For those who don’t know the tool: Unity is a real time engine used for games, virtual production and interactive content. Polybrush was its in editor mesh and vertex painting tool. The new alternative is designed as a Unity editor extension for painting and modifying meshes directly inside the engine.

RealBlend Mesh Painting and Creation is an editor extension available via the Unity Asset Store. It is designed to provide mesh editing and painting workflows directly inside the Unity editor, reducing the need to round trip to external DCC applications for certain environment art tasks. RealBlend supports vertex painting, mesh sculpting and procedural geometry creation within Unity.

Unity deprecated PolyBrush, so I made a better one :) – Realblend
byu/AdamNapper inUnity3D

Vertex painting and layer blending

RealBlend enables vertex colour painting on meshes inside the scene view. Vertex colour painting stores colour data per vertex, allowing artists to drive shader blending, material variation or masks without additional texture maps. The tool supports multi layer blending across Unity’s render pipelines. Layer limits differ by pipeline. Up to five layers are supported in HDRP and up to three layers in URP and the Built in pipeline, according to the product description.

Sculpting and mesh editing

In addition to painting, RealBlend includes sculpting tools such as move, push and smooth. These tools operate directly on mesh geometry inside the Unity editor, allowing artists to adjust forms without exporting to modelling software. Because vertex density determines sculpting resolution, practical results will depend on mesh topology.

Procedural mesh creation

RealBlend also includes procedural mesh creation tools to generate planes, curved walls and custom surfaces procedurally. This positions the tool as more than a paint overlay system. It can be used to create base geometry and then modify or paint it in the same environment. The exact parameter controls for procedural generation are not described in detail on the Asset Store page.

Additional utilities

Along are utilities for mesh baking and a mask packer for RGBA maps. Mask packing typically combines multiple greyscale textures into different colour channels of a single texture to optimise memory usage. Procedural noise functions are also referenced for creating dirt and wear effects. These can be used to introduce variation without external texture authoring.

Pipeline compatibility and pricing

RealBlend is listed as compatible with the Built in Render Pipeline, URP and HDRP. The product is distributed through the Unity Asset Store. Pricing is 20€, currently discounted to 14.40€ (may vary by region and promotion – I don’t understand those pricing policies at all anymore, so you should consult the Asset Store listing for current pricing and licence terms. Do that HERE) No subscription requirement is indicated on the product page.

Production considerations

In editor mesh painting and sculpting can accelerate environment art iteration, particularly for blending materials, adding surface variation or shaping greybox geometry. However, tools that modify mesh data directly inside the engine should be evaluated for asset stability, version control behaviour and compatibility with existing shader setups.

As always, new tools and editor extensions should be validated in controlled conditions prior to deployment in active projects.

// https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/painting/realblend-mesh-painting-creation-352952

The post RealBlend brings mesh painting back to Unity first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The Lost Bus is a 2025 survival-drama directed by Paul Greengrass for Blumhouse Productions in association with Comet Pictures and Apple Original Films. The film is based on the non-fiction book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire by journalist Lizzie Johnson. Set against the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, it follows a school-bus driver and a teacher who fight to guide 22 children to safety through an encroaching inferno. Combining Greengrass’s documentary-style direction with large-scale visual effects and environmental reconstruction by RISE FX, the film depicts one of the deadliest wildfires in recent history with stark realism.

Supervising the inferno: Oliver Schulz (IMDB | Linkedin) is a senior Visual Effects Supervisor at RISE FX, the Berlin-based VFX studio. Over more than a decade at RISE he has guided VFX supervision on major international productions including Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Blue Beetle and Megalopolis, among many others.

His background spans concept art, digital matte painting and 3D environments; skills that helped him to take the creative lead on blockbuster-scale environment and FX heavy shows. In this interview he reveals how he and his team at RISE tackled the challenge of recreating a burning landscape for The Lost Bus, combining procedural geography, wind-driven vegetation, deep-rendered volumetrics, and machine-learning techniques for depth integration, to bring the inferno to life on screen.

DP: How did you get onto the Lost Bus? 

Oliver Schulz: I came on board after wrapping up on Megalopolis and jumped onto the very first meeting with Charlie Noble and Gavin Round, Production VFX Supervisor and Producer. The project was already awarded at that time so we directly started talking about the Sequences and the scope of the Rise portion of work.

Luckily or better sad tragically this was a real event so in regards of look, there were many references and documentation of this day. So our first meeting was looking through a lot of real world footage from all available sources. Charlie had been prepping reference reels from the very beginning, so we could hone in on a lot of specific ones for each portion of the work because he had references for all of them!

DP: Roughly how big was the RISE team on The Lost Bus, and how long did you spend from first build to final comp?

Oliver Schulz: We started with a very small core team in May 24 and delivered the last shots at the beginning of 25.  I think around 50-60 people worked on the show in total during the production with up- and downramping based on specific project needs like temp deliveries for example.

DP: The antagonist of the movie is the geography of a very particular area, and the fact that it is on fire – how did you make sure that it was recognizably that specific part of the world? 

Oliver Schulz: We started with real world data derived from elevation models. That gave us a pretty good grounding in reality. We got lidar scans for very specific locations like the Pulga Bridges for example which was invaluable as this is usually something one doesn’t get from any publicly available sources. We spent quite a bit of time to get us a very good foundation of all key locations, which meant that everything had a geometrical base until the very last mountain you see on the horizon.

Our Lidar Supervisor David Salamon was instrumental in setting up this base. He used some maps imagery to give a rough base color to all those individual geometries that served as a rough guide later on in layout and surfacing for distributions of materials or assets. One has to keep in mind that most data was post 2018 so for instance vegetation had to be recreated from mostly photographic references shot before the fire. We tried to stay as true as possible to real world geography, but later on of course things had to be changed for storytelling reasons. 

DP: When merging New Mexico plates into your California canyon builds, how did you maintain scale and geological continuity?

