DarkTree 2.5 [from Darkling Simulations of Los Alamos,
NM], is a node-based procedural texture editing, rendering and
management application that's been around for five years. It has
attracted an active user-base and merits the attention of the
Renderosity community. DarkTree 2.5 offers a great interface,
portability across applications, versatility, and some clever
innovations that make it a powerful way to save and reuse textures.
For users of 3D Studio, Hash Animation Master, Cinema 4D,
Lightwave, and Truespace, I recommend that you download and install
the free Symbiont plugin from Darkling. Also, download the free
DarkTree materials.
Install the relevant plugin into your 3D application, and you'll be
able to load and manipulate DarkTree textures. Note, that these are
fully functional freeware plugins which are complete and won't
timeout or nag you for serial numbers [the freeware plugins differ
from the DarkTree application; which adds material creation and
editing, library management, and rendering capabilities]. The
Symbiont plugin functions similarly, but not identically, in each
host application, and it loads the same DarkTree files, whether
youre using C4D, Lightwave or 3D Studio. DarkTree textures come in
two flavors full materials and maps. A
material is rendered through the Darktree render
engine, rather than the host. A map controls a
channel in the native renderer. As a result, youll find that many
host effects, including shaders and render effects, will recognize
DarkTree maps, whereas they wont work with DarkTree materials. As
an example, the popular FPrime plugin for Lightwave will recognize
a DarkTree map, but it won't "see" a Darktree material. The
trickiest part of using the Symbiont can be mapping choices, and
there are occasionally sticky points where some effort is necessary
to make a texture work as expected. One simple solution is to
render the texture out as a bitmap, and then apply the bitmap to
the object . . . this solves most problems.
Similar Products/Competition While there are a number of
applications for editing procedural textures, most are embedded
within their applications. Bryce's Deep Texture Editor, and similar
editors found in XSI and Maya, are available [or are being
developed] as 3rd party plugins for 3D Studio and Lightwave. Among
standalone products, three strike me as relevant comparisons:
Artmatic, Genetica, and Slim. Artmatic, is a terrific application,
but can easily be distinguished from DarkTree. It is Mac-only, and
renders only a textured bitmap, not channels. Spiral Graphics'
Genetica, recently reviewed by Paula Sanders, on these boards, is a simpler
tool without the program hooks to link to 3D applications.
DarkTree's most direct competitor is a product that the majority of
3D artists probably haven't heard of: Slim from Pixar. It is used to build and
manage shaders in the Renderman environment, and works only with
Renderman. Slim is included as part of the $2,000 Renderman Artist
Tools package, and only is useful if one has access to a Renderman
render license, which is also expensive. Product Definition:
Free Plugin, Versus Commercial Application. I've already
detailed the free downloads so, whats in the $400 application?
DarkTree 2.5 is an application with three parts: 1. DarkTree
Texture Library Management Application
DarkTree has a very sophisticated material and map library. This
folder-based "Explorer-like" application allows you to navigate
your own libraries of DTs with ease. Maps and materials get colored
icons corresponding to their type (Purple for shaded material,
green for color, blue for bump, and grey for percentage types).
Having used DT for a number of years, I'll say that the management
utility is part of what makes DT useful to me. All the textures
I've ever created with DarkTree are there, and I can find them,
together with associated notes (DarkTree helpfully allows you to
insert text notes to a texture). 2. Texture Editor
The Editor is the core application of DarkTree, which allows you to
place tile-like nodes and connect them with "wires" to create
materials and maps; a process familiar to those who've used the
Material Room in Poser, Hypergraph in Maya, or XSI. Many users find
that the tree view is greatly preferable when editing complex
materials.
