Open-source material authoring software Material Maker 1.7 is out
Material Maker is now available on Steam. Users of the open-source material authoring and 3D texture painting software can now support development by buying the $14.99 Steam edition.
Tools developer Rod Zilla has released Material Maker 1.7, the latest version of the open-source node-based material authoring and 3D texture painting software.
The update adds a new Dynamic Sky Material, implements 32-bit support in more nodes, and makes the software available to buy on Steam, as well to download for free.
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.
The software also includes 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 1.7: new Dynamic Sky material
New features in Material Maker 1.7 include the Dynamic Sky Material (shown above), for generating procedural sky or deep space textures.
Several existing nodes get support for 32-bit image data, and it is now possible to use a parameter as the default value for the metallic input in PBR materias.
Workflow improvements include options to toggle side panels, to save and load custom layouts of UI panels, new keyboard shortcuts for the quickbar, and thumbnail previews in the file dialog.
You can find a full list of changes via the link at the foot of this story.
Now available to buy on Steam if you want to support future development
However, the biggest change – and the one that has taken up most of the development effort – is that Material Maker is now available on Steam.
The software remains free to download from Itch.io, so the new $14.99 Steam edition is mainly a way for people who want to support future development to do so.
As a bonus for doing so, you get a set of game-style Steam achievements – including the easily achievable ‘Spaghetti Monster’, for creating a node graph with over 100 connections.
Availability and system requirements
Material Maker 1.7 is available for Windows, Linux and macOS. The source code is available on GitHub under an open-source MIT licence.
The compiled binaries are free downloads, but if you like the software, you can support development by backing it on Patreon, or by buying it on Steam.
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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