For those who don’t know the tool: OptiDraw is an in editor mesh painting extension for Unity that aims to keep vertex, mask, and splat style painting close to your materials, shaders, and scene context.

A mesh painter that stays in engine

OptiDraw positions itself as a framework for texturing work inside the Unity Editor, with a focus on centralizing painting and data handling rather than sending artists on a DCC roundtrip for every tweak. Marketing claims call out a zero lag painting experience on static and animated meshes, plus workflows designed to feel familiar to artists coming from Adobe Substance 3D.

The core pitch: paint directly on meshes in the editor, store paint data in reusable assets, and keep the iteration loop short enough that you actually use it. If your pipeline already leans on mesh painting to drive blends, wear, grime, decals, or procedural masks, the idea here is simple. Do the edits where you preview the final shading.

Setup, shortcuts, and the first five minutes

OptiDraw claims (!) a one click setup flow. You open the Mesh Painter window from a top menu entry labeled R2G then OptiDraw then Mesh Painter, dock it where you want, and select an object in the scene.

On selection, the tool describes an auto initialization step that prepares a MonoBehaviour component, adds a Mesh Collider to the selected GameObject, and links a ScriptableObject asset to store painting data. The tool also bringsa Draw Mode toggle you can hit via the B key or a Draw Mode button to enter paint mode, with a brush gizmo shown in the Scene view.

There is also a compatibility check concept baked into the workflow. The documentation describes checks for mesh and shader compatibility, and it describes UI states where Draw Mode becomes non interactive if no compatible object is selected.

Data management, not just brushes

OptiDraw leans hard on a ScriptableObject driven data model, with an OptidrawData asset as the persistent storage for vertex colors and mask data, and an OptiDraw Mesh component as the bridge that connects that data to a GameObject.

The tool has a non destructive auto copy approach that keeps the original mesh untouched while managing the data needed for painting. It also includes a folder strategy split between an Editor folder setup intended to keep final build size smaller by excluding raw data, and a Runtime or Resources approach intended for cases where you need to modify paint data via C# during gameplay for things like dynamic damage or snow.

This matters more than it sounds. A painter that creates mystery folders and fragile references becomes a liability fast. OptiDraw makes claims about clean data management and efficient linking. In practice, you still want to verify how it behaves with prefab variants, source control, and multi artist merges before you bet a production on it.

Two engines, two very different failure modes

OptiDraw exposes two headline painting modes: Vertex Painting and Splat Painting.

Vertex Painting stores data directly in mesh vertices. The documentation frames it as useful for variation, blending, and environmental detailing without high resolution texture overhead. It also calls out the obvious constraint: resolution depends on mesh density, and topology changes after painting can break the relationship between vertex IDs and the stored data. If you plan to repaint after mesh edits, you will want a repeatable process and a stable asset handoff.

Splat Painting stores data in a texture map via UV coordinates, framed as a way to get pixel precise masks for complex blends and weathering effects. The documentation also lists the expected tradeoffs: texture memory, a need for clean non overlapping UV layouts, and some performance overhead from shader sampling compared to reading raw vertex data. If you ship on constrained hardware, this becomes a budgeting conversation, not a feature checkbox.

The tool also describes channel targeting across RGBA, paint operations like add, replace, and erase, a normal limit control to reduce bleed across sharp angles, and a seamless paint option to minimize seams across UV islands, texture borders, or submeshes. Around one third into a production, this is also where you will appreciate having robust undo and redo instead of a single irreversible mistake that haunts your repo forever. Marketing claims say undo and redo is robust. I did not test that.

Animated meshes and the unglamorous armpit problem

OptiDraw supports Mesh Renderers and Skinned Mesh Renderers. For skinned meshes, the documentation describes an Animation Draw tab that appears automatically when a Skinned Mesh Renderer is detected.

Animation Draw Mode is described as a specialized mode that lets you paint directly on meshes while they are in motion or at a specific animation frame, with a single Animation Clip slot you drag and drop into the UI. The UI is described with play and pause controls, a scrubber, frame stepping, and a clip duration readout.

The documentation describes the workflow advantage in plain terms: you can pose a character to access difficult regions and paint fixes in context, rather than guessing in T pose. It also claims deformation consistency by being aware of bones and weights, with the goal of avoiding texture sliding or warping issues. That is a marketing claim, and it is exactly the kind of thing you should stress test on your own rigs, since skinning setups vary wildly.

If your project sits inside game development production reality, you already know the rule: always test on the worst character in the build, not the best demo mesh.

UV channels, UDIM tiles, and why your mesh can still be the bottleneck

OptiDraw has support for up to four UV channels, UV0 through UV3, and it also describes UDIM aware splat painting for UV islands that extend beyond the standard 0 to 1 space. The documentation frames this as important for splat painting setups where textures use clamp for performance and where other tools might force remapping.

