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TB2 beta thread

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  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    thanks for the response EQ.

    Am working on an environment prop (OMG NOOOOES!) to show off the materials a bit... will have some more feedback for you when it's done. trying to get it all done in a day haha.

    i'm with Jerc at the moment on the material setup. but that might change later. like i said, more feedback to come.
  • AlecMoody
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    AlecMoody ngon master
    Jerc wrote: »
    Do you guys plan to add support for a metallic mask ?
    Right now if I get it right, you have to set your metal color in the specular map and set your diffuse to black on the metallic areas to make it work, which goes against the UE4 material system for example, where you put your metal color in the diffuse and simply use a metallic mask to set where the diffuse color should be transferred to the specular term.

    The UE4 workflow allows to have only the diffuse as a color map, the other masks are greyscale (specular, roughness, metalic) and can be composited into a second rgb map, making it really efficient.

    Also, you can't control the resolution of the substance textures.

    I'll play a bit with it this week end and post some nice screenshots asap :)

    I would much rather handle this with colored spec than a metalness map. There are times where you want to use spec color for material effects.
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    Awesome update, guys.

    Just a few thoughts/notes for now...pics later. :)

    Disclaimer: I may be missing some stuff somewhere as I'm still getting used to the interface :P

    1. Meshes should be loaded in the file menu not "created" IMHO. Creating implies that you are generating something, such as a material.
    2. Its not obvious at first that you can load multiple meshes into the same scene. Maybe have an append option to make this more obvious?
    3. Pavement Sky missing from TB1. It was my most used skybox.
    4. It would be nice if some preset skylights were created in the skylight editor based upon brightness or some other pleasant looking values.
    5. Scaling meshes via the transform widget would be nice
    6. It would be nice to import old toolbag scenes and have them converted to TB2 correctly.
    7. Hitting Esc should exit popups
    8. AFx16 should be enabled by default on all materials.
    9. Tab should move cursor to next field correctly
    10. Light widgets don't rotate so we cant see the light direction
    11. The light widget clips when rotating the camera
    12. Light values don't stick sometimes. e.g. Typing in a X rotation value of -148.78 gets truncated to -148.7 then a final value of 148.6 appears in the box once you stop editing
    13. No option to toggle lights that I can see.
    14. It would be nice if the lights were created at camera position as in Toolbag 1, rather than 0, 0, 0.
    15. It would be nice if the selection in the outliner wasnt deselected when clicking on an empty area in the 3d view.
    16. The ground plane would be nice to have back.
    Keep it up...This looks like it is going to be an amazing program. :)
  • EarthQuake
    Thanks for the feedback!
    bugo wrote: »
    the local reflections on mine are pretty blurry, I wonder if it's because my videocard doesn't support the best quality (GTX 470). Not just blurry, but spots and weird rendering. So I turned it off on this shot.

    Your card should be okay for local reflections. So a few things about local screen space reflections:

    1. Local reflections are blurred based on the gloss map content, like specular reflection from dynamic lights and IBL.
    2. As it is a screen space effect, it tends to look a bit better with a bit more blur, so it might be a little blurrier than you expect, but this helps to hide some of the inherent weaknesses of a screen space effect (its not raytraced reflections, so we only have the data that is visible in the viewport to work with, this causes artifacts in some situations).
    3. The real time preview is a bit noisy, this is for performance reasons mainly.
    4. To get better quality local reflections, make sure to save out a captured image (capture -> image, capture -> settings) with high sampling. Sampling will reduce the noisy look of SSR. You can also render an extra large screenshot (say 3840 x 2160 instead of 1080p).

    Here is what the local reflections should look like in the viewport:
    ssr001.jpg

    And here is an output image with 25x sampling
    ssr002.jpg

    And a final shot rendered extra large and sized back down to 1080p

    ssr03.jpg

    If you're still having problems with the local reflections, please feel free to post some images.
    Overall amazing application and great improvements. Best thing I liked was the horizon occlusion and tonemapping.
    Awesome, its interesting to see the different features people are excited about.
    Point light I had to type a number higher than 10000 so I could see it. Would be nice if there's an automatic rescale or something.
    Yeah, I've noticed this in scenes where the mesh scale is very large relative to Toolbag's default scale. There is probably something we can do here on our end.
    I would also like to change the camera background color (if there is, i couldn't find it)
    Yep, its in there right next to the sky background check box, "Background Color"
  • EarthQuake
    bcottage wrote: »
    Downloaded a trial of Marmoset the other day for the return of a half finished project.

    Absolutly love it so far.

