For those who don’t know the tool: Material Maker builds procedural textures and painted looks with node graphs, runs on Godot Engine, and exports materials for engines while you keep your DCC doing DCC things.

1.6 focuses on speed, sanity, and shipping

Material Maker 1.6 lands as a practical release: faster interaction on heavy graphs, new nodes aimed at controlled variation workflows, and a longer list of fixes that smooth daily use. The update keeps the core loop intact. You build textures and materials in a node graph, preview the result, and push assets downstream.

The release moves the app to Godot Engine 4.5.1. That base change pairs with performance work across graph rendering and several parameter editors. Graph rendering now optimizes zoomed-out views, and editor changes target responsiveness in places artists touch all day.

Controlled Variations aims for repeatable variety

1.6 introduces Controlled Variations and related nodes. The release frames this as a system for generating variants of a material look with more control than pure randomness.

Variant workflows matter when you need a family of surfaces that stay consistent across a set, a biome, or a prop library. In day-to-day terms, controlled variation can reduce duplicated graphs and the temptation to fork a graph into ten nearly identical versions you never want to touch again.

Aperture nodes cut the spaghetti

1.6 adds Aperture nodes to keep graphs readable. In and Out nodes connect through a shared identifier that appears as a label on the node. You edit the identifier by double-clicking the label or using keyboard shortcuts, and you can change label color with a key command while the node stays selected.

That feature targets the real enemy of node workflows: scaling up. A small graph stays understandable through wires. A production graph turns into a plate of noodles. Aperture nodes let you route signals cleanly without dragging cables across half the canvas.

Portal nodes and a growing node toolbox

1.6 adds portal nodes, plus a variadic Color Pick node. It also updates multiple existing nodes and editors. The changelog mentions changes around text handling, warp inputs, pixel tools, gradient options, and improved curve and polygon parameter editors. Comment nodes and remote links also receive attention, alongside drag-and-drop improvements for remote and iOS parameters.

glTF export takes a first step

1.6 adds a basic exporter for static PBR materials in the glTF format. The feature targets straightforward export rather than full dynamic graph translation. That still helps in real pipelines, where “get me the baked result in a common format” solves more problems than a perfect one-click pipeline dream. Several export-related fixes also land, including fixes tied to Godot 4 export behavior, missing ORM textures, and improvements to the Dynamic PBR preview and Godot 4 export paths.

Availability, licensing, and Steam plans

Material Maker distributes builds for Windows, macOS, and Linux via itch.io with name-your-own-price, including free. Source code lives on GitHub under the MIT License.

A Steam listing shows a planned release date of July 2026 and lists system requirements. Windows requires Windows 10, an x86_64 CPU with SSE4.2, and graphics support for Vulkan 1.2 or DirectX 12. macOS lists macOS 10.13 with Metal support. Linux lists Vulkan 1.2 support.

https://rodzilla.itch.io/material-maker/devlog/1491329/material-maker-16

https://github.com/RodZill4/material-maker

https://www.materialmaker.org/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4110830/Material_Maker/

The post Material Maker 1.6 tunes graphs and exports first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Marvelous Designer turns 2D patterns into simulated garments, then exports assets and animation through formats like FBX, Alembic, glTF, and VRM.

Drawing first, pattern later

The loudest shift in 2026.0 is the push toward direct creation on the avatar, with 3D Pencil aimed at skipping some of the usual back and forth between sketching intent and building patterns.

3D Pencil works in the 3D window on an avatar. Activating it from the 3D toolbar opens a Sketch dialog and switches the viewpoint to the front view. The view then stays locked to either the front or back for sketching, with zoom allowed, to keep conversion reliable when the lines become editable 3D pen data.

Sketching is a click and drag action on the avatar. Cleanup happens inside the same tool using an eraser mode. The eraser has a size setting to control how much gets removed in one pass, and the viewpoint can be switched between front and back.

