Back in the summer I talked about the upcoming 1.4 release of the awesome open source Godot engine powered Material Maker. Now that release is here and it has gained even more new features over the last few months including a complete shader system rewrite, new more configuarable UI, a ton of new nodes and a whole lot more. Highlight new features of the Material Maker 1.4 release include:
Updated User Interface and Theming Support:
- Material Maker now features a flexible UI layout, allowing all panels (except the Project panel) to be moved or undocked.
- Theme support has been greatly improved, making many custom UI components themeable. A new “Modern” theme has been added.
New SDF Nodes:
- Many new 2D and 3D SDF nodes were added.
- The 2D and 3D SDF Boolean and Transform nodes, and the 3D SDF Color node are now variadic, meaning they can accept a variable number of inputs.
New Spline and Pixel Nodes:
- A new Splines parameter type and an associated Splines node were introduced.
- A new Pixels parameter type was added, along with new Pixels and Smooth Pixels nodes for creating small images within materials.
New MeshMap Node: This node automatically bakes maps (position, normal, tangent, curvature, occlusion, or thickness) for the current custom mesh, improving the workflow for “smart materials.”
Shader Generation Rewritten: The code generation process was completely rewritten, resulting in faster performance and smaller shaders (unused functions are now removed).
Godot 4 Port: The application is now based on Godot 4.4.1, which provided opportunities for new features like multi-window support and compute shaders.
Shader Error Diagnostic Tool: A new tool was added to show shader compilation errors with clickable links that open the node editor to the correct section.
Lattice Parameter and Distort Node: A new Lattice parameter type and a new Distort node were added to apply grid-based distortion.
Key Links
Download Page
Material Maker 1.4 Release Notes
Material Maker GitHub Repository
You can learn more about the Material Maker 1.4 release and see several of the new features in action in the video below.