Smart Weathering 2.1.0

Know more about it in its user guide and on our Youtube channel!

About

Have you noticed that everything that surrounds us is imperfect? 

Have you appreciated the beauty of the “perfect imperfection”? 

Imperfections are part of our world, and their random nature, from subtleties to exaggerations, is what makes everything unique.

In the CG world, we have the possibility to recreate everything! However, creating these effects is overwhelming as either you don’t know how to properly do it because you are just starting in the 3D universe, or you know good enough that to create such effects you will need to spend quite a lot of hours doing the whole actual process and trying and failing (x many times) until you achieve your desired look. And after all, repeat the process for your next project.

But what if you can do it with just the magic of a slider? 

Or even better, without UV mapping or baking!

After years of facing this situation and working on many projects where we spent hours doing these effects, we wanted to create and bring you the ultimate solution.

“Smart Weathering” will let you add weathering effects to any of the shaders you have already done in your scene in order to add those imperfections that make a render more realistic.

A very intuitive, compact, powerful, and versatile solution loaded with the most common weathering effects to let you focus on the artistic aspect of your project and save a lot of time! 

No more excuses to keep postponing that old project you had in your mind anymore! (?

No need to ever again recreate imperfections from scratch or spend time finding the perfect texture to do so. We already covered it!

Main features 

Weatherize everything! 

The “Smart Weathering” tool will let you add an extensive amount of effects carefully created. 

Boost anything of your current scene. From a very basic Principled BSDF setup to a PBR material. 

Use effects ranging from very exaggerated ones like dirt and scratches on the edges to more subtle ones like smudges, wetness, and dust!

Also, this tool will work on any shape, as it is meant to smartly recognize the differences of each of your objects' surfaces and under any lighting condition.

Powerful and compact

This tool has been designed for you to only concentrate on the artistic side of your project. 

Simply select the effect that you want to apply and start playing with the sliders. 

Choose them from a wide variety of very common effects list and apply, either, a single of them, or use multiple effects at once in the same shader node! No more complicated shader setups!

Easy to use

This setup was designed to be easy to use. There are no complicated terms to understand. Just concentrate on the effect you would like to apply and play with the sub-sliders to fine-tune it.

There is no chance to set them “wrong”. By default by only enabling the effects will give you a realistic output. Additionally, any value of the sliders (including 0 and 1) will still give you a realistic result. It is only a matter of taste! 

If at any time you get lost, please consult our in-depth user guide page to understand how to use it and how the variables work!

Also, check our video tutorials here!

Amazing results in a couple of seconds

Give a backstory to your projects in a matter of seconds! 

Current texturing methods require you a lot of time and steps to move from the modeling to the texturing phase of your project. Normally, you would need at least a few hours to start texturing your modeling. 

This tool has been created to make you jump into hyperspace and let you focus on the design. No need to spend time unwrapping and manual texturing again. 

Easily create new texturing styles and explore many more design iterations in much less time.

Non-destructive workflow. Boost your current materials

“Smart weathering” will let you add single or multiple layered effects in a non-destructive manner. All the effects are completely separated from your base shader. This workflow will let you keep your base shader intact and explore different artistic styles without the need to worry about your previous material setup. 

Also, it updates in realtime, so if you make changes to your model the Smart weathering settings will adapt to them. No need to redo any UVs.

At any point, if the effect is not going as desired,  you will be able to separate the “Smart Weathering” effects pass and go back to your base shader or start playing again with the default values.

Easily copy your effects to other materials

Even though you can replicate the same effect that we are offering you in this setup, it is practically a nightmare when you want to copy these effects you created to a new shader setup you have. 

However, with our node setup, you will achieve this by just pressing two buttons.

Versatility

From subtle effects to very worn materials. You will have a wide variety of very common use effects selected for you to play with. Check the list below to see it in more detail.

Each of them was carefully created using all the experience we gained through the years to let you play with the sliders without the need for you to worry about the technical aspect. 