Oliver Schulz: As production did not have access or in case of some very sketchy roads didn’t shoot at the original location for safety reasons, they did some scouting through the US and chose some New Mexico locations as stand ins for some of our sequences. The most prominent was the Pulga road for sure. In the film, the first responding firefighters trying to get to the origin of the camp fire first get sight when they are on top of the Pulga Highway bridge crossing the Feather River Canyon.

Without any better option they decide their best shot is to try and get to the fire following a very narrow road on the slope of the canyon. All shots on Pulga Bridge were shot on a Studio Backlot featuring full CG Environments including the FG bridge. This narrow path however was all shot on the New Mexico location with two big fire engines driving a slightly wider road. 

In production that meant that we replaced most of the visible Environment due to a couple of reasons. First of course it needed to have the right roadwidth and the correct canyon in the background. Second we needed to have very windy vegetation everywhere. Third in case all of that worked in camera which was pretty rare we still needed to put FX Elements into every shot consisting of dust, debris, smoke and later also embers. With those guidelines in place probably 90% of the shots became full CG exteriors only keeping small bits of photography for fire engines and some road pieces.

Once all those went into layout we made sure to keep a senseful progression to those shots meaning having the firefighters travel along the road during those shots in cutorder. The topography of the shooting location though was pretty different from the storypoint progression on the pulga road, so was the framing in camera when pointing at the fire from the fire engine interiors.

That of course meant as good and real our base was, it needed to be heavily augmented to make sense with storytelling and framing choices. Most shots feature the correct BG canyon but the midground is totally made up to allow for good view to the fire origin. All of this had to be understandable even with very frenetically moving handheld cameras.

DP: Let’s talk vegetation: How much botanical creative freedom did you have? 

Oliver Schulz: Vegetation was a big part of the environment and one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the fire. All FVX vendors had to tackle it in one way or the other which meant all were contributing to the research for which plant goes where. The foundation was once again the research and material collection from Charlie and his team.

We focused on the most common species found in this region of CA and made sure the level of dryness and the distribution made sense. So in this sense there was not too much freedom here as everyone tried to make this as real as possible from this point of view. For the build we actually just used the most common ground which is Speedtree with some augmentations done in Houdini. Part of the assets were also shares from other vendors which just needed ingestion and rigging in FX.

DP: You mentioned building a hierarchical “ecosystem” in Houdini. How modular was this system, and how much hand-authoring did artists still need to do per shot?

Oliver Schulz: This was something we actually invested a bit of time in at the very beginning and was overseen by CG Supervisor David Schulz and Layout Lead Mareike Loges / Senior Layout Artist Björn Markgraf. The core idea is nothing new and hierarchical just means that you start from the biggest Elements in your kit and than go smaller and smaller based on the previous distribution of Elements. First step is to either scatter or handplace big trees for example, following this you end up with a certain distribution. 

Based on this the system places smaller entities like younger trees or seedlings and smaller shrubs and bushes around or between the big trees. This distribution is based on simple rules like distance or terrain steepness. In case of the Pulga road we divided it up in two categories: mountains and roads. Both had similar procedures. We would always start with the rough blocking geometries matching either scan data, elevation data or sometimes just made up. From there we would generate the base coverage of rock cliffs which would hold out trees mostly in those areas. Following this we created the trees and bigger vegetation which would determine the ground coverage of rocks vs more pepply ground.

Roads were pretty similar but less complex as they mostly feature small stones. Again here we used some manually created maps to drive the distribution of small vs bigger pebbles that mostly accumulate on the side for example.

The toolset itself worked pretty well and as it was applicable as a template we could have a fully laid out shot in a day. Shot specific adjustments were applied on almost every shot though, mostly for continuity, visibility or art direction purpose. 

DP: Vegetation, environment, and FX were all dependent on one another. How did you keep versioning sane between departments?

Oliver Schulz:  That was a big topic indeed and it only is possible with two things: a rigorous approval system and a good pipeline that helps you track those approved layouts. We rely on our usd pipeline to do exactly that for us, it makes it somewhat easy (Im sure layout and production will hit me for this) to track department versioning. For each layout update we`d always get automatic QC renders that run through our inhouse “slapstick” system which is our inhouse auto comp engine.

When Layout would do a specific change it would publish this either on a shot or on an Sequence/Environment level. This will trigger a QC render from the shotcam of the affected shots. Once the rendering is done it will have a postjob that combines it with the prepped plate in nuke and runs another renderjob that will give you the layout reviewable which is than checked and can be approved and pushed into the pipeline from RV. This Layout than becomes available to the FX department which would run all needed simulations and hand off another QC reviewable for approval. Without those systems in place it would have been a nightmare to stay on top of all these versions!

DP: You said the layout department drove wind direction and strength instead of FX. How did that change your creative workflow?

Oliver Schulz: Yes that was indeed true and one of our early conversations we had internally to determine the approach all Environment builds would share. It was a practical decision based on two factors: We would simulate all vegetation on the asset level in different windspeeds for efficiency reasons and we wanted to keep iteration loops to a minimum.

This meant that I wanted to look at layout versions with moving vegetation as the strong directional wind would make it necessary to consider this already while layouting trees. As the direction is clearly visible you cant rely on spinning a tree 360 deg free in Y to create variations as the direction is “baked” in, so you need to see it moving in order to determine if an environment looks good!

The second reason is that FX needed to take care of vegetation simulation only once and when approved never needed to come back. This system worked really well and was accessible to the layout artists down to the single blade of grass, meaning one could really art direct where and how much specific things should move.

DP: You divided smoke into “hero” and “residual” categories. How did you manage density and readability without losing visual clarity?

