DarkTree 2.5

DESCRIPTION
New 2.5 Features

• Cinema4D - DarkTree now includes plugin support for Cinema4D (Windows only).
• Renderman - DarkTree now includes plugin support for Renderman compatible renderers (Windows only).
• 3ds max - SimbiontMAX now supports render elements, baking, and radiosity.
• DarkTree Engine API - you can now write your own DarkTree based plugins.
• Component API - you can now code your own procedural components for DarkTree.
• Blend Tile - a new tile mode offers higher quality tiling results.
• Minimum/Maximum - all minimum and maximum components now have a new soft blend feature.
• Gamma Function - a new generator component for generating gamma curves.
• UVW Output - render bitmaps specifically for UVW mapped .obj and .lws models giving you bitmap speed and procedural quality.
• Large Output - render very large scale bitmaps in sections. This was designed specifically for billboard graphics.
• Normal Maps - bitmaps can now be rendered out as normal maps where color is used to encode the surface normal. Normal maps are higher quality than elevation bump maps and are used for real-timehardware shading.
• Larger Previews - component editor previews are now larger.
• Preview Zoom - you can now zoom in and out on the component editor preview allowing you to see your texture at different scales

DarkTree 2.5 is an advanced procedural shader authoring tool. By combining any of 100+ procedural components into a texture tree, you can interactively create photo-realistic textures, surface shaders, and animated effects.

The textures generated by DarkTrees are calculated in 3D space instead of being derived from bitmaps. Because of this, DarkTree materials can be rendered with full detail at any size, map seamlessly onto any shape, and can be easily changed during the creative process (or over time for special effects).

DarkTree textures and shaders can be saved out as bitmaps or brought directly into a 3D application via the included Simbiont plugins.

DarkTree 2.5 currently supports:

• RenderMan
• 3ds max
• LightWave
• Cinema4D
• trueSpace
• Animation:Master
• Plus, it has an API for creating your own plugins.

Since the release of DarkTree Textures 1.0 in 1998, DarkTree has proven itself a reliable and powerful tool in computer game, TV, and film production. DarkTree 2.5 continues to push the boundaries with the addition of new plugins for RenderMan and Cinema4D, large format and UVW bitmaps, and new APIs that allow you to write your own procedural components and DarkTree-based plugins.

Procedural Textures (calculated textures):

Advantages

• Reuse and Modify - DarkTree procedurals can be quickly changed at any time. Old materials can be tweaked and reused so that every surface looks fresh and new without having to redesign, paint, or photograph a new material.
• Placement - Generally, texture maps distribute details across your object's surface independent of your object's shape. This looks OK in some cases, like gravel, but is unrealistic in other cases, like rust placement. DarkTree procedurals allow you to export high level controls, like rustiness, that you can then place with bitmaps or vertex weights. (not available for trueSpace or Animation:Master)
• Resolution Independent - Since procedural textures are calculated at render time, they are always high resolution. Bitmaps get blurry as you zoom in while procedurals show you more detail.
• Visually Accurate Shading - Photo textures are pre-lit and so create false lighting cues when re-lit in a 3D scene, especially with bumpy textures. Procedurals provide raw unshaded surface attributes that render more accurately and result in more realistic looking output.
• 3D Mapping - When you attempt to apply a texture map to a 3D object, you immediately run into the problem of how to wrap a 2D bitmap onto a 3D object without distorting the texture. Procedurals, on the other hand, are 3D and so apply to any complex 3D shape without distortion.
• Low Memory Usage - Since procedural textures are calculated, they use up very little memory regardless of the detail level or surface area.

Disadvantages

• Aliasing - The down side of being resolution independent is that procedural textures can contain a great deal of detail. If you render a detailed procedural from a distance, you are likely to see aliasing problems and scintillation (sparkling) during animations. DarkTree provides a Surface Distance component that allows you to design textures that change their level of detail based on how far the surface is from the camera. This can fix the problem but requires you to design two or more versions of the procedural texture for different distances. A second solution is to render out the DarkTree as a texture map.
• Speed - Procedural textures are calculated at ``render time" which makes them substantially slower than bitmaps. DarkTree allows you to put an arbitrary number of components in a texture so you can use a few and keep it fast or put a lot and make it slow. You can render the procedurals out to bitmaps but you then lose the advantages of Resolution Independence, 3D Mapping, and Low Memory Usage. Some 3D packages include ``texture baking" features that allow you to pre-render procedurals making them as fast as bitmaps. DarkTree can render to some UVW map formats giving you the same advantages as baking.
• Difficulty - Procedural textures and shaders have long been the domain of only the most technical 3D artists. This is really the problem DarkTree was originally designed to solve. By providing a graphically rich interactive environment to create in, DarkTree artists can explore and create without being too technical. Designing procedurals still requires experimentation and some technical understanding.

Shading...Real

DarkTree 2.5 includes a single powerful empirical shader that's designed to emulate nearly any surface you will need. This shader component, called the DarkTree Shader, includes standard controls like diffuse, specular, glossiness, and transparency.