Converting moves the sketch into a 3D pen result and automatically switches to the edit tool for that pen. There is also a sewing behaviour note that matters for garment builders: when 3D pens get created by sketching both the front and the back, flattening both sides automatically sews the front and back together. This is not a promise that all garments suddenly become one-click wonders. It is a workflow: sketch in a fixed view, preview conversion, convert to editable pen lines, then continue editing as needed.

Laces that behave like patterns

The other flagship addition is the Lacing Tool, which formalises a common production detail into a dedicated workflow.

The tool creates lacing by clicking a sequence of designated holes. You pick the starting hole, then continue clicking holes in the desired order until the last or exit hole, and finish with a double-click on the final hole or by pressing Enter. When the path is finalized, an editable lace pattern generates in the 2D window for modification.

Undo controls are built into creation. Backspace undoes the last step, while Esc or Ctrl+Z undoes the entire creation step. That sounds minor, but in practice it signals that the tool expects iterative route tweaking, not a single perfect pass. Just a warning. If you are one of the people who is even nominally an adult, still struggles sometimes with shoelaces. Not judging, brother!

After the path finalises, direction and curvature can be adjusted. A reverse icon appears attached to the cursor immediately after finalising. Clicking a specific hole reverses direction at that point, changing whether the cord enters from the top or bottom of the eyelet. Routing updates in real time in the 3D window.

Curvature adjustment uses a slider to change the cord arc. Increasing curvature is intended to stabilise the simulation by preventing the cord from colliding with or clipping into nearby patterns. The resulting lace is still a standard pattern piece, so thickness, material, and physical properties remain editable in the property editor like any other garment component.

The tool works by eliminating manual intervention by automatically routing the cord and generating an editable pattern for further customisation.

Toon materials, with familiar knobs

2026.0 also adds a toon material workflow under a feature called Express Cartoon. It applies to fabrics, 3D objects, and avatar materials. The workflow is simple: select a fabric style or an avatar, then set Material type to Toon in the property editor, then adjust the exposed properties. The options list is long and reads like a practical toon shading panel rather than a single style preset. If your goal is the next KPop Deamon Hunter, well, go for it.

Base colour can be set as a colour or a map. Opacity has both a value and a map. Shadows get a shade colour and an optional shade colour map, plus hardness and a shift control that adjusts where shadows begin. Emission has both colour and a map. There is also a MatCap section with color and map, described as a fake reflection effect that blends with a MatCap image.

Rim light includes colour, fresnel power to control thickness and sharpness, and lift to adjust position offset. Outlines have a mode, an outline map for masking, a line colour, and a width value in millimetres.

It is worth remembering what this does and does not say. The feature allows a cartoon-style look using those material controls. It does not define a renderer, a lighting model, or a compliance target for any specific engine. That keeps expectations grounded: it is a shading feature inside the tool, with parameters designed to shape a toon result.

Export workflow: fewer surprises, more switches

The 2026.0 feature list calls out new and expanded format support, including glTF and VRM. In production terms, that points toward web compatibility and virtual character workflows, and it sits alongside existing interchange routes that many pipelines already rely on.

On the export control side, play region selection appears as a specific addition for FBX and glTF export in the feature list, enabling selective export of specific animation ranges. For joint animation export, baking keyframes is there to generate keys for empty frames to prevent unintended transformations.

Those items have matching controls visible in the updated FBX import and export documentation. FBX import supports Open or Add load types, scale, axis conversion, and several toggles such as joint animation and cache animation. It also lists trim import behaviour that cannot collide with clothing when simulation is on, plus a collide option toggle for trim in the property editor, and a glue icon workflow to attach trim to clothing.

FBX export includes single- and multiple-object exports, weld and un-weld options, and thin and thick options for exporting with or without rendering thickness. It includes combined UV coordinates and texture export controls, including texture size and seam fill. It also includes a 2026.0 specific note: Weld Turned Sewing Lines allows vertex merging for export even when the sewing line type is set to turned.

Licensing and cost facts that affect teams

A personal monthly subscription is listed at $39 per month and is cancelable anytime, with automatic billing. A one-year prepaid license is listed at $280 as a one-time payment, not automatically billed.