It also describes how UDIM support gets surfaced in the UI. You link an OptidrawData asset, inspect mesh info to see which UV channels support UDIM and how many submeshes exist, then navigate UV tiles through a viewer that shows tile coordinates. You then input those coordinates into the OptiDraw Mesh component per submesh, with the note that optimized workflows typically separate tiles into different submeshes for material needs.

Mesh compatibility still matters. The documentation describes an incompatible mesh case where the active UV channel contains overlapping islands or islands that cross tile boundaries, which can cause incorrect painting results and unexpected behavior. It also describes a compatible mesh case where at least one UV channel contains islands properly contained within a single tile, even if other channels have cross tile UVs.

It also describes a Unity side fix for missing or invalid UV data using the model importer option to generate lightmap UVs, producing a secondary UV channel where islands pack into a single tile. That is a pragmatic fallback, but it does not magically fix every projection requirement. Asset quality still sets the ceiling for how well any painter behaves.

Layers that look like a familiar UI, with an unfamiliar performance bill

OptiDraw includes a Layer System similar to modern image editing software and also similar to Unity Terrain Layers in how you select and paint a specific layer. There is also an explicit performance warning: the system is designed to support four PBR texture layers as a sweet spot. The documentation says the system can support eight layers or more on a single object but advises against eight layers on one mesh due to performance bottlenecks from texture sampling and memory overhead. That warning is more useful than most feature lists, because it tells you where the tool expects you to stop.

If your shader stack already sits in URP, you will still want to validate how many texture samples you can afford in your target platforms, and how many variants you want to maintain once layers enter the mix.

Shader integration: template route or build your own

OptiDraw describes shader requirements for proper data communication between the painter and the mesh, and it frames shader integration as either plug and play with templates or a custom setup.

The documentation says the package includes 11 template shaders located at Assets then Run2Go Studio then OptiDraw by ProfX then Shaders, and that you can find them in the shader picker under a category labeled R2G then LayeredLit. It also says that for developers using Unity 6.3, the tool is compatible with an official Sample Texture Terrain Shadergraph with minor tweaks. For custom setups, the documentation describes Shader Graph custom support via 21 subgraphs and custom HLSL scripts for blending and vertex modifications, described as modular so you can include or exclude functions.

Utility tools: channel packing with guard rails

OptiDraw includes a Texture Channel Packer described as a free utility that combines up to four grayscale textures into a single RGBA texture. The documentation frames this as a standard channel packing workflow for PBR maps to reduce texture samplers and memory footprint, and it says the tool supports custom channel mappings including common conventions like ORM.

Export formats are TGA and PNG, and the channel packer window cannot be docked as a tab within the Unity Editor.

Price and release details

On the Unity Asset Store, OptiDraw is listed as an “Extension Asset” and the latest version 3.2.2 and an original Unity version of 6000.0.67. The render pipeline compatibility section shows compatibility for Built in, URP, and HDRP at Unity version 6000.0.67f1.

The Asset Store price is €36.79.

As always, test any new tool before you let it touch production assets. Verify the data it generates, the shader hooks it expects, and the performance profile on your target hardware before you scale it across a project.

Link Citation Block

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/painting/optidraw-advanced-mesh-painting-tool-361248?clickref=1110l3SaYMtQ

The post OptiDraw paints animated meshes inside Unity first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

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.

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 site: FippedNormals is/was a CG store for assets and training you use alongside Blender, ZBrush, Unreal Engine, and the Substance 3D tools, when your pipeline needs fewer guesses and more ready-to-ship bits. Also Plugins, Tutorials, 3d-Printfiles and much more.

The dates you need on your calendar

The FlippedNormals Marketplace will stop accepting new orders on March 31, 2026. After that, purchases are done. Access to previously purchased files stays available until April 30, 2026. After that date, marketplace files will no longer be accessible. Creator payouts have a final date too. The last creator payout happens on April 15, 2026.

April 30, 2026 is also tied to creator operations, because the Creator Dashboard shuts down on the same day customers lose access to file hosting. If you bought something in the past, invoices matter. An invoice was emailed after every purchase, and it should be in the email inbox used at checkout. You can keep what you have locally forever, but you need to get it locally first. Treat April 30, 2026 as a hard donwload deadline, not a friendly suggestion.

What is actually shutting down

This is a shutdown of the marketplace, not a blanket disappearance of everything connected to it. The official plan is a smaller, more focused reboot that pivots away from running a broad storefront with thousands of creators. The new website is planned to focus on FlippedNormals Exclusives and FlipBox.

Why it is happening

The reason given is simple and painfully familiar to anyone who has ever stared at an infrastructure bill and then stared at their revenue chart. Expenses increased significantly over the last years while earnings decreased. Salary reductions were also mentioned as part of efforts to keep things going.