The DarkTree Shader also includes many nonstandard controls such as metal highlight, anisotropic specular, alpha, and a powerful clear coat specular layer with thickness and smoothing. In addition, customized function curves can be used to re-map the underlying specular and diffuse function curves. This allows you to emulate other shader algorithms and design exotic surface characteristics.

Shading...Unreal

Additional components like Incident and Posterboard allow you to add Fresnel and camera-facing non-photorealistic shaders.

Animated Procedurals

DarkTree 2.5's flexible framework makes it a powerful tool for creating texture and video effects.

Surface effects include animated shaders that can look like the fluid surface of liquid mercury, the rolling fireball of a nuclear bomb, or youthful skin that grows old and diseased. You can design effects that simply animate from one state to another; or you can set up multiple tweak controls and keyframe them in your 3D renderer.

DarkTree is also a super-filter for manipulating photos and rendered output. You can reproduce nearly any image processing effect and easily create entirely new ones as well.

Looping AnimationsDarkTree 2.5 comes with procedural components specifically designed to make seamlessly looping animations. Make anything from flowing water to churning lava to pulsating force fields. Excellent for computer game and web site graphics, where bandwidth is limited.

Making a looping animation is as easy as linking together a Loop component, a background texture, and a Time component to make it animate. For even more sophisticated looping animations, you can blend together multiple loops, cycle parameters, and even add Tile components to get both tiling and looping animations.

Texture Map Creation

Use DarkTree 2.5 shaded procedural textures to generate top quality texture maps for use in game development, web graphics, and 3D surfacing.

Output

Render fully-shaded textures for direct use in game and web graphics or generate raw bump (elevation or normal), color, and specular maps for 3D surfaces.

Shaded output uses distant (parallel) lighting. This gives you even shading across the surface allowing seamless tiling and clean shading in real-time 3D engines.

DarkTree also automatically splits out and renders matching color, bump, and percent texture maps. These combine in your 3D application to give you the highest quality 3D surfaces and avoid the false lighting cues of photograph-based textures.

Mapping

DarkTree 2.5 can generate texture maps for specific types of projections and mappings. You can generate planar, spherical, cylindrical, cubic, and UVW specific bitmaps. By taking advantage of the 3D nature of procedural shaders, DarkTree-generated maps are seamless and do not warp or distort on the given projection or UVW shape. (currently .obj and .lws file formats are supported for UVW mapping)

In addition, DarkTree provides an API that allows you to write your own output plugins to fit custom projections or 3D models. All output data is 32 bits per channel and can be written out through a standard bitmap format or any custom format the programmer wishes.

Tiling

DarkTree 2.5 includes three components specifically for making seamless texture map tiles: Blend Tile, VBlend Tile, and Warp Tile. These components make creating tiled procedural textures easy and efficient. DarkTree's Component Editor and Examine window both have tile preview modes that allow you to see how the texture will tile while you are working on them.

The Blend Tile component provides additional support for making tile sets (multiple bitmaps that tile together). Once an ``edge" texture is created, the center of each tile can be modified allowing you to create large high quality tile sets in minutes.

Production and Texture Rigging

When working on a CG production, multiple people, with different skills, work on different aspects of a shot. In such an environment, DarkTree provides the texture/shader artist with the tools to create full-rigged and to-scale procedural shaders that other team members can use without having to understand how the shader works.

Export specific controls in DarkTree (left) and those same controls will be available to anyone using the shader (right, same shader in 3ds max 5). Once a texture is rigged with tweak controls, it can easily be reused or quickly modified while the production director looks over your shoulder.

Procedural materials can also be built to-scale. Simply set a scale in DarkTree and then the material will fit perfectly on any to-scale objects in your shot.

Open API

The procedural engine for DarkTree 2.5 was re-written to allow extensive programmer access (API). You can write your own procedural components that will enhance DarkTree and, at the same time, all the Simbiont plugins. If you have your own proprietary renderer or an application that DarkTree doesn't currently support, you can write your own DarkTree-based plugin. (no licensing fee)

Free Plugins = Big Savings

Outfitting a CG studio with all the best graphics tools can be very expensive! If you buy a plugin for one animator, you have to buy it for the whole studio, collaborators, and contractors. All DarkTree 2.5 plugins are free, so adding DarkTree shaders to your production pipeline is free!

Yes, free. You can download and install our Simbiont plugins on all your render nodes (right now if you want). With the ability to export shader controls, only texture and shader artists need to have full DarkTree 2.5 copies.

REQUIREMENTS

• OS
  • Windows Vista, XP Home or Windows 2000/XP Professional
• Platform
  • PC with Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon
• Display
  • 1024 x 768 resolution display with 24-bit color.
• CPU Speed
  • 500MHz (2 GHz or greater recommended)
• Memory
  • 128 MB RAM
• Peripherals
  • CD-ROM and two button mouse