A student subscription is listed at $99 as a one-time payment, not automatically billed, with a note that it can be purchased up to two times over four years after student status verification.

Enterprise options list an enterprise network online monthly plan at $199 per seat, an enterprise network online annual plan at $2,000 per seat, and an enterprise Linux annual plan at $2,300 per seat. An indie studio option is listed as “Contact sales”. There is also an enterprise notice that, from December 2, 2025, the enterprise standalone license was discontinued and shifted to network online monthly and annual subscriptions.

The boring but important note

2026.0 stacks a lot of workflow surface area into one release: new creation tools, new material type controls, and a pile of import and export switches that can change how data lands in downstream tools. The right way to treat that is like any pipeline-facing update. Test the new tools on your ugliest garments (For bonus points: Remake the garment you are wearing right now as a training exercise. Hoodie, PJs, and Fluffy slippers and all), validate the round-trip exports, and confirm that your intended use stays stable before you put it on a deadline.

The post Marvelous Designer 2026.0 adds 3D Pencil and lacing first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: glTF sits between DCC export and runtime playback, and these web tools help you sanity check assets and rendering across engines before shots get spicy.

Two sites, one mission: fewer surprises

The glTF Sample Assets site and the glTF Render Fidelity Comparison site just got meaningful upgrades. They target the same everyday pain: you export a model, it looks right in one viewer, and then it looks slightly off somewhere else where it matters. The refreshed Sample Assets experience focuses on browsing, filtering, and sharing reference models that exercise specific features of glTF. The updated Render Fidelity Comparison experience focuses on visual baselines, with side-by-side checks that make renderer differences harder to hand wave and easier to track down. If you build tools, ship engines, validate exporters, or wrangle assets for realtime and VFX, these sites are designed to be the boring, reliable kind of helpful.

Sample Assets gets a real front door

The new landing experience for glTF Sample Assets presents the repository as a proper website. The intent is simple: make it easier to browse and find models by what they demonstrate. Models appear with thumbnails, and animated assets include a small animation preview. The site supports light and dark themes and aims for fast loading and fluid navigation. Filtering and search are first class, with tags that map to features, functionality, and extension coverage.

When you open a model, you land on a dedicated model page with an interactive preview, metadata, and download links. The preview uses the glTF Sample Renderer, which is built on WebGL and targets correct support for official KHR extensions. A context menu in the preview provides presentation options that include debug visualization modes for material properties, variant selection when multiple variants exist, and wireframe presentation when the WEBGL polygon mode extension is available.

The model page also links out to external tools and shows a recommendation style list of related assets, which is a surprisingly effective way to bounce between test cases when you are chasing a specific shading edge case across multiple files.

One practical detail matters here: each model includes a screenshot, description, license information, and a live preview. That combination turns the site into a quick reference shelf rather than a scavenger hunt through folders.

Render Fidelity Comparison leans into side by side truth

The redesigned glTF Render Fidelity Comparison site takes the same library mindset and aims it at output consistency. It frames the core goal as convergence around physically based rendering materials so you can expect a model to appear as intended across renderers and lighting environments. It also notes that this is ambitious, with realtime rendering quality still changing rapidly. *cough* understatement *cough*

The workflow is built for quick comparisons. You choose a model, filter by tags or search, then pick two renders and select a view mode. The comparison modes include side by side viewing, a slider view, and a difference view that shows computed differences.

The site spans popular realtime web renderers and also includes path tracers. In practice, that means you can jump between quick interactive engines like babylon.js and three.js, then also look at path traced production renderings from Blender using Cycles and from V-Ray. It is not about crowning a winner. It is about seeing where two implementations diverge so you can reproduce, triage, and fix.

Comparison images are generated offline and submitted via pull requests to the site repository, which keeps the content auditable and repeatable. That approach also makes it easier for teams to add coverage for their own renderer outputs without inventing a new pipeline.