    Thinking about buying the real thing but will that mean i will get a free update of marma 2 when it comes out or will it be sold seperate?

    p.s. i have a EVGA 660 ti if you want me to test M2 ;)

    Toolbag 2 will be sold separately. There may be discounts for existing Toolbag 1 license holder, unfortunately pricing information has not been finalized yet.
  • EarthQuake
    Jerc wrote: »
    Do you guys plan to add support for a metallic mask ?
    Right now if I get it right, you have to set your metal color in the specular map and set your diffuse to black on the metallic areas to make it work, which goes against the UE4 material system for example, where you put your metal color in the diffuse and simply use a metallic mask to set where the diffuse color should be transferred to the specular term.

    The UE4 workflow allows to have only the diffuse as a color map, the other masks are greyscale (specular, roughness, metalic) and can be composited into a second rgb map, making it really efficient.
    AlecMoody wrote: »
    I would much rather handle this with colored spec than a metalness map. There are times where you want to use spec color for material effects.

    Thanks for taking a look Jerc!

    Our personal philosophy on this is that full color specular is easier for artists to use/understand, more flexible, and better quality. We don't have the same performance restrictions as UE4 or other game engines, so we've tried to avoid packing a bunch of textures into a mix-map for the sake of efficiency and prefer to keep it simple to use.

    On the other hand, I can see why it would be useful to load content created in UE4 or other PBR systems that use a metalness mask. If this is something a lot of people want to see please let me know, as it will be an easier sell to our engineers. If we do add metalness, we will keep the full color spec though, metalness would be more of an extra option I would imagine.

    Oh and, to anyone who is posting feedback: please please please, if you see someone mention something, don't let that stop you from mentioning it again. If we see a bunch of people asking for a specific feature its likely going to be prioritized higher than if only one person asks for something. So please do not worry about leaving redundant feedback.
    Jerc wrote: »

    Also, you can't control the resolution of the substance textures.

    I'll play a bit with it this week end and post some nice screenshots asap :)

    We're really looking forward to see what you guys can do with substance support, and any feedback there is very much appreciated.
  • EarthQuake
    Awesome update, guys.

    Just a few thoughts/notes for now...pics later. :)

    Disclaimer: I may be missing some stuff somewhere as I'm still getting used to the interface :P

    1. Meshes should be loaded in the file menu not "created" IMHO. Creating implies that you are generating something, such as a material.
    2. Its not obvious at first that you can load multiple meshes into the same scene. Maybe have an append option to make this more obvious?
    3. Pavement Sky missing from TB1. It was my most used skybox.
    4. It would be nice if some preset skylights were created in the skylight editor based upon brightness or some other pleasant looking values.
    5. Scaling meshes via the transform widget would be nice
    6. It would be nice to import old toolbag scenes and have them converted to TB2 correctly.
    7. Hitting Esc should exit popups
    8. AFx16 should be enabled by default on all materials.
    9. Tab should move cursor to next field correctly
    10. Light widgets don't rotate so we cant see the light direction
    11. The light widget clips when rotating the camera
    12. Light values don't stick sometimes. e.g. Typing in a X rotation value of -148.78 gets truncated to -148.7 then a final value of 148.6 appears in the box once you stop editing
    13. No option to toggle lights that I can see.
    14. It would be nice if the lights were created at camera position as in Toolbag 1, rather than 0, 0, 0.
    15. It would be nice if the selection in the outliner wasnt deselected when clicking on an empty area in the 3d view.
    16. The ground plane would be nice to have back.
    Keep it up...This looks like it is going to be an amazing program. :)

    Great stuff Andy, thanks!

    2. Would changing the name of "create" to "add" solve this issue too do you think?

    3. The good news is that new IBL presets are super easy to add, just drop in any panorama and it will work!

    4. If you click on the pano preview in the sky object properties you can do just that (place directional lights based on the direction, intensity and color of the ibl content where you click.
  • Froyok
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    Froyok greentooth
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    On the other hand, I can see why it would be useful to load content created in UE4 or other PBR systems that use a metalness mask. If this is something a lot of people want to see please let me know, as it will be an easier sell to our engineers. If we do add metalness, we will keep the full color spec though, metalness would be more of an extra option I would imagine.

    I'm certainly not a Toolbag 2 beta tester, however I'm sure I would like to see a feature like this. This would help a lot the asset creation process before sending it to the target engine such as UE4. :thumbup:
  • EarthQuake
    Froyok wrote: »
    I'm certainly not a Toolbag 2 beta tester, however I'm sure I would like to see a feature like this. This would help a lot the asset creation process before sending it to the target engine such as UE4. :thumbup:

    Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

    Anyone else who is reading but isn't a tester yet: Don't let that stop you from posting. If you see that someone else has suggested a feature that you would like to see, feel free to chime in as well.
  • jeffdr
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    jeffdr polycounter lvl 11
    ZacD wrote: »
    Is there any system requirements you can list? Is it DX11 only or anything?