Oliver Schulz: These two categories were simply based on the fact that we needed to deal with smoke in almost every shot. The ever present residual smoke needed to inherit a direction, needed to be art directable and also needed to render as fast as possible. Its pretty much the equivalent of atmospheric perspective in a wildfire scenario. Our Fx Supervisor Akin Göcmenli came up with a system of instanced presimulated caches that sometimes could consist of thousands of individual ones.

We started by doing simulations of smoke with a constant wind direction and speed that had a hidden source of emission and diffused pretty soon. That gave us a very soft falloff to the edges of the simulation grid which made these simulations perfect to overlap and look as one big single instance of smoke. On top due to those aspects it was quite easy to remove single containers and punch holes into the wall of smoke for visibility. We also invested a bit of time to develop shaders and render efficiencies to cut down on notoriously long volumetric rendertimes for this element.

Hero smoke was the category which either had a visible emission source in frame or simply had a hero storytelling element. These were usually shot or sequence simulations as they were mostly much denser and most of the time also much closer to camera. We also spend a good amount of time matching shading and simulation to real world references.  The secret to readability also lies in relentless QCing of outputs to make sure once you kickoff the expensive lighting renders, you are as certain as possible all elements are going to work. 

DP: The ember work looks incredibly detailed. How did you simulate believable motion in strong winds without visible repetition or looping patterns?

Oliver Schulz: Embers were a big part of the equations so by now you might guess…. Yes we spend a bit of time in asset prep to build some solid foundations. The first thing is of course the driving factor for all fx aspect: the wind.

FX developed hero wind forces that we used to simulate all elements with. A good amount of chaos and variance is key to not run into issues with readable patterns in any simulation. Another factor is collision. Embers will behave a certain way when they collide and thats what we tried to replicate. Also the ground plays a big role especially with the heavier emberclumps that slide over it.

Reality is unbeaten when it comes to little quirks and anomalies especially for something as complex as this. As no one is able to have a ground as detailed as the real world we also sometimes had a collision geometry that had slightly more displacement in order to have more detailed collisions happening. 

DP: Lighting and volumetrics are natural enemies. How did you maintain physically plausible lighting through that much smoke and fire?

Oliver Schulz: That was one of the biggest questions going into this project, considering that what was shot on set sometimes had very little to do with what ended up on screen, especially in terms of atmospherics. The best base for something to look real is to match the real thing. We did so in our asset phase and made sure our shaders and lightrigs were physically plausible, especially the ones only used to develop assets. 

We would match greyballs and reference macbeth charts in order to make sure scene lighting was correct in terms of lightbalancing. Then from there we developed shaders for all aspects.One of the most common issues I see is that volume and surface renders aren’t lookdeved in conjunction. What you end up having to do is to grade surface and volume render differently. This leads to very unrealistic renders very fast because there is no ground truth you can come back to.

We tried to make sure all our shaders worked with each other to have exactly this common base. Also when dealing with dozens of light sources and those issues on top that’s definitely a position you don’t want to be in when time is running…. All volumetrics do have very different properties to them where one of the biggest is how they scatter light. Back to front scattering can take a volume from being ultrabright to consuming all lighting energy and being pitchblack. So once you matched the real thing, use those tools wisely to deviate from there and support the story. 

We tried to always start with a balancing pass usually done still in lighting. This goes to comp as the foundation to do all the finetuning with. Still there was a lot of tuning left for comp and also we needed to break reality more than once to make sure that what you wanted to read in a frame remained readable when tons of smoke and fire went in front. Sometimes we needed to go as far as use the deep data to pull things in and out of the smoke to make them visible. Still the most valuable tool you have is the artist’s eye to determine the sweet spot of good vs real.

DP: You mentioned deep rendering bottlenecks, like OIIO running out of patience with too many AoVs. What exactly went wrong first?

Oliver Schulz: Haha yes that was one of the issues that came when switching to full deep with our renders. That means you have each component of each lightgroup rendered with deep data to put it back together in comp. That resulted in a lot of channels that apparently were too much for OIIO to handle. Thank god that was fixed otherwise I wouldn’t write this story now ;)

DP: Rendering holdouts took up to an hour per frame. Did you develop any automation or optimisation to make deep rendering less painful?

Oliver Schulz: Indeed rendering times for deep holdouts were quite painful and nothing to speed up really. With so many volumetric elements you need to deep hold out everything with everything to make sure its accurate. If you multiply this with the number of separate elements rendered and with the amount of light Aovs times the amount of components you end up with a staggering number of renders.

Plus in the end you need to denoise all frames so the best solution was try to plan out delivery dates as good as possible to have time for all those thousands prerenders to run on the farm. Still our compositing Supervisor Oliver Hohn and Lead Nicolas Burgers had some longer evenings ensuring all renders were there the next morning to be picked up by the compositing Artists.

DP: You used machine-learning depth generators to create deep data from plates. What tools powered that, and how reliable were the results?

Oliver Schulz: We started testing tools quite early in anticipation of very challenging compositing work. DepthAnything v2 was what we ended up using as a default prerender pass. The results were a mixed bag considering the wide range of plates we worked with, although it proved to be valuable to have. Comp remapped the relative value output of the depth passes to absolute values from deep data with help of lidarscans or renders and was able to create some good integration especially with more wispy type of smoke.

For denser smoke and more accurate holdouts especially for actors we still needed to rely on a lot of manual roto for good integration. The AI passes proved to be pretty successful though for fast temp work as you get something going in no time. Issues were mostly the missing good temporal stability and also the lack of precision. 

 DP: Before deploying new tech like ML depth generators or procedural ecosystems, how do you test them safely inside production?

Oliver Schulz: We implemented those during production directly on our project infrastructure, so developed, tested and used simultaneously. 

DP: Were there any spectacular ML depth map failures, like smoke reading as solid or background cliffs collapsing?

Oliver Schulz: Depth popping or lost shapes were the most common ones. But as none of these passes were used without correction in comp I’m sure I haven’t seen all of them!

DP: With so many volumetric layers, how did compositors manage complexity without drowning in passes?