Moreover, each effect has sub-sliders/parameters for you to have more fine control of the final output.

No UV needed!

Yes! Yesss!! No UVs are needed for this tool to work! 

Sounds like magic, doesn’t it? You will not have to worry about this at all as the “Smart Weathering” node is designed to adapt its textures considering a reference object and your object scale, rotation, and position.
Even more, you will be able to add certain weathering effects in specific places/areas using a very simple trick! Check our video or see our documentation to know how to do it!

No baking required! Instant feedback workflow. 

If no UVs sounded good, no baking seems like a dream. 

You will get instant feedback about what is going on when playing with the sliders.

Also, effects like the edge scratches work perfectly as they should be. The scratches are done in the edges that are exposed to contact. The ones that are in more intricated locations (concave surfaces) will not be affected by the scratch effect.

100% Procedural

Yes, 100% procedural! All the SW effects are produced now using just the nodes that Blender has. This implies that the SW node is much lighter, and it will not produce tiling issues and/or pixelated texture effects in closeups.

Animatable effects

Each effect contained in the setup can be animated as you could see in our video! this is something that would be very difficult to achieve with current texturing methods.

Consistency 

By default, you will have all your objects using textures that have been scaled to real-life dimensions and they will remain consistent regardless of the size of your object if the scale is correct. 

Random offset effect

Each object you apply this node setup will get the effect with the same parameters but they will still have a “random offset variation” to avoid exact repetition in different objects. Also, you will have a random "seed" parameter in some of the effects.

Compatibility

This effects layer is compatible with all the current shaders that Blender currently has.

Blender Foundation support!

Part of this product's value is donated to the Blender Foundation!

Get free updates!

Buying this tool will give you access to future updates from new features to optimizations. We do not ensure a "perpetual" development of the tool and big structural changes, naturally, may be considered as a different product.

What users say about SW!

Current features

• Add-on format
  • Powerful selection tools
  • Copy and paste your already set properties to other materials
  • Easily add or remove the Smart Weathering node to your active object or to multiple objects selection
• 100% Procedural effects!
  • No tileable patterns and no pixelated textures in close-ups
  • Lighter file size and less memory consumption
• Manual tweaking
  • Hand paint the details you want to complement the procedural effects created. An unwrapped 3d model will be needed for this option to work.
• Effects
  • Scratches / Chipped paint on edges
  • Cracks
  • Micro Scratches
  • Rust
    • Bubbles
    • Stains
    • Top corrosion
  • Dirt
    • In cavities
    • On edges
  • Paint/liquid splashes
  • Smudges / Badly cleaned surfaces
    • Fingerprints
    • Grunge
    • Swirls
  • Dust
  • Custom effects input
  • Wetness
    • Water drops
    • Oiliness

Each of them with sub-parameters as bump intensity control, effect variations, variations intensity, custom color, roughness, top/bottom object masks, and so on.

What is the difference between the price tags?

We want to be really sincere with you. We are a small studio and we know that not everybody has Pixar’s budget.

That is why we decided that the best way to offer this product and be fair is by splitting it by ranges. The "Personal/Freelancer" is for everybody who develops his work on his own. The studio one is when you are already scaling up as a service provider and the company one is for those who are already settled. The revenue is meant to be considered as orientation when deciding.

To be clear there are no differences either in terms of quality (you will receive the same product) nor in terms of license type (you will be able to use them for commercial and personal works).

In addition to this, we set the price at the lowest we believe it can be affordable for those different tiers and fair for our work / effort.

The decision of which "price tag" to choose relies absolutely upon you, and we decided to trust you!

Important Notes

• "Smart Weathering" is meant to be used with Cycles only.

• This solution is not meant to be a complete replacement of current tools/ workflows as current unwrapping+texturing methods. However, this tool will be a much more efficient method in many scenarios (especially in still renderings works, or where you need animated textures).

Contact

User Guide

Video Tutorials

Please feel free to directly contact us at:

[email protected]

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