    Yea, I guess we forgot to put em up on the beta page. Here they are as of today:

    * D3D10-level GPU or better
    * 64-bit CPU/OS
    * Mac OS X 10.6.8+ or Vista SP 2+

    You'll want a lot of RAM if you're doing big scenes, but that varies so much we can't really set a bar for it that isn't arbitrary. More RAM = you can load more meshes and textures.

    The GPU is the real requirement. I would suggest a D3D11-level part, for performance's sake as well as compatibility (all the tessellation/displacement shaders require it).
  • polygoo
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    polygoo polycounter lvl 17
    awesome stuff, any spots left on the beta!?
  • jeffdr
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    jeffdr polycounter lvl 11
    polygoo wrote: »
    awesome stuff, any spots left on the beta!?

    No, sorry, the beta list is filled for the moment. We are planning to expand the beta testing efforts in the near future, once some of the initial glitches are fixed, but we can't put a date on that now.
  • Jason Young
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    Jason Young polycounter lvl 14
    Ohhhhhh looks great! I'm looking forward to this, especially if features are added to aid in larger scene creation. I really wanted to use toolbag for our escape entry, but it didn't quite fit our needs.

    Also working on a realistic character right now, so hopefully by the time I hit the baking/texture process it'll be into open beta. Would love to try it out.

    Do you guys have a feature list somewhere that you could share? There was a lot of info in the request thread, and I'm curious what stuff is going to make it in for the initial release.
  • Ged
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    Ged interpolator
    bcottage wrote: »
    Thinking about buying the real thing but will that mean i will get a free update of marma 2 when it comes out or will it be sold seperate?

    Id like to know this for the same reason,

    EDIY: oh I see there was an answer! sorry, ok I will wait for 2 to be released :) its looking great guys!
  • EarthQuake
    Ohhhhhh looks great! I'm looking forward to this, especially if features are added to aid in larger scene creation. I really wanted to use toolbag for our escape entry, but it didn't quite fit our needs.

    Also working on a realistic character right now, so hopefully by the time I hit the baking/texture process it'll be into open beta. Would love to try it out.

    Do you guys have a feature list somewhere that you could share? There was a lot of info in the request thread, and I'm curious what stuff is going to make it in for the initial release.

    Hey Jason, we've totally redone the scene editor, with more traditional layout tools, supporting multiple meshes, groups, numeric transforms, etc.

    Here is a quick overview of some of the new features, this is not a full feature list but should give you guys an idea of what to expect:

    Whats new in Toolbag 2?
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    here we go!

    1 day asset (don't hate me for how bad it is!), high, low, unwrap, texture, all in ~9 hours.

    hJ0p7ha.jpg

    there are definitely some workflow concerns...

    - it would be a lot "cleaner" in my opinion to be able to mask things as metallic or non-metallic. i understand you want to be as flexible as possible, while differentiating yourselves from other engines, and that's fantastic. but currently our control over reflectivity is a coloured specular map only, rather than colour + reflective value. the reason UE4 has a metal mask is because anything not metallic has a reflectivity of 0.04 (i think they said most non-metals average at that value so they set it as a constant) and anything that is metallic takes its reflectance from the albedo. that's why their workflow makes so much sense... you have one colour map, and then you define what on that map is metallic.

    - transition from dDo to TB2 is a little clunky. now i have to go in and manually set all metallics to have black diffuse (i know it's not a huge deal, but it's still a time constraint). i've also had to change some of the spec values as they don't always match reference materials now, since they're currently generated as diffuse + spec rather than black + spec. i know this isn't a marmoset problem as such, but i thought i'd highlight it as something people need to be aware of.



    - my personal opinion of how the workflow should be...
    create albedo
    create metallic mask
    reflectivity map optional.
    if no reflectivity map is slotted, do the UE4 thing, where non metals have a constant reflectance, and metals take reflectance from the albedo, and the diffuse is multiplied to zero for metals. if a reflectivity map is slotted, take reflectivity globally from that and ignore the metallic mask.

    if reflectivity map is slotted, you then have the option to raise/lower intensity. but i believe gloss should be static in all cases and only have an invert function. again realising you want flexibility, there's a difference between flexibility and maintaining old habits... you could do a huge thing for artists here by saying "this is how roughness works, learn to use it".

