► Mesh Materializer ◄

Purchase Mesh Materializer Here​

Watch example videos​

What is Mesh Materializer?

Tool for baking all kind of possible data from material into mesh - materializing it.​

What kind of data can be saved inside mesh?

• Textures and Color (bake one texture or blend two)
• Procedural materials (Substance)
• Indirect Lighting
• Ambient Occlusion
• Lightmap
• Displace

Where is saved all this data?

Inside mesh vertex color.
Materialized mesh is saved as new mesh asset file. Original mesh is not modified.​

How is this data visualized?

Using vertex color shaders. Package includes huge collection of such shaders, optimized for mobiles.​

What types of meshes are supported?

All type of 3d mesh files that can be imported in Unity or generated procedurally inside Editor and run-time.​

• Simple mesh
• Skinned mesh (without blend shapes)
• Unity terrain

Mesh Materializer is overgrowing tool collection and currently includes:

1. Low Poly Mesh Generator.
2. Ambient Occlusion and Indirect Lighting generator tool.
3. Terrain To Mesh plugin.
4. Vertex Color Adjustments.
5. Lightmap to vertex color baking tool.
   
6. Mesh optimizer.
7. Vertex Color to texture exporter.
8. Mesh Thickness Baker

Spoiler: Update history

v2020.2
• Fixed generating Terrain To Mesh shader when using SRP

v2020.1
• Fixed editor GUI slow down in Unity 2019.3

v2019.5
• Updated for Unity 2019.3

v2019.4
• Fixed example scripts not compiling for project build

v2019.3
• Fixed terrain to mesh conversion failing with SRP

v2019.2
• Updated for Unity 2019.1

v2019.1
• Compatible with Scriptable Render Pipeline
• Compatible with Encode Pro

v2018.7
• Fixed (Unity 2017) generating 'black' terrain Basemap.
• Fixed (Unity 2018) generating incorrect terrain Basemap in Linear color space.

v2018.6
• Updated for Unity 2018.3

v2018.5
• Fixed bug: Terrain was not converted into a mesh, if any of paint textures (diffuse or bump) was missing from the source terrain asset.

v2018.4
• Updated for Unity 2017.4 and Unity 2018.2
• Improved Terrain To Mesh shaders.

v2018.3
• Updated Vertex Color Adjustments plugin.

v2018.2
• Compatible with Unity 2018.1 (removed Substance material baking)

v2018.1
• Added runtim OBJ exporter for terrain.
• Flat color baking supports Bilinear and Point texture filter modes.
• Fixed AmbientOcclusion and MeshThickness calculations failing on using Occlusion Render solver.
• Fixed VertexColor shaders receiving wrong Unity ambient color.

v2017.3
• Fixed vertex color shaders error during build - 'Did not find shader kernel 'frag_surf' to compile'

v2017.2
• Unity 2017.1 compatible

v2017.1
• Added Mesh Thickness Baker tool.
• Terrain To Mesh One Directional Light shaders support Lightmap Multiplier option.

v1.67
• Added run-time color adjustments example scene and script

v1.66
• Fixed texture blur option not working in Unity 5.5
• Fixed texture mipmap data baking

v1.65
• Unity 5.5 compatible

v1.64
• Added TerrainToMesh OBJ exporter.

v1.63
• Added UV set selection for texture and displace baking.
• Added predefined resolution for Basemap baking.
• Improved CompressedMeshLoader script for smooth and flat terrains.
• Mesh Asset Name format option replaced with more intuitive Skip Similar Meshes option (available from Mesh Info tab).
• Improved AO generating precision when using Occlusion Render solver.
• Several editor improvements.

v1.62
• Added mesh asset compression option (generated file can be 3X smaller).
• Added mesh asset GPU optimization option (renders mesh faster).
Both options are inside Optimization tab.

v1.61
• Retina display support.

v1.6
• Unity 5.4 compatible
• Terrain To Mesh converter can add MeshCollider.
• Terrain spaltmaps and basemap can be exported in TGA format (requires Encode To TGA plugin)
• T2M shader has per-layer control for Shininess, Smoothness and Metallic parameters.
• Improved vertex color shaders.

v1.52
• Fixed bug with basemap not being generated in run-time on Android devices.

