Our Maya Scenes and Assets/Presets have had a large update to match with the latest Zoo Tools 2.7.0 . These new packs upgrades our Hive rigs, adds new shaders from polyhaven.com, calibrated skydomes, all assets now have folder organisation inside of our browsers and more!
Maya Scenes 1.8
– All Hive Rigs have been upgraded to match Zoo 2.7.0 .
– 42 new standardSurface shaders from PolyHaven.com .
Assets/Presets 2.8
– HDRI Skydomes now have callibrated intensities and key light orientations.
– Shader Presets now support metalness by default.
– New Assorted Shader Presets
– All of our browsers assets are now organised by folders.
– New Control shapes.
– Alembic Assets Cyc Backgrounds have improved UVs.
Hive Rigs Upgrades
Maya Scenes 1.8 upgrades all of our Hive rigs to match with Zoo 2.7.0 and above.
Zoo Tools 2.7.0 brings the Hive Auto-Rigger out of alpha and into beta. All Hive rigs are now compatible with the new version.
Each rig is availbale for each renderer.
Set the renderer to “All” (icon bottom right) to view all available rigs.
All Hive rigs have been updated to match Zoo 2.7.0. Each rig is supported by all renderers.
Included PolyHaven.com Shaders
We’ve included a selection of 42 shaders from PolyHaven.com with 2k resolution images, higher resolutions can be downloaded from their site. The shaders can be found inside of our Shader Presets (.MA/.MB) browser and by setting the renderer (bottom right icon) to All or Maya.
PolyHaven.com offer hundreds more free CCO HDRIs shaders and assets, please check them out!
A future version of Zoo Tools will have a Shader Builder tool that will automatically build shaders from PolyHaven.com and other texture libraries.
Set the renderer to “All” or “Maya” (icon bottom right) to view the standardSurface shaders.
42 PolyHaven Shaders included as standardSurface Shaders.
Cyc Assets with New UVs
The Alembic Assets browsers background cyc assets now have improved UVs for adding grids and textures.
Here is the Cyc Background textured with the included PolyHaven.com textures.
Cyc asset found in Alembic Assets with various PolyHaven.com textures.
Callibrated HDRI Skydome Images
HDRI images now all have callibrated intensity and rotation settings. Change and cycle through HDRIs while maintaining relative light settings.
By default all HDRI key lights shine directly from the front for all images.
The intensity of the HDRIs match with the default 1.0 intensity levels are now correctly exposed.
Before Callibration: HDRI Example
Old HDRIs load with random intensities and key light placement.
After Callibration: HDRI Example
New HDRIs in Zoo 2.7.0 callibrate the key light and intensity. Lights rotated 45degrees from the front.
The new HDRI settings Intenstry Multiplier and Rotation Offset allow you to calibrate and save offset settings on your own HDRI images.
Intensity and Rotation Offsets can be saved with custom HDRIs.
New Shader Presets
We’ve included new Shader Presets in the Assets/Presets 2.8 Pack.
– Human Viewport Metal based shaders are ideal for characters rendered in the viewport.
– Cloth Shaders with high roughness values.
Cloth and Human Viewport Shaders New in Assets/Presets 2.8.
New Control Shapes
The new Assets/Presets 2.8 Pack includes new control shapes to match with the Hive-Autorigger.
New Control Shapes in Zoo Assets/Presets 2.8.
Browser Folder Organisation
All Browser Assets and Presets now come with folder organised structures and you can add your own folders and categories too.
Each browser’s assets are now all sorted by folder. You can also add your own.
Shader Presets Metalness Defaults
All default Shader Presets now build with metalness values instead of IOR attributes.
This change matches modern PBR shader workflows that match with Substance Painter and game engines.
Both the Shader Manager and Shader Presets have supported the metalness shader attributes since Zoo 2.6.4 and now our presets now reflect those changes.
Default shaders now set metalness instead of IOR values. Metalness viewed in the Shader Manager.
If you are using Renderman’s PXRSurface we have included and marked the older IOR shader presets which will are compatible with PXRSurface which does not include the metalness setting.
Older shaders support IOR and support Renderman’s PXR Surface
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To see all tools go to the Zoo 2 Information Page.
Registered users can download all assets from the Zoo 2 Install Page.
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Hey there. Great job on the most recent updates. I’m really interested in looking forward to HIVE (Auto) custom rigging. Is Beta allowing this as Alpha had not, I believe?
Hi Brendan, are you after API training as per your email, I’ve replied there.
Yes if you’re after coding your own rig parts yes you can do that in beta, but you will need to talk to Dave directly, he’ll be able to keep you in the loop so you don’t go out of sync with us. Anyways I’ll talk to you via email.