Toolbag’s Bevel Shader in Action: 3 Artists Weigh In

This issue is unavoidable in some cases, as seen in my example above. This is also a time-consuming process, and dynameshing at maximum resolution can be cumbersome, resulting in massive file sizes that are difficult to manage.

Another alternative to avoid these Dynamesh issues is to work in Sub-D. However, working with topology on complex surfaces with many curves and booleans can take hours. And getting the mesh to shade properly and achieve nice, clean edge bevels at higher subdivision levels can take an insane amount of time in a production setting.

With CAD modeling, boolean operations and filleting become so easy that I don’t even have to think about them most of the time. If I want to boolean a sphere from a cylinder, I just do it. And depending on my CAD topology in that area, it’s still a very iterative process.

Take the examples above from 3DS Max and Plasticity. The shape on the left was set up in about 5 minutes by manually configuring the topology by using booleans, cutting, adding edge loops, and insetting faces. In comparison, the shape on the right was created in about 30 seconds in plasticity by using 3 simple operations, cut, boolean, and fillet, while also adding more complexity to the shape.

Admittedly, I’m not a sub-D expert, but you can see why CAD would be the better choice for hard surface shapes like these.

Ultimately, working with CAD is much faster and cleaner than working in Sub-D. Combined with Toolbag’s Bevel Shader, my CAD work has become even faster. Here are two examples of shapes and parts created in CAD that would’ve taken me a lot longer to create in Sub-D. I could export my entire project, bring it into Toolbag, and apply the bevel shader.

I added other materials just for stylistic choice, but you can assign different bevel widths to certain parts by applying a new material. It’s during this step that I like to separate bevel widths by material, making plastics softer than metals, as you would in ZBrush by polishing them more.

After this step, your high poly is complete! The bevel shader took about 2 minutes to set up, while the ZBrush Dynamesh method would probably take over a week, as each part needs to be exported and treated separately. This method for creating high polys works exceptionally well for maintaining consistent bevel widths across your project.

When using a single bevel shader material, every edge receives the same bevel width, which is sometimes not ideal. In some areas, you may want to have a larger bevel, while maintaining a smaller bevel in other areas. Toolbag 5.01 introduced bevel width masking using vertex colors to create varied edge widths, which I haven’t tried yet. For now, I manually add fillets in CAD to the areas that I want to have a larger highlight, as shown in the image above. For hard surface artists, this method is worth exploring. The time savings alone are hard to ignore.

I was super excited with Marmoset’s release of Toolbag 5 and the announcement of the Bevel Shader because I knew the team would deliver on this one, just as they have with any other aspect of the software, so I started testing and instantly knew that this feature would be part of every project I work on moving forward.

The ability to bake my models on the fly using Toolbag’s Bake Projects is a huge time saver, and the quality is incredibly high. At first, I wasn’t sure, but then I started creating comparisons of my own.

The render comparison above is from my latest personal project, which features baking textures onto the same low poly model using two different baking methods.

The image on the leftused was baked from a traditional high-poly model with polished edges, while the image on the right was the result of baking from a mid-poly model employing the bevel shader. The traditional method requires several hours of iterative work, whereas Toolbag’s Bevel Shader method takes less than an hour with minimal effort.

As you can see, the results are great. I had a hard time telling which screenshot belonged to which method. And after texturing, the differences become almost non-existent.

In some cases, I noticed that the bevel shader provides a better edge highlight than the traditional method!

Another application of the bevel shader that I love to include in my workflow is a quick showcase of my blockouts. Since I mainly use CAD software in my work, such as Plasticity and Fusion 360, I enjoy exporting my blockouts quickly with smoothing groups as an FBX file. I enjoy exporting my blockouts quickly with smoothing groups as an FBX file. This can be done either using the software exporter itself or using external software such as Pixyz Studio or Moi3D.

When working with CAD, the software sort of creates your smoothing groups/normals for you; it’s not perfect by any means, but it does the job for showing clients or supervisors what the model will look like when it’s smoothed with the high poly phase or baked with the Bevel Shader at a later stage. Keep in mind that smoothing straight out of CAD software can’t always be perfect. I use the Bevel Shader for this because it allows me to skip the high poly phase entirely and jump straight into cleaning up my low poly model. All I do is create a mid poly version of my model exported from CAD software and then use Toolbag’s Bevel Shader to showcase my model.

Creating a high poly would take a few hours (if not more), whereas using the Bevel Shader, it becomes a matter of exporting a mid poly, plus a few extra clicks, and you’re ready to showcase. This way, you save a lot of production time and can either proceed to the next step or iterate quickly on the feedback given

Marmoset Toolbag has been a crucial component of my workflow since I began my journey in 3D art during my college years, and I continue to use it in both professional and personal work.

The bevel shader has significantly enhanced my productivity, allowing me to focus on achieving high-quality results rather than spending an excessive amount of time creating high-poly models and baking them. I am really excited about the future of Toolbag and the continued support it will provide to artists in expressing their creativity with minimal technical difficulties.

To simulate realistic edge variation without needing multiple high-poly meshes, I assign different materials to selected face groups in my modeling software on the high-poly mesh. This allows me to apply separate bevel-shaded materials with custom values to other parts of the same mesh. You can see examples and some before-and-after photos in the images I’ve provided.

Using the Bevel Shader has saved me a significant amount of time. If you’re looking to speed up your hard surface workflow without sacrificing quality, I highly recommend giving it a shot.