Spiral Graphics - Genetica 2.5 Feature Summary

Effect Maps

Genetica 2.5 will now generate effect maps that can be used in any of the channels supported by your 3D environment, such as bump, specular, reflection, luminance, and others. The following image shows one example of these maps in use.

Take your creations to the next level of realism with Genetica's new effect maps. In this example an effect map has been placed in the luminance channel of the material to cause specific parts of it to glow in the dark.

Just like anything else made in Genetica, the new effect maps are fully seamless, resolution independent, and will automatically update to match any edits you make to your materials.

Effect Map Lab Intelligence

The Lab system has been overhauled to automatically generate appropriate effect maps based on the texture in question. This allows you to produce specialized grayscale channels in seconds that might otherwise require hours of work.

Lab nodes that will now automatically create effect maps are the Cut & Tile Lab, Layer Lab, Substance Lab, Weather Lab, Wood Lab, and the Fiber Lab (available in the professional edition of Genetica).

In this example, a Cut & Tile Lab was used to turn a solid material into floor tiles (center image). The other images show the various effect maps that were automatically created by the Cut & Tile Lab as a result of this operation. These maps will work great as bump maps, specular maps, and more, applied only to the mortar, only to the tiles, or both! A mask is also provided that will allow you to select just the tiles or just the mortar for further editing elsewhere. Other Lab nodes also create maps appropriate to the texture in question.

As the above image shows, Genetica 2.5's upgraded Lab system will provide you with a generous number of effect maps customized for each texture. The following image shows the true flexibility of this system by illustrating how the effect maps in the example above can be put to use for a variety of scenes.

Genetica 2.5's effect map are designed for maximum flexibility and creativity. In the left image an effect map was used in the displacement channel for a bubbly, cobblestone appearance. For the middle version an effect map in the diffuse channel creates an impression that dirt has settled in the grooves of the material for a medieval dungeon look. In the final image effect maps in specular, bump, and reflection channels create a polished version fit for a hotel lobby.

Effect Map Customization

Beyond the automatic effect map generating capability described above, Genetica 2.5 adds five new nodes to your arsenal allowing you to customize the effect maps that are produced for any texture. These nodes let you create new effect maps, name them, and combine them in various ways to achieve creative effects. Power users will enjoy generating customized channel data specific to their textures.

Normal Maps

The professional edition of Genetica 2.5 introduces fully-integrated normal map generation. Like any of the other effect maps created in Genetica 2.5, normal maps are automatically seamless and can be re-rendered at any desired resolution.

The new normal map functionality available in the Pro edition of Genetica 2.5 will be a blessing to anyone working with next-generation real-time environments.

Effect-Map-Aware Batch Processor

Genetica Pro's batch processor allows you to automate repetitive tasks that would otherwise take a long time to complete. With Genetica 2.5 Pro, the batch processor has been upgraded to allow you to design and execute tasks that may output hundreds of effect maps along with their corresponding textures. This will be a great timesaver for artists creating multi-channel texture collections, as well as those who like to quickly experiment with numerous texture variations.

Color Only Render Mode

By default, Genetica textures have highlights and shadows baked directly into them. However, if you are using Genetica 2.5's new effect maps to apply bumps or displacements within your final 3D scene, you may want a flat-looking version of your texture that doesn't already have highlights. The new Color Only Render mode automates the process of creating the flat version of your texture. Color Only Rendering is completely non-destructive, which means the original version of your texture is always available to you.

Rendering the original texture (top left) in Color Only mode will create a flat version of it without highlights or shadows (top right). This can then be used in combination with a displacement or bump map (also created by Genetica) in your final scene to give your materials a truly three-dimensional appearance.

For users desiring more control over the Color Only versions of their textures, several nodes have received a new "Skip for Color Only" property that allows you to customize what aspects of a texture are and are not included in Color Only Renders.

New Noise Types

Genetica 2.5 provides artists with five new noise types, along with dozens of options for customizing their appearance.

Noises are flexible pattern generators that give your textures character. From left to right and top to bottom, the new noises are "Lichen," "Rust," "Circuitry," "Metallic," and "Melt Noise."

In addition, the multi-purpose Cells generator node has received four new modes: "Circles", "Squares", "Square Bubbles", and "Manhattan."

The crystalline elevation map to the left is just one of the many new useful patterns that are made possible by Cells' four new modes.

Floating Views

A new Create Floating View option provides large, automatically-updating views of any part of your materials. Get high-resolution feedback on the results of your edits, as you make them. Floating views also allow artists with dual-monitor setups to make full use of their screen area.

Floating views not only let you simultaneously view different layers of your tiling texture (top two images) but also allow you to see how your material will appear at different camera distances (bottom two images). All floating views update automatically as you make changes to the material.

Lab Transparency Support

Lab nodes have been upgraded for transparency support. The Cut & Tile Lab, Layer Lab, and others will now maintain the transparency of their inputs, empowering a variety of effects, as illustrated below.

In this example the artist wanted a cracked and peeling version of a logo that he created in an illustration package, along with an alpha channel so that the logo could be effortlessly decaled onto various surfaces in the final environment. Thanks to Genetica 2.5's new Lab transparency support, creating transparent cracks in the logo was easy.

Embedded Author Info

Artists can now embed contact info and notes into the textures they make. Freelance artists and texturing studios will love the ability to include a live link to their on-line portfolios or company websites within any texture they distribute over the net. (This embedded data is visible to anyone editing the texture with Genetica, but it does not affect the final rendered output in any way.)

And More

In addition to everything mentioned above, artists will enjoy numerous speed and memory optimizations, interface enhancements, and other improvements!