Viewer Support
If you’re curious about how Marmoset Viewer works, wondering which features are supported, or having trouble using Marmoset Viewer, you’ve come to the right place! Alternatively, If you’re looking for an introduction to Marmoset Viewer, please read the Getting Started with Marmoset Viewer tutorial.
Basics
Marmoset Viewer is a WebGL-based 3D real-time renderer that runs on a wide range of browsers and operating systems. No plugin is required to see Marmoset Viewer content.
Marmoset Viewer is included for free with Toolbag versions 2.07 and newer.
KEYBOARD & MOUSE:
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TOUCHSCREEN:
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Marmoset Viewer should run on any device/browser combination that supports WebGL. Performance will vary depending on many factors, including device hardware and scene complexity. To check how well your device works with Marmoset Viewer, load the demo gallery.
At this time, Android support is not as robust as Windows, OS X and iOS. This is due to various technical issues related to the Android operating system that we are currently researching.
Exporting
Marmoset Viewer content is created by setting up a scene in Marmoset Toolbag, and exporting a .mview file. All of the scene data including meshes, materials, textures, lights, camera and post effect settings are saved. You can then upload the .mview file to your web server, or popular websites like ArtStation.
On export, your scene content is compressed to minimize the file size. Texture content is converted to a standard shading model, which is why you will see your textures displayed as reflectivity and gloss even if they were authored as metalness and roughness.
The texture quality options in the export dialog determine compression and resolution, with the following maximums:
- Low: Textures are capped at 1024×1024 with low quality compression.
- High: Textures are capped at 2048×2048 with medium quality compression.
- Unreasonable: Textures are capped at 4096×4096 with high quality compression.
Scenes with large or many textures will increase file size and bandwidth use and may not run well or may even crash on lower end devices like tablets and phones.
Beginning with the Marmoset Toolbag 2.08 update, we’ve added an option to export high-quality, losslessly compressed normal maps. It’s important to note that lossless normal maps can significantly increase the size of your Marmoset Viewer file.
There are no geometry count limitations. However, it’s important to keep in mind that complex scenes with high geometry count may not run well or may crash on mobile devices.
File size will vary depending on scene complexity, size and quality of textures, and number of textures. A typical game-ready asset with two texture sets limited to 2k resolution will generally be around 10MB.
Untextured high poly models can be loaded as well. A scene with 1 million triangles and no textures will be around 22MB. If you’re uploading content to ArtStation (which has a limit of 15MB) you can try decimating your mesh in ZBrush or other 3D modeling packages to reduce file size.
Local Content
Yes, as of version 3.04 Toolbag ships with a stand-alone .mview viewing application. Now you can double click .mview files to open them. The Viewer application can be downloaded separately as well.
Loading Marmoset Viewer scenes from your mobile device’s local storage is not currently supported.
Embedding
Check out the Getting Started with Marmoset Viewer tutorial for details.
Yes! View the Getting Started tutorial for more information.
Mark Bos (Revolutionart) created a WordPress plugin to make it easy to upload and embed Marmoset Viewer on your WordPress-based website.
Yes, however, doing so may cause performance/memory issues on lower end devices, so it should generally be avoided.
Supported Features
This is a list of the currently supported shader models and texture inputs. We plan to add support for more items on this list in the future.
| Name | Support | Notes |
| Subdivision | ||
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No | |
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No | |
| Displacement | ||
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No | |
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No | |
| Surface | ||
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Yes | Object space maps are not fully supported. |
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Partial | Detail normal maps are baked down to the primary normal map which may result in significantly reduced resolution. Only UV Set 0 is supported, Detail maps which use UV Set 1 will appear incorrect. |
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No | |
| Microsurface | ||
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Yes | Roughness maps (invert checked) will be converted to gloss maps. |
| Albedo | ||
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Yes | Albedo maps authored for the metalness workflow will be converted to standard albedo maps (specular workflow). |
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Yes | |
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Yes | |
| Diffusion | ||
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Yes | |
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Yes | |
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Yes | |
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Yes | |
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Partial | Dota content is converted to our standard shading model. Not all effects are supported at this time. |
| Reflectivity | ||
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Yes | |
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Yes | Metalness maps will be converted to standard reflectivity maps (specular workflow). |
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Yes | Metalness maps will be converted to standard reflectivity maps (specular workflow). |
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Yes | |
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Partial | Dota content is converted to our standard shading model. Not all effects are supported at this time. |
| Reflection | ||
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Yes | |
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Yes | |
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Yes | GGX support uses an approximated method (for performance reasons) which does not match as accurately as Blinn-Phong. This is especially noticeable with rougher surfaces. |
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Yes | |
| Secondary Reflection | ||
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No | |
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No | |
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No | |
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No | |
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No | |
| Occlusion | ||
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Yes | |
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Yes | |
| Emissive | ||
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Yes | |
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Yes | |
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No | |
| Transparency | ||
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Yes | |
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Yes | Dithered transparency uses an alternate technique, which is a mix of alpha blend and alpha test. |
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Yes | |
| Extra | ||
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No | |
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Yes | Substance inputs can not be changed dynamically because they are optimized and compressed on export. |
SUPPORTED:
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NOT SUPPORTED:
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Yes, as of Toolbag 3.04 animation is supported! Rigged, animated FBX files and animation content created inside Toolbag, such as object and material animations are currently supported. However, blend shapes, vertex animation and Alembic animations are not supported at this time. To create an Animated Viewer file simply enable Export Animations in the Viewer export window.