The biggest new trick is an experimental 3D comparison mode that enables full interactivity comparison of two realtime renderers side by side. It currently supports three.js, babylon.js, model-viewer, and three js path tracer tooling. If you have ever tried to discuss a subtle lighting mismatch over screenshots, you know why interactive side by side matters. In one sentence, the updated site encourages you to comapre outputs with fewer assumptions and more pixels on screen.

https://github.khronos.org/glTF-Render-Fidelity/model/AttenuationTest

Contributing is part of the design

Both sites are open to contributions. For sample assets, new models can be proposed via pull requests to the repository. For render fidelity, you can submit renderer outputs by following the repository guidelines for generating renders of a sample asset and placing the results in the appropriate location for comparison.

There is also a straightforward feedback loop via issues in the repositories, which keeps bug reports and feature requests attached to something actionable. This is the one place where it is worth naming the organizer exactly once: Khronos is clearly aiming to make the glTF developer ecosystem easier to navigate, easier to test, and harder to break quietly.

https://github.khronos.org/glTF-Assets/

https://github.khronos.org/glTF-Render-Fidelity/

The post glTF sample assets and fidelity site refresh first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Unity Studio is now officially released after a beta that started last autumn. The product sits inside a browser and targets teams that want interactive real time 3D outcomes without turning every review cycle into a software install party.

The tool frames itself as a simplified counterpart to the Unity Editor. The split reads like this. Unity Studio focuses on quick creation and sharing of interactive 3D applications in a web-based workspace. The Unity Editor covers advanced development for complex applications.

Unity Studio is designed for people who work with 3D data but do not necessarily live in code all day, including designers, artists, training and marketeers, industrial engineers, and sales teams. That audience definition matters because it shapes almost every feature choice, from visual logic blocks to one click publishing.

The interface aims for familiar, not fearless

The day to day experience centers on a canvas with panels that list project contents and expose settings and controls for building and sharing. The tutorial material breaks the UI down into a Hierarchy panel, a Project panel, a Scene view, and an Inspector panel, plus a Camera Preview for framing the final view.

Navigation and inspection are built in so you can look at scenes, models, and assets from different angles. Lighting controls exist for mood and readability, which helps when you need to communicate intent rather than chase photoreal.

Unity Studio also supports building drafts as an initial working state. Drafts and projects live in the cloud and are accessible within an organization. The asset pipeline stays tightly connected to Unity Asset Manager, which stores uploaded assets, tracks versions of drafts, and keeps a version history you can browse.

Import and formats, with a cloud converter doing extra work

Asset ingest starts with upload and import flows that pass through Unity Asset Manager. The supported formats story splits into two layers.

On the direct import side, Unity Studio supports 3D model file formats including glTF in GLB form, FBX, and OBJ, plus supported image types like PNG and JPEG and supported audio types like WAV, MP3, AIFF, AIF, and OGG.

On the conversion side, the Asset Manager can convert additional formats into supported formats. The conversion list includes CAD oriented extensions such as STEP variants, and it includes OpenUSD variants such as USD, USDA, USDC, and USDZ, plus glTF, GLB, PXZ, and others.

The asset optimization angle hooks into Unity Asset Transformer. The Asset Manager uses that tool to optimize complex industry files, including CAD assets, so you can visualize and interact with them in a web browesr without extra software installs.

There is also a size related behavior worth knowing early. When an asset exceeds 200 MB, Unity Studio uses a preview GLB file instead of the original GLB, OBJ, or FBX file for that content.

Animation and UI, built for explanation

A lot of industrial and training content needs motion because motion explains behavior. Unity Studio includes animation tools that cover individual object animation and more complex sequences. The feature overview material describes an animation director that coordinates movements on a shared timeline using keyframes, with examples like fluid flows or mechanical sequences.

UI authoring sits on a UI canvas so you can place functional interfaces directly over the 3D scene. The feature set explicitly calls out buttons, readouts, and text, and the tutorial content includes creating UI text elements as part of an interaction example. That pairing matters because a lot of review workflows depend on guided UI, not just orbit and zoom.

Material work also shows up in the tutorial path. You can create new materials and edit existing ones, and you can duplicate an imported material into an editable copy so changes apply only to a specific object.

