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 yr since we’ve had a significant launch of Materials Maker and there’s a good cause for this, Materials Maker has been ported from Godot 3.x to Godot 4.x and acquired plenty of upgrades through the porting course of.
On this weblog submit all the way in which again in 2023, future growth 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 totally different as a result of it would 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 a very powerful: porting to Godot 4 was an incredible alternative to rewrite crucial components of Materials Maker, such because the shader generator and the feel rendering system. Such big adjustments would require a lot of testing, and that’s why there’ll most likely be many alpha and beta releases earlier than the ultimate 1.4 (you may already seize dev builds on Github and check them at your personal danger).
The present state of the Godot 4 port is that materials authoring is usually accomplished (nonetheless need to optimize rendering and port just a few lacking choices resembling mipmaps for buffers and many others.), and I began porting the portray device (this one will take a while as a result of I didn’t discover one of the simplest ways to profit from new Godot 4 options but).
However since 1.4 shall be late, it can’t be the 1.4 that was initially deliberate (some form of 1.3 based mostly on Godot 4 with just a few simple new options and enhancements), however ought to be definitely worth the wait. Plus I need 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 solely made potential by new Godot 4 rendering gadget options, and may be very helpful when encountering precision issues (they will simply be seen on regular maps created from mild slopes on excessive peak 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 potential to make use of baked maps to introduce ambient occlusion or curvature info, 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 every time a brand new mannequin is proven within the 3D view.
That is nonetheless beneath growth 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 a very good 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 effectively (see a WIP screenshot beneath, with ugly placeholder icons), and when it’s accomplished 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 feel it is likely to be a very good 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 venture 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 possibly can study extra concerning the lengthy awaited Materials Maker 1.4 launch, now powered by Godot 4.x within the video beneath.