v1.51
• Fixed bug with TerrainToMesh textures being rendered as pixelated.

v1.5
• Added complex mesh support (like SpeedTree).
• Added terrain trees exporter.

v1.4
• Rewritten runt-time API (not compatible with previous versions)
• Added new ambient occlusion solver - Occlusion Render (requires RenderTextures support). Solver can interact with scene gameobjects for better ambient occlusion generating.
• Old ambient occlusion solver - Raycast - has results smooth option.
• Added terrain maps exporter (splatmaps, basemap and heightmap).
• Added T2M (terrain to mesh) shaders.
• Added T2M material generation option.
• Added Lightmap baking tool (Unity 5.2 and above)
• Indirect lighting can be generated from scene's active skybox (requires RenderTextures support)
• Added property drawer for run-time scripts (support undo/redo)
• New substance importer (for Unity 5.2 and above)
• Updated texture blurring tool. Now it is GPU accelerated (requires RenderTextures support).

• Faceted uv layout exporter renamed to Vertex Color Exporter
• Added antialiasing option
• Last saved texture can be opened from context menu

• Color adjustments support separate channels invertor
• Added alpha channel invert option

• Vertex color shaders can use Lightmaps and Image based lighting together

Editor changes
• Mesh main texture, mesh second texture, mesh tint color and mesh vertex color now are combined into one Mesh Texture & Color tab.
• Unity ambient tab is removed
• Image based lighting tab replaced with new Indirect Lighting tab
• Combine mesh checkbox moved to Mesh Info tab
• Generated meshes are saved inside Assets/(Temporary) folder (used by all VacuumShaders tools).
• Instantiated prefab can be removed by Undo (Ctrl + Z)


v1.36
• VacuumShaders assets synchronization. Required update for all VacuumShaders assets.
• Built-in Mesh Materializer shaders are deprecated. Use new Vertex Color shaders instead.

v1.35
• Fixed shaders not compiling due to exceeding input limit.

v1.34
• Added default material parameter inside MM editor, that will be applied to a prefab after conversion.

v1.33
• Fixed material editor throwing errors in Unity 5.1

v1.32
• Added dds textures support.

v1.31
• Added two new parameters to the Mesh Asset Name list (editor window). Converted mesh assets may have unique ID, guaranteeing all mesh conversion in selection.

v1.3
• Added faceted uv layout exporter - Menu/Window/VacuumShaders/Faceted UV Layout Exporter.
• Added alpha values modifier to the Color Adjustments window.
• Fixed iOS build problems.
• Fixed Windows Store/Phone build problems.
• Fixed gui textures not displayed if Unity Editor is in Linear color space.

v1.21
• Added MeshMaterializer.dll without ProceduralMaterial support for WebGL builds. Check MeshMaterializer/Scripts/ folder.

v1.2
• Added option to skip texture compression (speeds up conversion).
• Fixed - Mesh collider not receiving converted mesh.
• Fixed - Disabled objects in hierarchy not converted.
• Unity editor warnings not related to MM will not bother any more.

v1.1
• Removed restriction on texture formats, all type of textures are supported (only in editor).
• Added 'benchmark' option to the build log type for displaying each conversion step time and some statistic info.
• Fixed IBL calculation (reading wrong cubmap uvs).
• Fixed custom material editor (showing hidden parameters).
• Even more stable editor. Catching more exceptions.

v1.01
• Fixed unlit shaders not receiving fog in Unity 5.

v 1.0
• Unity 5 ready.
• Added Color Adjustments tool.
• Added procedural material (Substance) baking.
• Added presets system. All Mesh Materializer and Color Adjustments window settings can be saved as presets.
• Ambient occlusion can be generated for terrains.
• AO supports dirt texture.
• AO can be blurred (only for terrains).
• AO generated data can be exported as texture in editor (only for terrains)
• AO power option now works as supposed.
• AO baking uses zero Random.seed that guarantees always the same AO results.
• Added generated mesh asset name format option.
• Generated asset's material shader can be selected from MM editor window.
• Converted mesh can automatically proceed to Color Adjustments using selected preset.
• Converted terrain mesh now has uv1.
• Depending on project setting color will be baked in Linear or Gamma color spaces.
• Flat1/2/3 has been renamed to Flat/Flat Smooth/Flat Smoother.
• Improved vertex color shaders.
• Shaders have correct fallback and shadow cast/receive code.
• Shaders have specular and emission options.
• Shaders work in Gamma and Linear color spaces.
• Added Unity 5 Standard shader with vertex color support.
• Improved GUI.

