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New year, new nodes in ArtEngine 2021.1

February 12, 2021 in Engine & platform | 8 min. read
Cat looking at a cat painting
Cat looking at a cat painting
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Kick off 2021 with powerful procedural tools that work alongside example-based AI superstar nodes.

Welcome to 2021 – and our first ArtEngine release of the year. While we’ve always had you covered when it comes to the example-based workflow, we’ve dedicated this past year to developing some powerful procedural nodes to augment your example-based toolkit and offer you the best of both worlds. Read on to discover some key highlights of new features and get a sneak peek of what’s to come.

Procedural power

We’re excited to launch our procedural toolkit with our new Pattern Array Node. By leveraging this node, you can quickly and efficiently create complex, seamless patterns of bitmaps or materials on huge canvases. You can also use it as a Scatter node to disperse bitmaps and materials in natural-looking formations.

Floor patterns
The Pattern Array node is used for structure or employed as a Scatter node. Here, the node was applied to naturally scatter leaves across a sand material.

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Check out this video to learn how to create your first pattern.

New and improved nodes

Along with growing our family of procedural nodes, we made some major improvements and additions to our example-based node family, that include:

  • A new Noise node: Add an extra touch of randomization by generating Gaussian, Cells, Crystals, Clouds or other noise profiles.
  • A new Basic Shapes node: Produce your own basic shapes, then plug them into the Pattern Array node or use them as masks on other images.
  • More realistic ambient lighting approximations: Enjoy more physically accurate results thanks to a new algorithm in the Ambient Occlusion node.
  • Better normals: Leverage the Multi-Angle to Texture node with our Radial Compensation slider to generate better normal maps.
  • Batch processing: Use our batching workflows to batch process thousands of files with a single click (available for ArtEngine Studio users only).
Different patterns on a field of grass
Create countless variations using the Basic Shapes and Pattern Array nodes in conjunction.
ArtEngine Seam Removal and Mutation nodes remain as powerful as ever.
ArtEngine Seam Removal and Mutation nodes remain as powerful as ever.

Next up: The fun stuff

2020 was all about tooling up, as ArtEngine officially joined the Unity family. This required us to spend significant time working on stability issues and migrating to the Unity licensing system – but we’re finally ready to take on the fun stuff. That’s why we’re so pumped to share our product roadmap for 2021. 

While you will see fewer releases, each one will be packed with more features. Here’s a sneak peek of one of our exciting features coming later this year. 

Introducing Style Transfer, a node that will let you capture the style of one image and apply it to another. Whether you want to replicate the vibe of your favorite 80s retro game, or snazz up your Unity scene with some Van Gogh-inspired visuals, we invite you to unleash your imagination and have some fun with AI! 

 

Pictures on the floor
Two go in, one comes out…
Two go in, one comes out…

As our users continue to multiply, so does the wonderful art that you create. If you have any feedback for us, or are interested in having your artwork featured, please drop us a line at artengine-info@unity3d.com, on our Discord channel or the Unity Forum.

 

Try ArtEngine for free

 

Artist attributions: Victor Kam

The following is intended for informational purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. No purchasing decisions should be made based on the following materials. Unity is not committing to deliver any functionality, features or code. The development, timing and release of all products, functionality and features are at the sole discretion of Unity, and are subject to change.

February 12, 2021 in Engine & platform | 8 min. read

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