Oliver Schulz: We have standard workflows for loading CG renders into nuke which do provide a basic level of organization. However the more elements you have the bigger the compscripts and we had some good ones for sure!

DP: Fire colouration is tricky. Did you use any spectral rendering or rely purely on LUTs to match on-set lighting and heat distortion?

Oliver Schulz: That is very true.. Luckily production tried to shoot everything with a practical fire which provided a good level of references in camera. If you than try to render as physically plausible as possible and have something in frame that you can match exposure to you are already halfway there. We didn’t use any spectral rendering here and rendered everything through Houdinis Karma in RGB.

DP: You switched to full motion-blur sampling for embers instead of faked streaks. How much did that impact render time, and was it worth it?

Oliver Schulz: Oh that was worth every minute of rendertime.. Real Motionblur for an element which is mainly visible in motionblur is a good investment. Plus the rendertimes weren’t actually that bad and took only a couple of minutes as you are not dealing with an expensive shading as well. The biggest benefit is getting nice curved and very interesting blurs especially with collisions.  The trick actually is to only invest time where its needed and render other elements with less costly settings. Deep compositing allows for it as you are not bound to any holdouts and you can combine differently rendered motion blur without any problems.

DP: How crucial was RiseFlow for distributing simulations and maintaining consistency across all sequences?

Oliver Schulz: We started implementing RiseFlow at the very beginning once we had our initial workflow for distributing elements figured out. The development was done by our Head of Pipeline Paul Schweizer and the implementation on the show was spearheaded by Jonas Sorgenfrei.

It actually is a very versatile framework that we use for a variety of tasks here at Rise. Its a modular node based System that can take arbitrary inputs and execute them in a chained workflow. FX built templates for various scenarios that got exposed variables like wind direction, speed, inputs for collision geometry etc. These could than be varied per shot and sent to the farm for execution. Once all those Sims were done, QC renders were submitted to the Farm and when completed, auto comped in Slapstick.

That meant that one artist could do changes on a big number of shots by adjusting the template and than resimming and rendering them over night. All render elements were deepcomped with our deep plate workflow and reviewed the next morning. This allowed for rapid adjustments and turnarounds which was a very crucial aspect of this fast paced production. 

DP: How did RiseFlow and Slapstick communicate between departments for reviews and dailies?

Oliver Schulz: RiseFlow and Slapstick are two different things really. The point where they communicate is that Riseflow might trigger a farmjob where Slapstick is hooked in as a post process that gets triggered after completion of the render. Slapstick again is a modular node based system implemented in Nuke that allows for a generalized template to be created. These inputs could take for instance all general elements that comp might use to layer a shot like mainplates, rotos, colorcorrections, lensdistortions etc and comp them together. We use Slapstick in all departments to create automatic reviewables for assetbuild like turntables with reference images, lighting slaps,fx slaps and so on.

DP: You’ve called The Lost Bus the toughest matchmove job you’ve ever seen. How did you solve the handheld, wet, low-light camera challenge?

Oliver Schulz: That was a tough one indeed. To solve this it really just comes down to the excellence of all individual artists that created those matchmoves. So there is no magic recipe to get through so many challenging matchmoves…

DP: Greengrass loves long, continuous takes. How did you manage to iterate and render efficiently on such heavy, unbroken shots?

Oliver Schulz: I guess it is really to choose your battles wisely… Invest into a good foundation early on and make sure to be as precise as possible in prep phase. Once the show is running and you are in full delivery mode there is no time to go back and redevelop anything.

Render optimization as much as possible and then relying on everything that was set up in the beginning is key to not have to think about accuracy anymore when you are trying to finish the shots. We did this and it really paid off, though having a couple of long shots with lots of elements to render we never ran into the issue of having to fear a render didn’t get finished in time.

There were some challenging shots for all departments involved but again the prep phase paid off and we managed to deliver everything in time. It’s really a Situation in which the Production team led by Michelle Cullen and Production Manager Androniki Nikolaou outdid themselves by planning and scheduling every milestone in production to make sure we had what we needed to finish shots in time. Of course that also means adjusting and revising this schedule each and every day based on client comments and changes.. It’s a tough job to make sure the whole production runs like a well oiled machine!

DP: Deep compositing only works if all layers align perfectly in space. Did you use diagnostic tools or pure visual QC to verify deep accuracy?

Oliver Schulz: The good thing about deep is that it’s pretty accurate as long as the sampling increments in depth are small enough for certain elements. It’s a game of keeping error thresholds low enough so you don’t pick them up actually. The balancing is precision versus filesize. Surface renders aren’t an issue really as you are dealing with front and backsides of hard surface objects really.

The fun starts with volumetric elements and this is where you need to tweak the settings a bit to make sure you don’t end up having 5GB per frame in volumetric renders. Still frames could grow to well over 1GB on bigger shots with all elements included, so we needed to do some rough calculations beforehand to make sure we weren’t running out of allocated serverspace.

DP: How did you maintain consistency for fire behaviour across sequences? Was there a single reference look, or did it evolve shot by shot?

Oliver Schulz: One of the big topics obviously here as the quality of the fire not only needed to remain consistent but also serve the story in how it behaves. When you look at fires in reality they all have very different qualities to them depending on a ton of external factors like what is burning, where it burns, what is the actual heat it produces and what is the influence of the wind and so on. So yes it’s crucial to pick a reference and not try to incorporate them all. The initial tactic we used was to create asset based fires with all components.

The two types that production defined as assets were “spotfires” and “forestfires”. Pretty generalized in description though mostly divided up by scale. So we took those two types into asset development and created a little scene with them. Forestfire in the background and spotfires in the foreground. This scene actually was the same one we used to lookdev all assets in. So we had a common ground for all assets really and the fx ones were not different.