Logic, the no code promise in one word

Interactivity in Unity Studio centers on a visual scripting system called “Logik”, uhm, no. logic. Relax, Flame-Users! The Logic editor uses a node library and a builder area where you drag and connect building blocks. The goal is to create interactive behaviors without writing code.

Publishing and sharing: the review link is the deliverable

Publishing is built into the workflow. Unity Studio publishes applications to the web, and web is currently the only available platform option. The publish flow includes selecting Publish, choosing Web, entering a title, and optionally entering a password to restrict access. Publishing generates a Project Web URL you can share.

Sharing a published project is essentially sharing that link. Anyone with the link can access the application. Updating a published application pushes the latest changes to the live version via an Update action. Unpublishing takes the application offline so it is no longer accessible via the web link.

That set of actions lines up neatly with design review reality. You send one link, you iterate, and you do not play whack a mole with new attachments every time a stakeholder asks for a different camera angle.

Use cases: HMI, configurators, simulations, training

The product messaging and documentation focus on industrial and enterprise style scenarios that benefit from fast iteration.

The tool targets HMI prototyping for automotive and industrial dashboards. It targets product configurators where teams adjust colors and swap components in real time. It also targets step by step demonstrations of machine behavior in a browser. Training apps for operators are also in scope, and the product page calls out building 3D training experiences with assets, UI instructions, and live updates.

The docs also describe building configurators, designing HMI layouts, creating step by step training scenarios, and exporting work as a web application for customers or external partners to review. Across those tasks, the common thread stays the same: interactive review, short loops, and fewer handoffs.

Pricing and quotas, with the cloud meter clearly visible

Unity Studio is priced at $799 USD per seat, per year. There is a 30 day free trial with no credit card required.

Each seat includes 120 GB of cloud storage for assets and content in Unity Asset Manager. Each organization also gets 10 GB per month of bandwidth for deployed Studio applications for Studio app hosting. Additional storage can be purchased at $0.75 per GB per month and additional bandwidth at $0.50 per GB per month.

Deployment builds and hosts the application in the company cloud so teams can access it on the web without server management. Hosting uses bandwidth, so treat published links like any other hosted deliverable and keep an eye on how widely they travel.

A production minded reality check

Unity Studio aims to shrink the distance between a 3D idea and a clickable decision. It does that with browser delivery, visual Logic, and built in publishing. Those are strong levers for review and training pipelines where time disappears into coordination rather than creation.

Still, every new tool belongs in a staging lane first. Test it with representative assets, representative reviewers, and the same network conditions you expect in the real world. New tools and innovations should always be tested before use in production.

https://unity.com/products/unity-studio// Requirements and compatibility, browser versions, WebGPU notes, mobile browser limitation

The post Unity ships Unity Studio for in-browser 3D first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Blender is the free all in one DCC for modeling, animation, rendering, and export tasks like USD, with Eevee for realtime previews, Cycles for finals, and a Compositor that keeps quietly expanding its job description.

The release vibe: refine, then refine again

Blender 5.1 arrives with a clear theme: make everyday work feel lighter. The focus sits on quality of life improvements, stability, and polish, following a “Winter of Quality” push that solved 350 important issues and also cleaned up code to make future improvements easier.

That mindset shows up everywhere. Some changes are the sort you notice instantly. Others only reveal themselves after a week, when you realize you have not sworn at a dialog box even once. Progress comes in many forms. It is still the same familiar toolset. The difference is how often it gets out of your way.

Raycast: a shader node that likes to ask questions

A new Raycast shader node lands in the material system, built around a simple idea: shoot a ray, get useful surface information back, and use it to drive looks. That unlocks effects that rely on the closest point on a surface from the ray source, or the distance to it. There are demo files showing setups like toon shading and an X ray render effect.

There is also a practical warning: Raycast can be computationally expensive, and baking its output is suggested as a way to improve render times when needed.

Rendering: faster compiles, leaner memory, quicker frames

On the realtime side, Eevee speeds up material compilation by pre processing shader sources. In the standard Barbershop text scene benchmark, GPU shaders compile 25 to 50 percent faster across operating systems. Memory also gets attention. Eevee reduces texture memory use via texture pooling, helping scenes fit into less VRAM.

