Materials Maker is a well-liked free and open supply procedural texture creation utility for Mac, Home windows and Linux constructed utilizing the Godot sport engine. It’s the closest factor you can see to an open supply and free different to the favored Substance Designer.
It has been nicely over a 12 months since we’ve had a significant launch of Materials Maker and there’s a good motive for this, Materials Maker has been ported from Godot 3.x to Godot 4.x and acquired quite a lot of upgrades in the course of the porting course of.
On this weblog put up all the best way again in 2023, future improvement of Maker Maker 1.4 was described:
Within the final 3 years, I dedicated to launch a brand new model of Materials Maker each three months, and one way or the other succeeded (this may simply be checked by looking at devlogs right here on itch.io).
The upcoming 1.4 is slightly bit totally different as a result of it’ll use Godot 4, and, though I’ve anticipated this port by beginning it 9 months in the past, it’s much more work than I assumed, for a number of causes. I received’t undergo all of them, however simply point out crucial: porting to Godot 4 was an ideal alternative to rewrite crucial elements of Materials Maker, such because the shader generator and the feel rendering system. Such large modifications would require numerous testing, and that’s why there’ll most likely be many alpha and beta releases earlier than the ultimate 1.4 (you’ll be able to already seize dev builds on Github and take a look at them at your personal danger).
The present state of the Godot 4 port is that materials authoring is generally carried out (nonetheless need to optimize rendering and port a number of lacking choices corresponding to mipmaps for buffers and so on.), and I began porting the portray device (this one will take a while as a result of I didn’t discover one of the best ways to learn from new Godot 4 options but).
However since 1.4 will probably be late, it can’t be the 1.4 that was initially deliberate (some form of 1.3 based mostly on Godot 4 with a number of simple new options and enhancements), however must be definitely worth the wait. Plus I have to admit that simply porting stuff and testing and fixing bugs is slightly bit boring. So for a greater 1.4 and my very own sanity, I began including the next new options:
- 32 bits buffers: this one is completely made attainable by new Godot 4 rendering system options, and could be very helpful when encountering precision issues (they will simply be seen on regular maps created from light slopes on excessive top maps)
- Good supplies: the map generator has practically been utterly rewritten, and a brand new “Mesh Map” node has been added to introduce these mesh-specific maps in your materials graph. This makes it attainable to make use of baked maps to introduce ambient occlusion or curvature data, or to make use of triplanar mapping to use a 2D materials or to use a 3D materials. The Mesh Map node rebuilds its output at any time when a brand new mannequin is proven within the 3D view.
That is nonetheless below improvement however outcomes are promising already (see the identical materials on three totally different meshes beneath).- A brand new panel system: panel placement in Materials Maker lacked flexibility, so new multi-window capabilities of Godot 4 have been excuse for remodeling that half. Now panels may be moved practically wherever you need within the UI in addition to undocked. That is nonetheless experimental however already works fairly nicely (see a WIP screenshot beneath, with ugly placeholder icons), and when it’s carried out I’ll attempt to make it simple to reuse in different Godot-based initiatives.
- A brand new splashscreen: I do know splashscreens are annoying, however I believe it is likely to be excuse for displaying what customers can do with Materials Maker. I examined one thing in 1.3, however it didn’t look good in any respect, so it has been redesigned and can present randomly a fabric made with Materials Maker, or a undertaking the place Materials Maker was used (2 examples are proven beneath, one is a screenshot of a PBR materials, and the opposite is an animated shader). There’s additionally an easter egg on that splashscreen, in case you’re actually bored whereas Materials Maker is loading.
Between the discharge of that preliminary Materials Maker 1.4 announcement and now a number of dozen new options have been added and numerous fixes and enhancements have been made, cumulating within the second launch candidate launch final week.
Key Hyperlinks
You’ll be able to be taught extra concerning the lengthy awaited Materials Maker 1.4 launch, now powered by Godot 4.x within the video beneath.