We picked a general reference we felt was working well for each category and supplemented that with references that production had shot on set. The shot element though were mostly run by gas so wouldnt really emit any smoke but were a general ref in terms of breakup and edge qualities. Also those would come in native resolution where most of the actual refs are cellphone captures of much poorer quality.

So with all those references in place we started matching the fires again in different windspeeds. We tried to also implement all little details especially on the bigger forest fire like flambursts on dry wood, falling burning pieces of wood etc. Once fire was in place we hooked it up with all secondary elements like smoke and embers. We had already pretty robust setups developed for each of them individually so we could already build on a solid foundation using those as a base.

Once this little scene was successfully approved by production to go into shots we splitted out the individual components as assets again. These had all elements attached like smoke emission, ember emission, lots of different masks for heat distortion and were ready to be dropped into shots.

Using this technique we had a very solid foundation of very similar looking and behaving fires. Of course for hero shots we would need to resim those, but with setups in place and our template system it was mostly straightforward. Of course there are shots that need to tell a certain story like a fire coming right at you towards camera. Solving a problem like reading a perspective of a selfilluminating matter coming right towards camera is a different beast though you can’t prep for! This just takes a lot of creativity and trial and error to get right…

DP: What’s the single biggest creative takeaway from The Lost Bus you’d carry into your next show?

Oliver Schulz:  Don’t try to put out all the fires at once….

DP: Which shot makes you proudest or gives you flashbacks?

Oliver Schulz: Oh there are so many good ones really, honestly when I was watching all shots in a row I was so happy about the overall level of quality the team achieved in every aspect. So hard to pick singles but the Embercam full CG shots looked amazing on the big screen and were pretty spectacular… but getting them to the state we delivered them in was quite a journey…

DP: Finally, if you had to redo The Lost Bus from scratch, what would you rebuild first? Vegetation tools, compositing templates, or your caffeine reserves?

Oliver Schulz: Myself :)

The post Rendering the Inferno at RiseFX: The Lost Bus first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

If you are used to grabbing shader freebies for Unreal, here is something refreshingly different: MatMADNESS, a 3D artist, has released a shader pack for Godot Engine aimed squarely at realistic human rendering. It runs in Godot 4.5 and is expected to work in 4.4 as well. The package contains a skin shader, an eye shader, and a separate shader for eye wetness. To make life easier, it comes bundled with sample models and a simple viewer. Everything is released under MIT and CC BY 4.0 licences. That means you can experiment, adapt, or build on it without licensing headaches. Get more info on itch.io and download everythign from Github.

My Skin and Eye Shaders are Available for FREE on GitHub! DEMO on Itch.io
byu/MatMADNESSart ingodot

The developer does note that the project is a work in progress and not actively maintained. Updates may or may not happen, so treat this more as a starting point than a polished, long-term solution.

Why Human Shaders Are Rare in Free Packs

Human shaders are not the kind of thing you find in every community repository. Stylised outlines, terrain shaders, toon materials, or procedural noise are much more common. Realistic human rendering requires a mix of subsurface scattering, multiple specular layers, and detail maps for pores and imperfections. Eyes introduce another level of complexity, since you need convincing refraction in the cornea, depth in the iris, accurate shading of the sclera, and at least a hint of wetness.

Performance is another issue. These features are costly, and free assets are often designed to run on modest hardware. Realistic skin shaders can demand a lot from the GPU, which makes them less attractive for free-to-use packs. On top of that, human shaders are rarely “one size fits all.” A good skin shader often needs tuning per character, with different maps for colour, normal, roughness, or subdermal scattering. Add the burden of keeping complex shader code maintained across engine updates, and it becomes clear why few artists release them publicly. That makes this pack from MatMADNESS unusual and valuable.

When to Use It

These shaders can serve multiple practical purposes. In previsualisation or prototyping, they let you set up a believable human quickly, just to test how lighting and mood work. In indie or student projects, they offer a way to achieve realism without writing custom shader code from scratch. For training and education, they provide a reference on how to implement skin shading, subsurface effects, and layered transparency in Godot. Research and VR projects can also benefit, since avatars and human-computer interaction studies often demand realistic digital humans. Even if your final product does not aim for realism, shaders like this are useful in internal tools or look-development scenes where you want assets to look more convincing.

Loading and Handling Shaders in Godot

Integrating the shaders into Godot follows a straightforward workflow. After downloading the pack, place the files into your project folder. Each shader file can be loaded as a Shader resource. You then create a ShaderMaterial and assign the shader to it, before applying the material to a mesh. Godot will expose uniforms defined in the shader, which means you can set textures, colour controls, or numerical parameters directly in the editor. This is where you would plug in detail maps for the skin or adjust the strength of the wetness effect on the eyes.

Lighting plays a significant role. Godot’s renderer can be set to forward+ or clustered, and results may differ depending on the choice. High-dynamic-range lighting, shadow settings, and environment probes all influence how convincing the shader looks. On top of this, the shaders should be performance-tested on the platforms you intend to ship on, as complex effects can hit framerate hard. The pack’s included model viewer is useful for testing, but before integrating into a production character pipeline, it is strongly recommended to iterate under the same lighting and hardware constraints you plan to target.

The State of Play

The shader pack is confirmed to run in Godot 4.5, and the licence makes it safe to experiment with in both personal and commercial projects. The fact that it comes with sample models and a simple viewer makes first tests easy, without needing to drag in your own rigged assets immediately. Given the “work in progress” status, developers should expect to tweak and maintain the shaders themselves if they want to rely on them for long-term projects.

Final Thoughts: Long Live Godot’s Human-Face Ambitions

It is refreshing to see a shader release like this in the Godot community. The engine is often associated with stylised indie games, so a public set of shaders that lean toward realism is a welcome surprise. For those wanting to go deeper into the engine, Digital Production author Helge Moos is running a comprehensive training programme at Pixeltrain where he develops a full game in Godot from scratch. These shaders can be dropped into such a project as test assets or even as a starting point for production work.

