Friday, November 25th, 2016 Posted by Jim Thacker

Marmoset releases Toolbag 3


Originally posted on 21 October 2016. Scroll down for news of the commercial release.

Marmoset has unveiled Toolbag 3, a major update to its real-time rendering toolkit for games artists, adding animation support, global illumination, texture baking and a “slew of new features”.

The release, which is currently in open beta, is due for commercial release 25 November 2016.

Support for rendering animations, including both tech animations and characters
One major new feature in Toolbag 3, originally teased in Marmoset’s GDC showreel, is support for rendering animations, as opposed to simple stills and turntables of models.

Demo footage in the preview video above includes both technical animations and skinned characters.

According to Marmoset, the update introduces “entirely new systems for importing and keyframing meshes, lights, cameras [and] post effects”.

Real-time GI and other rendering improvements
There are also a number of improvements to the quality of rendered ouptut, ranging from support for real-time global illumination to a new Local Reflections effect intended for “high-sample screenshots”.

The update also introduces a new skin shader.

New texture baker supports a wide range of common map types
Another major new feature is integrated support for texture baking, shown briefly at the end of the video.

According to the discussion thread on Polycount, the baker can export tangent and object space normals, curvature, height and ambient occlusion maps.

Material IDs and material properties (“currently albedo, spec and gloss”) are also supported.

Direct export to Unity and UE4; support for console commands
Toolbag’s export options have also been extended, with direct export to the Unity and Unreal Engine game engines, and the increasingly industry-standard artist portfolio site ArtStation.

There is also a new – and presumably self-explanatory – ‘Scene Bundle’ export feature.

According to comments from beta testers in this thread on The Foundry’s forum, the release also supports console commands, making it possible to “run scripted macros out of Toolbag”.


Updated 25 November 2016: Toolbag 3 is now shipping for Windows 7+. The Mac version is still in development, but Toolbag 2 is still available for Mac OS X 10.9+.

Marmoset has also raised its prices: whereas Toolbag 2 cost $149, new licences of Toolbag 3 cost $189 for individual artists and $349 for studios. You can read the pricing FAQs here.

Both types of licence are currently available at a launch discount.


Read more about in Toolbag 3 on Marmoset’s website
(Includes videos of the new features)