Cycles picks up performance gains too. GPU rendering improves by about 5 to 10 percent for many scenes, and HIP RT ray tracing is enabled by default on AMD GPUs. If your day includes lots of lookdev iteration, the combined effect is straightforward: fewer pauses between decisions.

Animation and rigging: the biggest speed win in the room

If you care about playback, Blender 5.1 comes with a headline worthy improvement: actions and shape keys evaluate significantly faster, with reported gains ranging from 4 percent to 304 percent in frames per second depending on the file. For cleanup work, the Graph Editor adds a Gaussian smoothing modifier that smooths curves non destructively. It is also explicitly described as resource heavy, with guidance not to use it on too many curves at once.

There are also small but practical timeline and editor touches that help animation feel less fiddly, like interpolation line colors indicating interpolation type in the Dope Sheet and menus.

Compositing and editorial: nodes that earn their keep

The built in Compositor adds a Mask to SDF node. It converts a mask into a Signed Distance Field by computing the distance of each pixel from the mask edges. That supports effects like edge glows, eroding or dilating mask edges, and distance based effects like procedural blurs.

The compositor also gains utility nodes including Boolean, Integer, Vector, and Index Switch, plus support for the existing Radial Tiling node. Speed matters here too. Several key nodes are faster, including Blur, Directional Blur, Vector Blur, Glare, Lens Distortion, and Anti Aliasing, described as 1.2x to 2x faster.

In the Sequencer, the Blade tool adds a box gesture that supports ripple editing, aimed at quicker cutting. Taken together, the message is clear: the VFX and video toolsets are being treated like first class citizens, not the side quest you only visit when your shot count gets scary.

Modeling and sculpt: a pile of small wins

Modeling sees a mix of performance and wrokflow tweaks. Filling for text objects improves, expanding the types of fonts that behave well as 3D text. Filling in general is up to five times faster, especially for n gons with many sides. Snapping adds an option to snap to the center of faces. In sculpt and paint, one visible addition is a Blur brush for blurring surface colors in Sculpt mode.

Grease Pencil: holes, at last

Grease Pencil gets notable workflow improvements, including better handling of strokes and fills and new ways to cut holes in shapes. Holes in fills can be created either via new operators that perform Boolean style operations or via the SVG importer. The draw here is practical: importing SVG and PDF content becomes easier to integrate without the same fill weirdness described in the feature overview. If you have ever built a workaround stack just to preserve negative space, this one lands with a satisfying thud.

Geometry Nodes: more rig friendly, more volume friendly

Geometry Nodes adds a Bone Info node that makes it possible to access bone position data. There are also new nodes for working with volume grids, including nodes for dilating, eroding, and clipping volume grids.

UI, file I O, and pipeline glue

The UI picks up just under 100 fixes and feature improvements, including the ability to search for controls by name in Preferences. Other practical UI touches include resizing quad views interactively by dragging the center point, and copying and pasting nodes between separate instances. On file formats, new options include AVIF export. Updates also land for USD, glTF, and FBX, with FBX files now including Shape Key normals for better compatibility with game engines like Unity.

For pipeline integration, support includes Python 3.13 and OpenColorIO 2.5, matching the CY2026 spec for the VFX Reference Platform. For virtual reality projects, the arc teleportation system is described as completely rewritten, and OpenXR is supported on macOS.

Availability and licensing

Blender 5.1 is a free download. The source code is available under the GPLv3 license. That free and open model is not new, but it still matters. It shapes how fast features get tested in the wild, how quickly workflows spread through studios, and how often a random late night fix becomes a shared win by morning.

The only remaining job is the boring one: install, test, validate, and only then roll it into serious work. Even a tool with a good mood still deserves a proper pipeline check. And yes, the Blender Foundation clearly wants this release to feel like a calm upgrade, not a reinvention.

https://www.blender.org/press/blender-5-1-release/

The post Blender 5.1 is here first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.