    personally i think that would work a LOT cleaner and more efficiently than what we have now. which FEELS like such a mix of old and new that it doesn't really function amazingly as either. as we've seen from films like wreck it ralph, physically based is perfectly flexible enough to do whatever you want it to do, without having so many internal math functions (like roughness) accessible and more importantly changeable by the artist.

    just my $0.02 though :)
  • EarthQuake
    Lee, thanks again dude. You make some good points and are giving us a lot to think about.
  • Ballo
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    Ballo polycounter lvl 9
    Can't wait!!!! :D, where is the list of new features?, the first link send a page with a pass. Thanks
  • EarthQuake
    Ballo wrote: »
    Can't wait!!!! :D, where is the list of new features?, the first link send a page with a pass. Thanks

    Fixed it, should work now, try clicking the link again.
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    Great to see so much activity here, I might have some more images later, but for now I only have a humble suggestion.

    Would be nice if I could setup the images like this, instead of going into the settings window, much more streamlined if one saves a lot of images.
    XZg19Wr.png
  • radiancef0rge
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    radiancef0rge ngon master
    Is there support for multiple materials per object?
  • Chris Krüger
    I'm seriously looking forward to getting my hands dirty with tb2 :) Selectable tangent basis is great news, made my day!
  • EarthQuake
    Is there support for multiple materials per object?

    Right now you can apply 1 material per object/mesh chunk, multiple chunks can be loaded per obj/fbx/etc file or you can load them through multiple files.

    Per face selection/matids are not yet supported but are on the todo list.
  • shaderfx
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    shaderfx polycounter lvl 9
    This looks really really great.
    Definitely looks like you have all the latest and greatest rendering techniques in there (or on their way).
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    Would it be possible to have toolbag2 import the cameras from fbx files?
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    feature request -

    have Toolbag update meshes automatically the same way it updates textures please!
  • artquest
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    artquest polycounter lvl 13
    I've only had a few minutes to mess around with it so far but DAM this is crazy awesome so far :) I'll have to dig into it more and post some in-depth stuff soon.
  • radiancef0rge
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    radiancef0rge ngon master
    feature request -

    have Toolbag update meshes automatically the same way it updates textures please!

    I would imagine this would be difficult especially if the mat ids change like maya does all the time :/
  • cptSwing
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    cptSwing polycounter lvl 11
    Would it be possible to have toolbag2 import the cameras from fbx files?

    Yes please!
  • Teessider
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    Teessider polycounter lvl 11
    This is looking to be an awesome piece of kit. Can't wait for it :)
  • radiancef0rge
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    radiancef0rge ngon master
    OldHouse_07.jpg

    Heres what Im working on. No specular or anything like that yet.

    Trying out the scene manager and large scale models. 44,000 tris with pretty good performance on my 650m slis.

    A little unfortunate about the mipping on the sides of the building. Is this possibly customizable?
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    radiancef0rge: you can turn of mipping, by clicking on options where you load the texture, would be cool to be able to change the lodbias like in udk though.
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Great stuff Andy, thanks!

    2. Would changing the name of "create" to "add" solve this issue too do you think?
    Yes! :)
  • EarthQuake
    You can turn off mipping, and also force on stronger AF per texture, click the options button next to the texture map in the material editor for various settings.

    Andy Davies was spotted gallivanting around the polycount hangout with a copy of TB2 if anyone is interested: https://plus.google.com/events/cptqbcoc3qclpk61nnp4p8tfe5g?authkey=CLXv_MeTzNbxcg
  • artquest
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    artquest polycounter lvl 13
    Thoughts so far after playing a bit more. First of all it's absolutely amazing so far

    - The object list in the top left corner of the screen is great! Would it be possible to add windows like functionality to the list? Shift does add to selection but CTRL doesn't deselect and selecting an object and then shift clicking another object further down the list wont select everything in-between either.

    - I couldn't figure out how to delete unwanted objects or materials.

    - Dragging and droping a decimated .obj from zbrush crashed toolbag 2.0 instantly but worked fine when using the "create" menu option.

    - I agree with the suggestion to change the "create mesh" menu option to "add mesh"

    - I too would love having a metalness mask option. And it makes total sense after reading Almighty Gir's explination of the UE4 method.

    - I couldn't find any place to get anisotropy going. If I want to fake hair I would love love love the ability to fake it.

    - It would be amazing if there was a repository "Cheat sheet" included with TB2 that tells artists ballpark values for known materials for reflectance and gloss.

    - The peachfuzz setting in the skin shader may be useful on other shaders for creating a cloth-like sheen effect?