v 0.98 beta
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Fixed generated terrain chunks position related to the parent asset.

v 0.96/0.97 beta
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Fixed mesh second texture baking with detail blend type for flattened meshes.
• Fixed inconsistent line endings in shaders.

v 0.95 beta
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Fixed terrain texture baking bug - "Texture rectangle out of bounds".
• Fixed terrain texture baking bug - "Black edge"
• Terrain multi-chunk conversion has name notation with _x[row]_y[column] suffix.
• For mesh second texture baking added Decal and Detail blend types.

v 0.94 beta
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• No limit on vertex count when flattening mesh. If new mesh will have more then 65000 vertices, it will be just splitted.
• Lightmap baking supports mipmaps and blur.
• Improved progress bar, now it will update correctly and display current task progress. It will automatically close on conversion finish.
• IBL, AO and displace can be baked on meshes without normals.
• Fixed huge memory leak when textures with mipmaps or blur options were used.
• Fixed huge memory leak with IBL calculation.
• Fixed conversion bug when submeshes count was more than renderers shared materials count.
• Fixed conversion bug when asset name contained unsupported characters.
• Fixed losing prefab connection on Unity exit or renaming asset.
• Added reflection option for vertex lit shaders.

v 0.92/0.93 beta
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• New Terrain conversion algorithm. Speed up 2x - 10x depend on vertex count ratio.


v 0.91 beta
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• Added multi-mesh conversion.
• Added hierarchy conversion.
• Removed generation type restriction, any mesh with any hierarchy with any amount of meshes can be converted.
• After conversion Mesh Materializer will create ready prefab, with proper meshes and materials, and spawns it into the scene.
• Source object can be hidden after conversion.
• All generated meshes (and prefabs with materials) will be saved in its own folders.
• New multi-chunk terrain conversion. Instead of converting terrain into one mesh, it can be divided into N amount of chunks with maximum 65,000 vertex each.
• Mesh combining is optional. It will be available if conversion group consists only of MeshFilters.
• Combined meshes can be at any position (0,0,0 position not required).
• Force One Submesh -> renamed Force One SubMaterial.
• New Mesh Info tab displays vertex/triangle info of all meshes participating in conversion.
• MM editor window data will not be lost on close.
• To reset editor window use ContextMenu/Reset.
• MM editor window will prepare all textures and meshes for conversion: make them readable and generate mipmaps if required.
• New build report displays full and detail info about conversion.
• 10K line of bugs has been fixed!

VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

nice

 

Hot damn! That's awesome!

Watching thread. Want. Want hard!

 

Is there a release date window ?

 

In about two weeks, may be early.



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

Thanks

 

+1 for me too. Please ping me when this drops or or you need any beta testers.

 

Arkhivrag, While I was waiting for this package I was looking at your other shaders. Will you consider to offer a bundle on the asset store?

 

I've never thought about that. Really can not answer now.



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

Tease

 

Added some example videos to the #1 post.



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

Thanks for the videos. Looks great

 

As a Polyworld and The Amazing Wireframe shader owner this is interesting to me.
Thoughts on price point. It's just the convertor right?

The optimiser Looks cool!

Many thanks

 

twobob, I was looking at Polyworld as well the other day. Are these two packages competitors, complementary or some overlap?

 

Yes, it's just a converter (no 3d assets). In addition with mesh converting you can generate and bake to vertex color many useful data, with variety parameters and baking options. Also it works in Editor and Runtime.

The one thing Mesh Materializer and Polyworld may have in common is "flattening triangle surface". From here Mesh Materializer goes in one direction (offering lots of mesh data manipulator and baking features) and Polyworld in another direction (offering lots of 3d assets. Do not have Polyworld, may be wrong).



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

yeah. Kind of Apples and Oranges but from the same tree
Very interested... Price point?