A key detail here is that revenue from FlippedNormals Exclusives was used to keep the marketplace afloat during that period. That combination of higher operating costs, lower earnings, and internal cost cutting still led to the conclusion that the marketplace model was no longer sustainable. If you are reading this as a warning label for other niche CG storefronts, resist the urge to generalize. The only confirmed facts here are the reasons described for this specific shutdown, not the whole sector.

What customers should do right now

Log in, open your library, and pull down everything you have paid for to local storage before April 30, 2026. If your workflow spans multiple machines, back up like you mean it. Put a copy on a second drive. Put another copy wherever your studio keeps long-term project archives. If you rely on invoice PDFs for accounting, store those alongside the content so future you does not have to play detective.

If you depend on the platform for recurring downloads during a production, plan to stop depending on it before the cutoff. The last thing you want is a late-night render emergency that turns into an “amrketplace is gone” surprise.

There is also a specific path for owners of exclusives content. If you purchased FlippedNormals Exclusives on the current marketplace, there is a process to move them to the new site once it launches.

That process requires contacting support after the new site is live, using the support email address. A 100 percent promo code is described as the mechanism to migrate courses to a new account. One more detail that will trip up anyone on autopilot: you will have to make a new user account for the new site as part of that migration flow.

What creators should expect

If you sell on marketplaces, you already know the question creators ask first: what about payouts. The official timeline includes a final creator payout date of April 15, 2026. That is presented as the last payout event. There is also an operational cutoff on April 30, 2026, when the Creator Dashboard shuts down.

If you are a creator and you have analytics, product files, thumbnails, descriptions, license text, or customer support notes you rely on, assume you need to export whatever you can before that dashboard goes dark.

The new site focus, as described, narrows the catalog to FlippedNormals Exclusives and FlipBox. That is a very different value proposition from a wide creator marketplace, even if the UI ends up sleeker. If your pipeline planning relies on “I can always re-download that later,” change the habit. This event is a reminder that availability is a feature you only notice once it is gone.

https://help.flippednormals.com/article/130-flippednormals-marketplace-closing-down-faq

The post FlippedNormals Marketplace closes March 31 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Unity is a realtime game engine that ships to desktop and consoles, and Platform Toolkit sits in the build and platform integration layer, so your release pipeline spends less time arguing with targets and more time making frames.

What changed and when

A Unity product update at the Game Developers Conference included two platform-focused announcements. First, official Steam support is planned, including a native solution intended to help bring games to the platform. This support should be covering Steam, Steam Deck, and Steam Machine.

Second, targeted enhancements to the engine Linux runtime are planned with the goal of native performance increases. The same update frames this work as a way to reduce reliance on running Windows builds through Proton.

https://twitter.com/unitygames/status/2031777294394552663

Steam support without the scavenger hunt

If you have shipped on Steam before, you already know the punchline: it is possible, but the path has historically depended on what you integrate and how you maintain it over time. The new message is about making that experience feel like a supported lane rather than a community tradition. The announcement describes a built-in platform toolkit that will facilitate the workflow of bringing games to Steam. That phrasing matters for production because it points to changes that sit inside your day to day build and release loop, not just documentation or a sample project you copy once and then forget until it breaks on a Friday.

So for now, the important production takeaway is narrower and still useful: the roadmap points at a native solution for Steam targeting Steam Deck and Steam Machine as part of the same effort.

Linux runtime work aimed at less Proton reliance

The second half of the update calls out targeted enhancements to the Linux runtime in Unity, framed around native performance gains and removing the need to rely on Windows through Proton.

For teams shipping to Linux ecosystems, that focus is notable because runtime changes tend to land below your gameplay code and sometimes below your rendering decisions. When runtime behavior shifts, it can affect performance, stability, input, windowing, threading, and the kinds of issues that only appear on particular hardware and driver mixes.

Still, the direction is clear enough to influence planning. If your release strategy currently depends on Windows builds plus Proton, the announcement signals that native Linux performance is a priority area rather than an afterthought. That can change how you triage bugs, where you invest profiling time, and how you communicate platform expectations internally.

What is still missing

The story is big, but the specifics are currently thin in the provided material. There is no published schedule in the sources for when official Steam support will ship. There is no description of what the native solution includes, whether it is a package, an editor workflow, a build target configuration, or a set of services. There is no compatibility matrix that spells out editor versions, player versions, or which OS targets are covered.

That means any team looking to act immediately should treat this as a roadmap signal rather than a shipping feature drop. It is a green light to pay attention, not a license to rewrite your platform plan overnight.

https://unity.com

https://gdconf.com

The post Official Steam support lands on Unity roadmap first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.