the new toolbag yet? It does all of these already.
I totally second the snapshot + alpha or save as transparent PNG option. A lot of people like to add gradient backgrounds and such in photoshop and this would simplify it so much.
Edit: Holy crap, it does indeed include most of the stuff I asked for. Kickass! I"m going to be playing with this all night.
As far as the alpha in a snapshot thing, I think its already supported. If you check out the alpha channels of your TGA files written for screenshots, it should be present. Let me know if there are bugs or glitches in that regard.
I've also noticed that the lighting system for normal maps isn't optimal, perhaps due to the lightcubes? Smoothing errors will show up for many angles, even those not close to 90 degrees. Obviously this is an engine thing, but it would be nice to have better normal map rendering with something like the 3point system.
To give you an example of what I mean, this is a mesh that had a normal map baked in xNormal and is broken up into proper smoothing groups.
Check out the new version
http://www.8monkeylabs.com/toolbag
Yea, shadows are a bit jaggy as well.
The autoreload function is amazing, you can be texturing in photoshop and have marmoset open on the second monitor, and just click over to it and the textures update without having to click anything. Its a great tool for realtime preview of textures.
After using it for a few days, there are a couple features/bug fixes that would be nice.
- The addition of a bloom slider for just the emissive map so you could make lights glow without it affecting areas with spec.
- The ability to create some type of dummy camera icon/arrow in space so that when for example you are creating a 3 point lighting setup, you know where your camera will be.
- The ability to manually adjust a slider for the turntable, instead of having to set a speed and unpause to rotate the asset.
- When bringing in obj, the wireframe checkbox will only show triangulated meshes instead of quads. I don't know if its different for mesh, but quads would be nice.
- The ability to rename, duplicate, and re-order lights.
- The axis of the light seems to be created based on the camera or something instead of world space. This is kind of annoying, I'd prefer it to be created with 0,0,0 rotation.
- I've noticed that when using the screenshot button, the quality and lighting differ significantly from the realtime viewport. For example, if I tweak the lighting and spec so a shiny metal is just on the edge of being blown out, when I take the screenshot it will be completely blown out in the render. The quality also seems to be significantly worse, there will be jagged edges and what seems like a low res render when compared to the viewport, even when jacking up the render size. Doing print screen results in much higher quality.
Overall, the new version is freaken awesome, and seems definitely worth buying to me.
i feel silly now..lol. :P
The screenshot color issues are a little disturbing to hear. Are you by chance taking your shots in HDR (writing pfm files)? The gamma on those will be different, but if you're writing TGA shots, it should be the same...
Here is an example, using tga (non hdr) vs print screen. You can see that the lighting is blown out on the rendered image. The lighting and bloom seem to be significantly bright.
Oh and by the way - our 20% off sale for Toolbag ends tonight (wednesday) at midnight.
@PredatorGSR,
What Skylight preset are you using?
@Jeff,
One thing i did notice when doing the test is that the generated alpha from the Marmoset exported TGA doesnt include Bloom. Bug?
Also for feature requests, i think the following would be great.
Also in the manual it states that to load an sky preset the user should select one from the "Env Lighting Presets" but the option is actually called "Sky Lighting Preset".
Thanks for all the hard work guys...im loving marmoset
http://www.konradbeerbaum.com/forums/marmoset_settings.jpg
Some things you guys should consider adding:
-Auto mesh update! The texture update feature is awesome! Its great for seeing my bakes when I am re-baking, after its done I hope over to marmo and it is updated. But I do change my mesh a lot during baking. Fixing normals, editing uv's etc. It would be great to have that update feature on the mesh also!
-Maybe some sort of hue/saturation slider for diffuse (and spec maybe) ?
-Multiple mesh import, already been suggested, but it would be a great addition, especially if it had a translation widget. Would work great for adding a couple things around your model for portfolio shots
Keep it up !
Also, just throwing this out there... anybody interested in a mac version? It would probably be doable.
Also some more ideas :P
Currently it pains me to use so many different textures when i could use 1 for the same cost. (using Gloss and Height in the Alphas means 4 wasted channels right?)
Thanks for looking guys
Also a another few feature requests ^^
On a side note, i think savable camera positions would be sweet too!
It would be nice to be able to use them again
I have just successfully reproduced the prntscrn vs .tga but that PredatorGSR reported a few posts ago.
It seems to be linked to the use of spotlights in a scene.
I would be happy to send you guys the .tbag file along with the asset/textures if that would help any.
Do you want me to PM you with a link to the files?
- If you save a scene with the green channel inverted on the normal it doesn't apply the inversion when the scene is loaded even though the invert Y option is checked.
- Marmoset doesn't remember the same normal map settings when you save a material.
.Maybe it would be best to put the normal map swizzle in the Material tab?
I think it would maybe make a litle more sense in there rather than in the View tab.
Bug - Even when I save my scene imediately prior to closing the program I still have a prompt telling me there are unsaved changes.
Suggestion - I have a material I would like to apply to multiple objects/chunks, a duplicate material function would be very handy for this sort of thing
off the top of my head:
-the ability to create project folders kinda like what 3ds max does.
-saving a screenshot should not overwrite another
-customize width and height
-separate slot for gloss map