 

I've not decided yet, may be 15$ or 20$



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

Added poll to know how much would you pay for this tool.
But guess lowest price will receive more votes



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

What's the timing on this? Are you also adding any potential for adding "lines" around the final converted mesh (like a hand-drawn black outline with different thicknesses)?

 

Package will be submitted next week, still working on some features.
As for "hand-drawn black outline" it's done using shaders and has nothing to do with Mesh Materializer.



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

Looking forward to it. Also, does the Mesh Optimizer work after the mesh has been "Materialized" to reduce unused. And, are there percentages to "optimize" the mesh by (like 75% would cut a 10k mesh to 7.5k). I'm buying once it hits the store.

 

All features including optimizer work any time.
Optimizer removes unused buffers from mesh completely, you can not set % of optimization.

For Unity 5 uv3 and uv4 removing will be added.



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

Hmm. Perhaps have an early adopters price (since we forge the way for real-world polished products) and then put it up - after a short time - once you are certain it is super solid.

Seems reasonable, as by that time you have lots of great reviews and some happy core supporters.
Assuming that you time your marketing to coincide with the end of your Gamma Release (I.E Full Price from that point on) that would be optimal "customer-mopping", the alternate approach is obviously to overcharge your early adopters and then drop the price over time but I honestly don't think that approach suits the asset store.

Tis your thing. Do what you will

 

Improved optimizer. Now it shows the exact amount of bytes each buffer use and how much file size you will save by unchecking them.

(uv2 and tangent will not be saved inside mesh asset, saving 662KB)



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

I'm subscribing to this

 

Does Mesh Materializer support Blend Shapes ?
If not, are there any plans to add support?

 

Whilst Unity do not export blendshape information AFAIK into the vertex.
I did just see a demo recently of someone manually automating such data so however one day...
So I am going to guess, "No".

 

Currently there is no way of reading or writing the blend shape information. And the connection to the blend shapes are lost when creating new mesh.



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

Mesh Materializer (v0.9 beta) has been submitted for review.
Beta version is only for Unity 4.



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

nice job.
I am currently getting Simple LOD support for these types of meshes solid.
It's along month for my budget though... sigh.
Might have to reach in my own pocket, gah.

 

Any way you can work some real magic and make this work on speedtrees?

 

After quick research my answer is NO.
Converting speedtree mesh to flat style is not a problem.
Problem is animation.

Speedtree saves vertex animation(bending) coefficient inside uv.z component. Image below shows that (uv.z can be read only from shader).

Read and write mesh uv data from script is only possible by Vector2, that is X and Y components only.
Z and W components (that hold some speedtree data), after mesh conversion are lost forever.
So while I have not access to mesh uv data as Vector4 - Materializing of speedtree is not possible




VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

Thanks, Arkhivrag - I appreciate you giving it a try. Is this something speed tree could fix or it is Unity that needs to do it? Also does v4 vs v5 of Unity buy you anything?

 

Unity should give access to mesh uv's from script as Vector4 to make it possible read/write all four components.
Unity 5 version still have several bugs, I'll fix them while Mesh Materializer is in beta.




VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

"Mesh Materializer generates one mesh asset with maximum 65000 vertices."
"Terrain vertex count is controllable. Any dimensional terrains can be converted."

I have a little experience now in exporting terrains into meshes and was wondering how you felt about them being a special case.

Would it be at all possible to subdivide the resultant meshes into geometrically symmetric powers of two and allow for higher resolutions?

Basically get around the limit by doing all the calcs once /then/ splitting them into the relevant, roughly square, geometries.

This would make using an LOD system on such (hi resolution) chunks far easier, and more efficient given the roughly symmetrical shape.

I would also make delivering such chunk as Asset Bundles far more reasonable a proposition, since the chunks would be a much more reasonable size to stream.

I have roughly done a similar thing before and I can confirm that this is truly a "value-added" thing that real games will benefit from.

Finally: The reason I ask is, (and why I quoted above), the second quote potentially implies that you export the terrain regardless of how many multiples of 65k it generates, and a naïve implementation of that can make sub-chunking the results no-longer be "optimal" as the initially generated meshes are not roughly symmetric, power of two, geometries.

I appreciate your consideration.

