Material Maker 0.9

Material Maker has been updated to 0.9, with user interface improvements, a bunch of new nodes and a full rewrite of the export system.

Please don't hesitate to report bugs, submit ideas for new features and new nodes, or show the awesome materials you create!

User interface

• Side panels can now be moved (to top left, top right, bottom left or bottom right) by dragging their title bar or hidden using the View -> Panes submenu to customize the UI.
  
  

• A new  Hierarchy pane shows the current material's group hierarchy. It can show from 0 to 3 output preview images for each group (this can be configured by right clicking in the pane). If you use groups a lot, navigating complex materials is now quick and easy; if you don't, it's definitely the right time to give them a try.
  In case you don't want to see this pane, the button that shows the hierarchy popup in the graph pane is still there.
• The graph pane can now show a 2D preview as background (by clicking on the "bricks" button).
• A new popup menu for adding nodes on graph edit can be shown with the space key, or by connecting an output to an empty space (this new features was contributed by Metin ÇETİN).
• A new menu to select the default, dark or light UI theme.
• The Paste and Duplicate commands have been updated to create the new nodes at the mouse pointer's location.
• Nodes don't have "eye" buttons for their output preview anymore. Just click on an output slot to show (or hide) its preview, and a circle will be shown around the previewed output.

Export

The export command has been completely rewritten to be able to export for several game engines, and generate additional files.
It now has 3 export options:

• Godot export generates all PNG and a .tres file that can directly be used in Godot. Alternatively, the Material Maker addon for Godot will be updated soon and will add an import plugin for .ptex files. PTEX material textures can either be prerendered when importing or generated at runtime.
• Unity export generates the necessary PNG files and a .mat material file, ready to use in Unity.
• Unreal export generates PNG files usable directly in an Unreal material. Creating a simple Unreal material from those is described in the documentation.

Since I discovered Unity and Unreal engine while adding this feature, I guess we can consider this as beta, and it probably needs your feedback!

Command line

• The path to a .ptex file can be specified as command line argument to directly open a project. This makes it possible to associate Material Maker with the .ptex extension.
• It is possible to export several materials for Godot, Unity or Unreal engine using the --export command line argument.

Nodes

• Comment nodes now have editable title and color
• 3D signed distance function nodes nowsupport a color index, and the 3D/SDF/Render node has a new color index output.
• New nodes have been added for 3D textures (2D texture projection, pattern, fractional Brownian motion), 3D textures operators (rotate, colorize, distort, blend), a node to mix 3D textures per index, and a node to apply a 3D texture. All this is based on hacks by Paulo Falcão.
  

• A new 2D fractional Brownian motion node has been added, with support for value, Perlin and Voronoi noise.
• New Splatter and Tiler nodes have been added. Splatter instanciates its input image several times to its outputs. Tiler does the same by placing instances on a grid and applying a random offset (results are similar, but tiler can handle a lot more instances). Both can randomly scale and rotate instances, and support an input mask that define zones where instances cannot be created. Finally, both accept 2x2 or 4x4 arrays of images and pick them randomly for each instance, and have a greyscale and a color variant.

• The new Tiler2x2 node has 4 inputs and outputs a 2x2 array of its inputs, mainly useful to produce arrays for Splatter and Tiler.

Miscellaneous

• It is now possible to create new input/output slots types by editing a .json file and adding a preview shader file.