The post Skin Deep & Code Clean: Free Human Shaders for Godot (Yes, Godot, Not Unreal) first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Rahul Parihar has released Clay 4.Doh, the latest update to his procedural clay shader and toolkit for Blender. Announced on 22 August 2025, the update is free to existing users and continues the promise of one‑time purchase pricing with perpetual updates. The toolkit, originally designed to mimic the look and behaviour of real clay, now expands into new territory with additional tools, modifiers, and shader refinements.

Clay 4.Doh retains its foundation on Blender’s Principled BSDF shader, which ensures physically accurate rendering without requiring UV unwrapping or manual texturing. A single master node drives all clay variants, streamlining material creation for artists working across Cycles and Eevee. This design makes the shader predictable and consistent, an important consideration for production environments where stability outweighs novelty.

New Tools and Modifiers

The update introduces several new creative tools including a Pottery tool, Clay Text, and Eyes. These extend the procedural approach, allowing users to generate complex clay‑like effects without leaving Blender. Clay Text supports all fonts and languages, broadening its use in motion graphics as well as character work. The Eyes tool integrates directly into the clay system, enabling stylised character creation with consistent shading.

Clay 4.Doh also brings modifiers for Mesh, Curve, Grease Pencil, and VDB objects. This widens compatibility across Blender’s different object types, allowing artists to maintain the clay aesthetic whether working with geometry, strokes, or volumetrics. Fingerprints and finger dents have been upgraded, producing finer, more realistic surface variation. These refinements address one of the key demands in claymation‑style projects: believable tactile detail.

Animation, Surface Effects, and Rendering

Support for sticky textures ensures materials move correctly with animated meshes, preventing sliding artefacts. Clay 4.Doh continues to include stop‑motion capabilities, enabling animators to simulate the frame‑by‑frame look of traditional clay animation directly inside Blender. Additional surface overlays have been added, including glitter, dust, and crackle effects. These run alongside existing shader controls such as subsurface scattering, ambient occlusion, and transmission, giving artists flexibility in shading without adding complexity to the node setup.

The toolkit is positioned as a production‑ready material system. By remaining tightly bound to Blender’s existing rendering engines and keeping everything node‑based, the workflow avoids external dependencies. This ensures projects can be archived or shared without versioning headaches.

Pricing and Availability

Clay 4.Doh is sold exclusively through Superhive Market. Pricing is tiered: Clay Doh Solo at 35 US dollars for individual users, Clay Doh Team at 140 US dollars for up to five users, and Clay Doh Studio at 299 US dollars for up to fifteen users. All licences are non‑subscription and include future updates at no extra cost. For a limited time, buyers can apply the discount code “claydoh25” for 25 percent off. The package includes tutorials and documentation, with further training available on Rahul Parihar’s YouTube channel.

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ClayDoh Product Page – Superhive Market

The post Clay 4.Doh Update Sculpts Blender Workflow first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Navigating complex shader trees in Blender can feel like wandering through a labyrinth blindfolded. Enter Shader View, an innovative add-on that displays real-time output previews directly above each node, eliminating the tedious back-and-forth of connecting nodes to the material output just to see their effects. This tool renders node output previews in the background, ensuring a fluid workflow even in projects with over 200 nodes.

Performance and Customization at Your Fingertips

Shader View is optimized for performance, handling extensive shader trees smoothly. Each node’s preview is customizable, allowing adjustments to fit your specific workflow. You can modify the render sample count, switch between EEVEE and Cycles render engines, and toggle lighting modes—particularly useful when working with normal maps. The add-on also intelligently prevents node preview overlaps, keeping your node editor clean and organized.

A Nod to Node Preview

Inspired by Simon Wendsche’s Node Preview add-on, Shader View enhances the concept with several improvements:

• Per-Node Customization: Independent settings for each node provide greater flexibility.
• Animation Compatibility: Functions seamlessly with animated shaders.
• Performance Tuning: Adjustable settings ensure smooth operation, even on older hardware.
• Active Socket Highlighting: Highlights the active output socket for nodes with multiple outputs.
• Overlap Prevention: Smart logic prevents rendered previews from overlapping.
• User-Friendly Interface: Designed for ease of use without compromising functionality.

Pricing and Availability

Shader View is available for purchase on Gumroad for $14.90.

The post Real-Time Node Previews in Blender—Because Guesswork is So Last Year first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

A Two-Step Conversion Process
The Import-Maya-Shaders tool simplifies the migration of materials from Autodesk Maya to Blender. Developed by VFX director Robert Rioux, this open-source package focuses on converting Maya’s Arnold aiStandardSurface shaders into Blender’s Principled BSDF format.

The conversion involves two main steps:

1. Export from Maya: First, export your geometry as an FBX file. Then, run the provided MayaExportShader.py script in Maya’s script editor. This action prompts a file browser to save the shader description as a JSON file.
2. Import into Blender: After installing the import_maya_shader.zip add-on in Blender, import the previously exported FBX file. Navigate to File > Import > Import Maya shader (json) and select the JSON file. The tool will then reconstruct the shaders in Blender.

Limitations to Consider
While Import-Maya-Shaders is a valuable asset for basic shader conversion, it has its constraints. The tool is designed to handle straightforward shader trees. If your Maya shaders incorporate complex nodes such as addMix, ramps, or curves, the conversion may not proceed as intended. Additionally, the tool exclusively supports aiStandardSurface shaders. In cases where no file input exists, it will utilize the existing shader values, including RGB information.

Availability and Licensing
The Import-Maya-Shaders package is available for free under the GPL-3.0 license. You can access and download the tool from its GitHub repository.

Proceed with Caution
While this tool offers a convenient method for transferring shaders between Maya and Blender, it’s essential to recognize its limitations. Complex shader networks may require additional manual adjustments post-conversion. As with any new tool, it’s advisable to test its capabilities on non-critical projects before integrating it into your primary production pipeline. For a comprehensive understanding and access to the tool, visit the Import-Maya-Shaders GitHub page.

