I made a free tool called PBR Texture Atlas Editor (PBRTAE). I originally built it for myself. Then I thought I might sell it, came to terms with the fact that I probably wouldn’t sell many copies, and decided to give it away for free.
I’ll keep this short: it’s an editor for people who use texture atlases when laying out UVs for their models. I built it because working with layers in Photoshop, GIMP, and similar tools often got on my nerves.
Here’s how it works: click “Add Panel” to bring in the texture sets you want in the atlas, one set at a time. Then position each panel where you want it. When you click Export, the tool automatically generates matching atlases for all the textures you added. You can also apply simple image effects to textures you find online, much like you would in an image editor.
I’ll be sharing this post in a few other places too. PBRTAE will keep improving, and you can follow new releases on its itch.io page.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions here or on itch io, even if your feedback is “What a pointless tool! Why would anyone use this?!”
While working on a much larger and more comprehensive tool, I was also trying to make a game. Despite being involved in 3D modeling for 20 years, my skills are still limited, so I started looking into techniques that would make modeling easier. As I explored creating trim sheets from 2D images and putting together texture atlases, my modeling workflow shifted in that direction. That also meant having to use applications like photoshop and gimp. The trouble is, while these applications handle RGB images just fine, things fall apart when working with sensitive data such as normal maps and roughness maps. They end up altering the linear data.
I paid particular attention to this in PBRTAE, making sure normal maps stay intact and linear data retains its quality.
Anyway, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. As time allows, I’ll add more features that I think will make it much more powerful.
excellent, and thanks for sharing - sounds like something i might use in the not too distant future - been scratching my head thinking of an anagrammatic name from the letters PBRTAE, and am yet to come up with one other than BARTAB, which is silly and also spelled wrong
I’m going to release a very comprehensive overhaul. Since I’ve been doing research and development for another software project for a very long time, all I need to do is add the features that are almost ready and fix bugs. To be honest, there isn’t much else I want to add for now. On the other hand, I’m not sure where else I can promote the software. Does anyone have any ideas?
I’m not sure if people’s interest in high performance monolithic tools has waned in this era of vibe coding and artificial intelligence. Frankly, it doesn’t really matter, but I wouldn’t mind getting some feedback from professionals in the texturing field.