Materials Maker is a well-liked free and open supply procedural texture creation utility for Mac, Home windows and Linux constructed utilizing the Godot recreation engine. It’s the closest factor you will discover to an open supply and free different to the favored Substance Designer.
It has been effectively over a 12 months since we’ve had a serious launch of Materials Maker and there’s a good purpose for this, Materials Maker has been ported from Godot 3.x to Godot 4.x and obtained quite a few upgrades in the course of the porting course of.
On this weblog submit all the way in which 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 someway succeeded (this may simply be checked by looking at devlogs right here on itch.io).
The upcoming 1.4 is just a little bit completely different as a result of it should 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 believed, for a number of causes. I gained’t undergo all of them, however simply point out crucial: porting to Godot 4 was a fantastic alternative to rewrite essential elements of Materials Maker, such because the shader generator and the feel rendering system. Such enormous modifications would require plenty of 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 individual threat).
The present state of the Godot 4 port is that materials authoring is generally performed (nonetheless need to optimize rendering and port just a few lacking choices reminiscent of mipmaps for buffers and so forth.), 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 likely be late, it can’t be the 1.4 that was initially deliberate (some form of 1.3 primarily based on Godot 4 with just a few straightforward new options and enhancements), however needs to be definitely worth the wait. Plus I have to admit that simply porting stuff and testing and fixing bugs is just a little 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 fully made doable by new Godot 4 rendering system options, and may be very helpful when encountering precision issues (they’ll simply be seen on regular maps created from mild slopes on excessive peak maps)
- Good supplies: the map generator has almost been fully rewritten, and a brand new “Mesh Map” node has been added to introduce these mesh-specific maps in your materials graph. This makes it doable 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 beneath improvement however outcomes are promising already (see the identical materials on three completely 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 an excellent excuse for remodeling that half. Now panels could be moved almost wherever you need within the UI in addition to undocked. That is nonetheless experimental however already works fairly effectively (see a WIP screenshot beneath, with ugly placeholder icons), and when it’s performed I’ll attempt to make it straightforward to reuse in different Godot-based initiatives.
- A brand new splashscreen: I do know splashscreens are annoying, however I feel it is perhaps an excellent excuse for displaying what customers can do with Materials Maker. I examined one thing in 1.3, but it surely 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 may be taught extra in regards to the lengthy awaited Materials Maker 1.4 launch, now powered by Godot 4.x within the video beneath.