The post Import-Maya-Shaders: Bridging Maya and Blender first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Shaders and bitmaps – textures in two forms

In the last part of our series, we looked at methods for smoothing geometric facets. The work of Henri Gouraud (1971) and Bui Tong Phong (1975) are central to this. Phong shading in particular aims to smooth the surface behaviour of an object with a limited number of polygons in such a way that the impression of a smooth surface with flawless reflections is created. Diffuse and specular reflections therefore appear as if an infinite number of polygons are involved.

If you like, Phong shading, the Phong lighting model and all BRDFs based on it basically add a level of detail that is not given by the pure number of polygons. This is particularly noticeable in BRDFs such as Cook-Torrance or Oren-Nayar, which are based on microscopically small surface irregularities without these actually being present as polygons.
Textures follow a similarly enhancing approach: as a coating for 3D models, they increase the visual level of detail of an object without increasing the level of detail of the geometry. For example, a carbon fibre component does not have to be modelled from countless microscopically fine carbon fibres, but the corresponding texture creates this level of detail (Figure 1). There are two different approaches for the application of textures – shaders and bitmaps.

• Shaders – rule-based patterns: Shaders are small programmes within 3D software or a game engine that specify surface properties according to certain mathematical rules. In C4D, a slightly turbulent colour gradient shader can create the effect of slight damage on the edges of a window sill, for example (image 2). However, shaders can not only imitate natural surfaces, they can also react interactively: For example, the ambient occlusion shader creates a darkening depending on the object approaches.

Image 2: Shader in use: On the lower edge of the window sill, a slightly turbulent colour gradient simulates the effect of slight edge damage. On the tabletop, a subtle ambient occlusion shader creates diffuse shading as it approaches the tea lights. On the glass of the candles, total internal reflection and emitted reflection create the typical double reflections, and a subsurface scattering shader in the luminaire channel of the wax ensures light scattering below the surface

• Bitmaps – photo wallpapers: In addition to shaders, bitmaps, i.e. pixel images such as .tiff or .jpg, can also be used as textures. These images are applied to the object in question like a photo wallpaper using certain projection methods. In contrast to shaders, bitmap textures are easy to calculate and generate a high level of realism in themselves, although this comes at the cost of a lack of flexibility and limited bitmap resolution.

Materials are displayed in the material manager as freely nameable icons. Materials are then assigned to specific objects in C4D using drag-and-drop: The material icon in the material manager is simply dragged onto the desired object in the object manager. It is then created there as a texture tag next to the object. The material can also be assigned by dragging and dropping it onto the object in the viewport.
Right-clicking on the material icon in the material manager offers interesting options such as selecting the associated object in the object manager (“Texture tags / Select objects” command) or selecting the material icons of currently active objects (“Select materials of active objects” command). Double-clicking on the material icon opens the
Material editor, which then offers the actual option of editing the material.

Channelling material properties

The channel-based nature of C4D materials becomes apparent in the C4D material editor. The term “channel” is basically just a synonym for a certain aspect of a material (Fig. 5).

Figure 5: Control centres side by side: material editor, texture tag in the object manager and its parameters in the attribute manager. In the material editor, the expanded colour selector in “Colour wheel” mode offers numerous options for creating colour harmonies. Details on texture projection can be found in the corresponding drop-down menu of the texture tag

Colour

The colour channel defines the diffuse reflection of the material with a colour selector, a brightness control for blending with black and the option of loading and blending bitmap textures or shaders. This basic configuration is common to all colour-relevant channels of a material. The colour channel also has a drop-down menu for lighting models (“Lambert” or “Oren-Nayar”, see part 1 of the article series). The colour channel fulfils an essential task of a texture: it basically says: “Show me where I am in the light”.
Since R18, the colour picker mentioned above has been a powerful tool for systematically creating, analysing and changing colours. It has three different modes:
Colour circle: Here, colours are arranged in a circle around a centre point and can be varied in a separate brightness scale. The plus and minus buttons can be used to create sample points in the colour circle and move them freely. Above the colour circle there are buttons for creating different colour harmonies according to the artistic discipline of colour theory. Generated sample points are brought into certain relations to each other by these buttons in order to match the selected colour harmony
Colour harmony – e.g. “complementary”, “tetrad” or “equiangular” (Fig. 5).
In the colour spectrum, colours are arranged as a linear spectrum and can be varied according to brightness and saturation in the field to the left.
With colour-from-image, colours can be taken from a loaded reference image. Here too, sample points can be created and freely moved using the plus and minus buttons.
The “Average” drop-down field offers the choice between pixel-precise or average-based colour determination. Clicking on the small mosaic symbol calls up the “Detail” control field, which can be used to create a coarsening of the image that reflects the average colour of an image area.
In all three modes, you can choose between different colour spaces, namely RGB, HSV and a Kelvin scale extended by a colouring function (“T” for “Tint”). In addition to these three options, there is also a colour mixer for creating a colour from two mixing sources, a colour field system for organising and saving colour fields and a colour pipette for colour samples from the entire desktop.
The extensive options of the colour selector can be visually reduced and made clearer using the “Compact” mode. This mode can be found as a button directly under the “Colour” field and can be defined as the default in the program settings (“Units”).
Diffusion

The task of this channel is to darken surfaces. Greyscale information from bitmap textures or shaders is evaluated in order to attenuate the glow channel, highlight or reflection in addition to the colour channel. The term “difussion” is therefore rather misleading. The most common use of the diffusion channel is the use of the ambient occlusion shader or smart modifications of it (see Figure 3).

Luminaires

The luminaire channel defines self-illumination in the sense of ambient, lighting-independent illumination. In terms of the Phong lighting model, it would be responsible for the ambient component(see last part of the article series). A frequent use of the luminaire channel is the use of the subsurface scattering shader (Figure 2). In combination with Global Illumination, the luminaire channel can also generate actual light.

