News

Boxshot 5.5.2 beta

24 Sep 2022

This update adds so called “texture slots” that let you fine–tune each image used in materials. More details and screenshots are inside.

Introducing Texture Slots

Boxshot lets you load various types of artwork to use in materials: diffuse texture (the main artwork), various masks, heightmap and so on. The artwork is used as is, but you can flip it over, adjust the tiling a bit and so on, and this works for all the images in the material.

Start from this update, you can configure all the tiling, wrapping, rotation and other texture parameters independently for every image used in materials. The combination of the artwork image and its parameters is called “texture slot” and if you used Koru or Owlet, you probably already seen them there.

Here’s what it looks like:

Closed texture slot in Boxshot

So far it is pretty simple: just a name, color picker and the artwork icon. But if you click it, it expands this way:

Expanded texture slot in Boxshot

Here you can find the file picker, cropping button (yes you can now crop textures separately), uv mapping options like repeat, offset, separate texture wrapping options, rotation, filtering and color correction.

Yes, textures can now be rotated freely which works best for various masks, especially the tiled ones. Note, that the Fit to images option will only work properly if the rotation angle is a factor of 90°, as otherwise Boxshot can’t compute shape’s dimensions.

You can re–use texture slots by dragging them onto each other, including the ones in other materials, or by right–clicking them and copying and pasting the whole slots, or just images or cropping parameters. This way you can easily transfer texture parameters between materials.

Scene background and environment use texture slots, as well:

Scene background is configured by the texture slot, too

Note, that this slot doesn’t offer UV mapping or cropping options. The number of options in the slot depends on what it is used for and some features may not be offered everywhere.

Project Format Changes

It is very important to note that adding texture slots changes the way Boxshot projects are saved.

Boxshot will read and properly process old projects saved without texture slots, but once the project is saved by the new version it will not work with the old Boxshot, you will get blank materials.

Make sure you have backup copies of your projects before you switch to the new version. Although it is pretty stable for the beta, it is still a beta, so have a plan if you decide to roll everything back.

Other Changes

Besides the texture slots update, this version comes with:

  • proper artwork colors in preview on Mac;
  • better relief decals processing;
  • soda can model uv mapping fixed;
  • higher parameters precision for all the shapes;
  • better 3D PDF export.

Cheers!