Correct initial subdivisions into smaller than 65k chunks:



Incorrect initial subdivisions into smaller than 65k chunks:

​

Many thanks Davit

 

@twobob
That's a good idea, but instead of divide the resultant meshes into geometrically symmetric powers of two, I think the better way would be chunk amount control horizontally and vertically.



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

oh. okay.

I cant quite visualize what you mean, but okay At least you are thinking about it

EDIT: or are you saying that it will be possible to SET the Vertical and Horizontal slice size?
I must be a bit slow today
That would be do the trick I think.

Much obliged for your thoughts.

 

6 days passed...





VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

So what's the final price tag?

 

And by "Like" I mean "Like" that you said something about it, since I have been checking every day for a week

(and I am sat here now trying to do a job that would /probably/ go much faster with your tool)

 

25$ while in beta.



VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

Released!
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/28583





VacuumShaders - Facebook Twitter YouTube

 

Spoiler

We are down for maintenance, but expect to be up and running again shortly.
Please check back with us a little later.

Thank you for your patience
-- The Asset Store Team



AAAARRRGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/28583

Thanks for your order
You just completed your payment.




1st feedback:

Typo

Usability: It would be better workflow if the resultant meshes appeared - In game - in the location of the the thing they were replacing. Ideally, optionally, disabling the converted Terrain/Model/Whatever. The current workflow is a bit of a "head-scratcher", when it's "complete", there are extra, manual, steps to see the results.

That is certainly not a "usual" workflow.

I will keep playing and see if an obvious workflow emerges

REVIEW

For the terrain mesh export alone this is worth the price.

Grab it now while it's on the introductory beta price!

Crammed with win, this lightweight Material encoder has useful mesh data stripping skills and a few other tricks too up it's sleeve.

It's spanking brand new so the interface may undergo some changes but - CRAMMED WITH WIN

Cheers
​

 

I coupled this up with Simple LOD to get a sense if this pairing could help solve "Big Numbers" in terrain style geometry.

Exported a 128m2 terrain to mesh. <-- MM Used
Stripped out all "extra" data in the mesh <-- MM Used
Compressed to aprx. 5 & 10 times geometry compression (LOD 0 and 1). <-- Simple LOD

Most Compressed, LOD1:

Gridded that 5x5


And shoved in a camera, light and a controller.

Previously this size of Terrain (Yes I know all the free benefits of /actual/ terrain are lost) would have had a very real geometry count, possibly above a million triangles at a reasonable resolution, without compression.

Mesh Materializer + Simple LOD, roughly 3.2 km2 of mesh:
Average Tri count (in typical unity camera frusta) 130k
Average Vert count (in typical unity camera frusta) 68k

HERE I AM USING A DIFFUSE DETAIL SHADER - NOT THE INCLUDED ONE


Here it is using the provided shader.



(also, over an order of magnitude smaller to stream; at just 340kb for the entire geometry storage requirements in the scene above )

Nice result, Nice tool.

Looking forward to doing even cooler things with it, but that justifies the price right there in my book.

And since we have such a low count, Let's shove that through Polyworld (since we can now afford the geometry increases). Fun!



You have done a good thing. I don't feel that this, or Polyworld, tread on each others toes.
They complement nicely
Cheers.

 

@twobob it sounds as though you are stating that this does not do everything the creator indicated it does. From what I read, it takes any mesh (skin, terrain, or otherwise), bakes it down, optimizes it, and converts it to flat style so that it will have the low poly, vertex color of this style. So, I'm a bit confused now and I was about to purchase but feel like I should delay. I was torn between this (my preference) and polyworld.

 

Well no.

I simply re-applied the polyworld process to it afterward to get the colors I wanted, at the expense of re-wrapping the mesh. I will make that clearer.

I also did not picture his shaders in action which I now will.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Spoiler

I managed to crash my editor just now (multiple undo on 50+ objects, unity bug not the Mesh Materializer) give me a sec and I will get it done...

EDIT: DONE

 

Hi

I've tried with this turret https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/16502 but Mesh Materializer only converts the base. I thought it would convert a mesh with child meshes or maybe i'm doing somethign wrong.

This is the original model and meshh materializer settings



This is the converted model output

 

I've also tried to convert a SkinnedMeshRenderer and i got this error:

LOL it seems it's not my best day