Transparency

This channel is responsible for the transparency and refraction of transparent materials. If bitmap textures or shaders are loaded, they vary the transparency according to colour and brightness. The channel tracks a number of important parameters: Refraction defines the refractive index (IOR, Index of Refraction) of the material (e.g. water 1.33). Fresnel reflection creates a reflection dependent on the viewing angle (yes, you read that right – in the transparency channel!). The “total internal reflection” produces a reflection in the direction of the surface normal, while “exit reflection” produces a reflection in the opposite direction to the surface normal. These two reflections can be used, for example, to generate the double reflections of glass vessels (see Fig. 2). However, switching off the exit reflection can produce a somewhat tidier appearance and also save computing time. Absorption colour and distance determine over what distance the light is absorbed and in what colour – ideal for creating coloured liquids – and last but not least, the matt effect defines whether and to what extent the transparency is scattered, e.g. for frosted glass. The process is sample-based, so it can affect the rendering time.

Reflectivity

The reflectivity channel in C4D accommodates all reflective aspects of a material in the form of various reflectivity models. These can be stacked as layers in a photo
these can be stacked on top of each other as layers in photo-shop style, offset against each other and mixed. You can choose from a range of different reflectivity models. These are basically BRDFs in which (with two exceptions) only the specular reflective aspects are analysed.
In doing so, we again encounter the names of old acquaintances: BRDFs for sharp or scattered specular reflections are, for example
Beckmann, GGX, Phong or Ward. The reflectivity models that are capable of generating a true specular reflection (Beckmann, GGX, Ward, anisotropy) also have their own specular component so that specular and specular reflection can be controlled separately for each model. Here is an overview of the most important models:

• Beckmann as a preset standard model is suitable for most applications such as plastic, water surfaces, glass etc. With pronounced reflective roughness, the curve diagram shows a rather abrupt end in the decrease curve. The Ward model is very similar, but produces somewhat duller reflective surfaces with higher roughness.
• GGX, on the other hand, is characterised by a significantly broader, softer acceptance behaviour of scattered (rough) reflections. It is therefore ideal for metals with pronounced diffuse reflections (Fig. 6).

Spat mapping: This type of projection is basically an enlarged surface mapping. However, the texture is shifted diagonally to the left with increasing object depth.
UVW mapping: We are already familiar with the three spatial axes X, Y and Z when working with 3D space. Points of a polygon object can be precisely recorded using these coordinates. In order to capture the points of a 2D texture exactly, a 2D coordinate system is required on this 3D object. And this is exactly what UVW coordinates are.
Why all this? As long as objects fit into the above-mentioned shape categories such as surface, sphere, etc. and do not have complicated geometry, the above-mentioned projection types are ideal. For more complicated geometry, further modelling steps or even deformation of the object, however, UVW mapping is unavoidable: it virtually nails the 2D coordinates of a texture to the 3D coordinates of an object – a property that the geometric projection types do not have (Fig. 10).
In addition to fixing texture coordinates, UVW mapping also offers the option of precisely assigning texture areas to an object surface. To do this, however, the UVW coordinate system must first be relaxed and unwound in Bodypaint 3D – an area that is beyond the scope of this series of articles.
By the way: Basic and spline objects (Lathe, Extrude, etc.) are automatically equipped with UVW coordinates. If these bodies are converted into polygon objects using “C”, a UVW tag is created which saves the UVW information. If you want to create a UVW mapping from the other projection types, use the object manager menu to create tags / UVW tags for polygon objects. For basic and spline objects, go to Object manager menu > Tags > C4D tags > Texture fixation.

Shrink mapping: With this type of mapping, the texture is placed over the object in a spherical shape and shrunk at the south pole, similar to the net on a hot air balloon.
Camera mapping: With camera mapping, a selected camera acts as a slide projector that projects the corresponding texture onto the object. To do this, the corresponding camera object must be dragged into the “Camera” field. If the camera is now moved or rotated, the projection changes accordingly.

• Side: This drop-down menu determines on which side of the surface normal the texture is displayed. The default setting is “Both” – ideal for logos on glass objects, for example.
• Tile: If a bitmap texture or a 2D shader does not completely cover an object, its structure is repeated by default, i.e. tiled like a floor tile.
• Seamless: This option sets texture tiles to mirror each other at their edges.
• Offset U/V: Irrespective of the projection type (sphere, surface, UVW, etc.), U denotes the width information, while V represents the height information. In the case of a 3D texture (e.g. 3D marble), a W coordinate for the depth would theoretically also be involved. If the U / V offset is changed, the start of the texture is shifted accordingly.
• Length U/V: Analogue to “Offset”, the texture can be scaled along U and V here.

Once you have finally applied your texture to the object using one or other projection type, further corrections to the position, rotation or scaling of the texture may be necessary. The projection of the texture on the object is displayed in C4D with a so-called texture cage. This is a yellow wireframe model that represents the selected projection type. This becomes visible as soon as you select the texture mode in the tool column on the left in C4D when the object is active.
An automated adjustment of the projection to the dimensions of the object can be carried out using the “Tags / Adjust to object” command in the Object Manager menu, for example. This adjusts the scaling of the texture cage to the dimensions of the object. Variations of the command also exist for adjusting to the size of the texture image, the size of an expandable frame or adjusting to various axes.
If you want to move, rotate or scale the texture cage as a whole, the most convenient way is to also activate the axis mode in the tool menu. The texture cage can then be moved, rotated or scaled along the axes accordingly. In principle, this procedure does not apply to UVW mapping.
In the next article in this series, we will look at how to use all this knowledge to create elegant, convincing textures and illuminate them credibly.

The post Shading, Lighting & Rendering with Cinema 4D R19 (Part 2) first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.