Boxshot 5.5.1 beta
31 Aug 2022
This is the second beta of Boxshot 5.5 mostly focused on materials improvements, but it also adds some other features. Read on for more details.
Reflection 180°
The new option lets you specify the reflection tint for the objects’ sides. It is similar to “Reflection 90°” we have in Koru, but here we named it a little bit more obvious. Here’s what you can do with it:
It works for both metals and dielectrics and let you visually enhance your materials a lot.
Extinction Coefficient
That’s another new option in the material properties panel. Simply put, that’s the index of refraction for metals. More specifically, that’s a second part of the complex refractive index of any material. You may also now it as K in Koru and Owlet.
The higher it is, the more reflective is the metallic material. You can adjust it manually, or use online refraction index databases to get the proper parameters for the metal you need.
By the way, we updated the built–in list of materials in Boxshot and added some new ones there:
Anisotropy
That’s what you use to create that “brushed” effect. All the options are there, we just need to make a nice tutorial for this feature, but here’s what you can do with it:
Boxshot comes with some pre–defined radial and linear brushed textures that you can use in your scenes, or you can make your own, if needed.
Thin Film Interference
Think of anodized aluminium or soap bubbles. You may see that features in Koru and Owlet, now it is ported to Boxshot:
Constant thin film thickness gives you the anodized metal effect, while using texture for thickness gives oil spill colors.
Decal Materials
This update moves decal materials to the shape’s materials list:
This way we can easily add new features to materials without having to duplicate them for decals. Now you can also adjust all the properties of decal materials, not just the selected ones.
Snapping
The snapping feature we added recently divided our users into two camps: ones were super happy about that, while others wanted the shapes to move freely. Although we had the “Alt” hotkey to disable the snapping, we decided to make it a little more obvious, so now you can toggle snapping with Alt–S hotkey, or using the “Snap” item in the “View” menu.
Cheers!