Check out free material authoring software Material Maker 1.5
The Material Maker showreel showcase materials created with the open-source software.
Tools developer Rod Zilla has released Material Maker 1.5, the latest version of the free node-based material authoring and 3D texture painting software.
The open-source app can now load images in DDS format and load 3D meshes in FBX format, and gets 10 new nodes, including seven SDF nodes.
A simple but capable free alternative to the Substance 3D tools
First released in 2018, Material Maker is a procedural texture generator based the Godot engine.
Its workflow is reminiscent of Substance 3D Designer, Adobe’s games-industry-standard material authoring tool, enabling artists to create procedural textures via visual programming.
Users drag nodes – there are currently around 200 – from a library panel to the graph editor and wire their inputs and outputs together, with the resulting generated texture being previewed in real time on a 3D mesh.
Completed materials can be exported as PBR texture maps, with the software including export templates for Unity and Unreal Engine as well as Godot.
More recently, the software added a 3D texture painting system, along the lines of Substance 3D Painter, enabling users to paint directly onto the surface of 3D models.
Material Maker 1.5: support for common file formats for games
Compared to Material Maker 1.4, which was in development for over two years, Material Maker 1.5 isn’t quite as big an update, although it’s still pretty wide-ranging.
Key changes include support for loading images in DDS format, widely used for games textures, and for loading meshes in FBX format.
The update also reinstates the command-line interface, making it possible to bulk-export materials from the command line.
Updates to the node graph, Library panel and Reference panel
Material Maker 1.5 also introduces 10 new nodes, including seven SDF nodes.
Workflow in the node graph has been improved, with support for lasso selection of nodes, and a number of new keyboard shortcuts.
There are also workflow improvements to the software’s Library panel and Reference panel, including the option to paste a reference image from the clipboard.
Availability and system requirements
Material Maker 1.5 is available free for Windows, Linux and macOS. The source code is available on GitHub under an open-source MIT licence.
If you like the software, you can support development by backing it on Patreon.
Download compiled versions of Material Maker for free from Rod Zilla’s itch.io page
(Includes the option to make a voluntary donation)
Read more about Material Maker in the online documentation
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