    - I wanted to ask about some of the things in this link,

    A. page 22: Does TB2.0 roughness value effect the diffuse as well as reflection?

    B. page 23: Specular tails. I kept trying to get a good reflection on the eyes of a character and find it very difficult. What do you guys currently have in TB2? From the results it looked close to the Beckmann model. This also ties into lights I think ( I watched the presentation from guerilla games on their PBR setup for the new killzone, they said artists tended to exaggerate the gloss values in order to get a more broad highlight from a point light but this lead to all sorts of problems because the gloss value no longer represented the material they were trying to emulate) The solution proposed by guerilla games is to give point lights a "shape" that shows up in reflections. here's the section of the video I'm referring to.


    More to come soon! Loving it so far!
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    artquest wrote: »
    - I couldn't figure out how to delete unwanted objects or materials.

    Select and hit the delete key ;)
  • artquest
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    artquest polycounter lvl 13
    Select and hit the delete key ;)

    Maybe it just bugged out for me? That was the first thing I tried.
  • EarthQuake
    artquest wrote: »
    Maybe it just bugged out for me? That was the first thing I tried.

    Select+delete will do it, maybe you clicked off and lost selection?
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    Or maybe another keyboard setup?
  • artquest
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    artquest polycounter lvl 13
    Oh yeah 1 last question is, when everyone else was talking about using marmoset to prototype assets before they go into UE4, a thought popped into my head about the layered materials. Are there any plans to add a layered material option to TB2?
  • artquest
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    artquest polycounter lvl 13
    Or maybe another keyboard setup?


    Actually you know what? The other day my wife changed my keyboard to another country's layout as a practical joke. I set it back to the standard US layout but I did notice a few bugs since then.

    ops, sorry about the double post, running on almost no sleep! :P

    EDIT: Got my delete key working in marmoset. :)
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    mm, having a norwegian keyboard myself and it does mess up the keys sometimes.
    Hope you get it sorted out :)
  • Lonewolf
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    Lonewolf polycounter lvl 18
    any chance ill be able to load toolbag 1 scenes/materials?
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    Little bug report, might be only me it happens to though.

    If I open toolbag2 then load a scene I have saved it works fine, but if I double click on the scene in windows explorer it opens toolbag2 then it crashes right away.
  • EarthQuake
    Lonewolf wrote: »
    any chance ill be able to load toolbag 1 scenes/materials?

    You can load TB1 .mesh files, which should load the corresponding material files automatically. TB1 scene files are not currently supported.
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    gDIQoMe.jpg

    DAT SSR.

    Wait, how does it reflect a reflection? I mean, the reflection of the top coin in the middle coin is reflected in the top coin.

    OT, but wow, Polycount's monetary/fiscal policy must suck...
  • artquest
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    artquest polycounter lvl 13
    Mental Ray:
    TechRebelTitan2.jpg

    Marmoset TB 2.0:
    i7oHbkIX6Yb5W.jpg

    I had a minute to continue testing TB2.0 so I threw one of the titans from sins of a solar empire into marmoset as a test model to play around with. The first image is an old render from mental ray and the second is from toolbag 2.0. Absolutely stunning. If I play with the lights a bit more I probably could almost exactly replicate the first image.

    Well done guys! well done! I'm amazed :) I never thought the day would come so soon when I can barely tell the difference between something rendered in realtime and something that took about 2 minutes a frame to render.
  • [Deleted User]
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    [Deleted User] polycounter lvl 3
    I'm soo hoping that this will allow me to dump standard rendering for at least 70-80 percent of my needs.

    Are there soft dynamic shadows in TB2.0? How about some nice glass example?

    Can we see higher res, 8K or something like that, version of this image?
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    header002.jpg
  • bugo
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    bugo polycounter lvl 17
    Thanks for the response EQ. Here's a better screenshot with reflections and bg color changed.

    2 requests for a next release( maybe?):

    - If I could blur the "mirror" feature, mipmap it somehow. I know I could blur the sky but... you know. Or even have a feature to blur the sky itself! Or just folow the gloss map just as the blinn does.
    - Soft shadows or penumbra (The Size/Softness doesn't seem to be doing on the shadows, only on the shading, am I right?)

    THerefore I'm still loving this, I'm thinking on doing a whole prop just to test this entirely. Again, thanks for the opportunity. Can't wait for a next release.

    arc170_2.jpg

    EDIT:

    I just tested the light editor on the skymap, fantastic idea.
    I found a bug it seems. Pressing F9 doesn't take a screenshot to clipboard, I have to go to the menu to do it.

    arc170_3.jpg

    Tested also SSS (terrible model and textures, it's old, but you get the idea.)

    laureen02.jpg
  • Neox
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    Neox veteran polycounter
    hope this weekend i'll have time to look at the beta, sorry i couldn't make it earlier :/
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