The Editor has some significant advantages over the built-in
materials editors in many 3D applications. 3D Studio users, for
instance, may have found the Material Editor difficult to use
precisely, because its hard to see what's connected to what. Its
not that complex textures can't be created in the Material Editor,
but, rather the challenge is keeping track of how the bump map
enhances the specularity map. Working in DarkTree, by contrast, is
easy you can see many levels into a "deep" texture at a glance,
and understand what's connected to what. One notable Editor feature
is the ability to highlight any node in your tree and right click
to "examine" it. Examine opens a little menu that reflects
the channels presently being output by the node you've selected.
Each of these channels can be expanded into a little preview window
this is a great feature that allows you to visualize each of the
channels of a texture independently.
Along similar lines, DarkTree's node icons have a dynamic graphic
they show a quick render of a specific branch of the tree, at each
level. This is another thoughtful feature; one which makes it easy
to understand the flow of a tree.
One group of special purpose DT components are the "blend tiles,
these help create seamless repeatable textures. Along similar
lines, DT's "carousel tile" is used to make a tree "loopable,"
meaning that it repeats without a discontinuity when it loops in
time. If DT has a killer feature Id say that it would be
"Tweaks." A tweak is a parameter, or group of parameters, defined
in the Editor, which then can be accessed at render time. Let's say
you're working on an animated explosion texture. You can do this in
3D Studio, in Lightwave, in Maya, in any application with a decent
materials editor. Now, let's say you want to offset the explosion
in time how do you do it? If you're designing the material, you
may remember all the places where material components are driven by
time, on the other hand you may not. In DarkTree, at design time,
you define a tweak and give it the name "Explosion time offset."
When you load this DarkTree in any host application, you simply
enter the value or parameter that you want into this tweak. Tweaks
can do so many things, the exact range is determined by which
parameters the host application makes available through its API. At
a bare minimum, all supported applications can be expected to be
able to link colors, gradients, and images to tweaked parameters.
In Lightwave, for example, the Tweak will accept an Envelope or a
Texture as an input opening an incredible range of parameters
that can be passed to the Tweak. In 3D Studio, one can use
Materials as inputs to Tweaks, and also engineer some clever inputs
using parameter wiring. In both applications, weight maps are
available as tweaks, and this is a boon a way of "painting in"
complex texture attributes. 3. Bitmap Renderer
This application takes your completed DarkTrees, and renders them
to bitmaps. These maps can be done with most standard projection
mappings (cubic, spherical, plane, cylinder), and one can also load
a UV-mapped Wavefront (Obj) or Lightwave (LWO) object and render a
bitmap which corresponds to this objects UV parameters. For folks
who are experimenting with the free Symbiont, the Renderer will be
the surprise when they purchase the full DarkTree package. What's
striking about it are all the options that one possesses: choice of
size, choice of frame number in animated textures, choice of
channels, and the ability to render numbered bitmaps corresponding
to each channel of a shader, and to do so to defined folders on
your hard drive. All of these options make management a lot easier.
Artists creating game graphics will appreciate the Renderer's
organization: the ability to render to multiple resolutions and
multiple directories is helpful to those preparing texture
resources. The DarkTree Community No review of DT would be
complete without mentioning the users and 3d party support that DT
has generated. Theres a very active mailing list, which features
smart answers to abstruse questions, and friendly folks! Theres
been considerable third party development for DarkTree as well.
Marvin Landis coded new noise functions, and made them available, as a free
download, to DT users. Also, a UK based developer, ShadersRJJ, has
produced a valuable extension of the DarkTree component set, which
can be purchased at sharders.org Summary DarkTree 2.5 is a
well-supported, robust, and cleverly designed application for
generating, managing and editing procedural textures. Users
interested in textures would do well to take a look at Darkling Simulations'
DarkTree.
 DarkTree 2.5 CD: $419 USD Download $399 USD
Upgrades available System Requirements: PC Only Windows XP 500MHz
2GHz + recommended/128 MB Ram
 A special "thank you" to contributing columnist, artist,
Alexander Polsky [crocodilian], for taking
time out of his busy schedule to be a part of our writing team this
week. We invite you to view crocodilian's Gallery |
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