Yes, if you have multiple animation sets, enable Animation Showcase from the Viewer export window. This will add a dropdown with an entry for each animation to the Viewer interface. When Animation Showcase is disabled, the animation will play as a series from the start to end frame.
Learn more about how to import and create animations in Toolbag with episode #3 and #10 of the Getting to Know Toolbag 3 video tutorial series.
Yes, as of Toolbag 3.04 multiple cameras are supported. If your scene has more than one camera, it will be exported and a dropdown will be added to the Viewer interface. If you have cameras in your scene which you do not want to export, click the eyeball icon in the outliner to hide them.
Yes, as of Toolbag 3.04 volumetric shadow casting fog is supported.
Yes, for performance reasons there are a few limitations. Firstly, only 3 shadow casting lights are supported. You can use more lights (up to 6 total), but only the first 3 will cast shadows. Secondly, directional and spot lights do cast shadows; however, omni lights do not cast shadows at this time. Thirdly area lights are not supported. Set light width to 0 for accurate preview.
Global illumination (GI), local reflections (SSR), and ambient occlusion (SSAO) are not supported at this time.
This is not possible with Marmoset viewer. We feel 3D presentation is the most intuitive way to display textures. Additionally, 3D texture presentation allows us to show texture content regardless of how many materials or maps were used to author the materials.
If you want to show your 2D flats, you can include traditional images on your portfolio or ArtStation page.
Not at this time. On export, all texture content is converted to an optimized, universal standard to ensure compatibility and maintain high performance.
Not at this time. If you’re having trouble running Marmoset Viewer on your device, please contact support@marmoset.co.
Troubleshooting
This message will be displayed when a variety of errors occur, such as:
“PACKAGE FILE (SCENE.MVIEW) COULD NOT BE RETRIEVED.”
This means that the file could not be found, or that there was a server-side problem loading the file. To troubleshoot:
- Make sure you have uploaded both the .mview file and the .html file to your server.
- Make sure the path to the .mview file in the .html file is correct. If you’ve moved the .mview file to a different directory, you will need to update the path.
If you’ve done the two steps above and continue to have problems loading your file you may need to enable cross-origin resource sharing on your web server. Many servers have CORS disabled by default. If you do not have access to server-side settings, try contacting support for your web host.
If there is no way to enable CORS on your web host, the easiest way to share your art will be via ArtStation.
“PLEASE CHECK TO ENSURE YOUR BROWSER HAS SUPPORT FOR WEBGL.”
This means that your device and/or browser do not support WebGL. To troubleshoot:
- Make sure you’re using a web browser that supports WebGL. Most modern browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari support WebGL.
- Check that you have the latest version of your browser installed.
- Confirm that you have the latest version of your video card drivers installed.
- If you’re using a beta version or special build of your web browser, try the latest public release instead.
- Make sure WebGL is enabled in your browser’s settings. Some browsers such as Safari may have WebGL disabled by default. For more details visit https://get.webgl.org/.
“THIS .MVIEW FILE IS FROM AN OUT-OF-DATE BETA VERSION OF TOOLBAG. PLEASE RE-EXPORT IT WITH THE NEW VERSION. THANKS!”
This error means that something major has changed with Marmoset Viewer’s code, which has broken backwards compatibility. Re-exporting your scene should fix the problem. This error will only be seen with content exported from the early beta version.
“PACKAGE FILE COULD NOT BE READ OR IS INVALID.”
This means that there was some sort of problem reading the file. The file may be corrupt, in which case:
- Re-upload the file, or if your upload is still in progress, wait for it to finish and refresh the page.
- Re-export and re-upload the file.
If that doesn’t fix it, it may simply be a file not found error (depending on how your web host handles 404s). Try the steps listed above in the “Package file could not be retrieved.” section.
If you’re using a service like Dropbox to host your files you may get an error about mixed content types or even a blank screen. This happens when content is requested from both HTTP and HTTPS sources, which most browsers do not allow due to security concerns. To fix this, edit your .html file to make sure the
Visit Mozilla’s page on mixed content for more information.
Insufficient memory is the most common cause of problems/crashing. If you’re on a mobile device, try exporting your scene with lower quality settings to reduce file size/memory usage. If you’re having trouble viewing someone else’s content, contact the author and ask them to export a mobile-friendly version of the scene.
If you’re on a desktop or laptop with plenty of video memory, try the following:
- Restart your browser.
- Restart your computer.
- Make sure you have the latest version of your browser installed.
- Confirm that you have the latest version of your video card drivers installed.
If you’re still having problems, contact support@marmoset.co.
If you’re using the skin shader, you may notice differences in the shadows when comparing Marmoset Viewer to Toolbag. For example, the shadows may appear to be much more or less blurry in Toolbag, or the shadows may not show up very well in Marmoset Viewer. The reason for this is that the Shadow Blur skin shader setting in Toolbag is dependent on scene/mesh scale and camera FOV. We have updated the skin shader in Marmoset Viewer to be more consistent in this regard, however we are still researching how to make similar changes to Toolbag 3. In the mean time, you may need to export a few test scenes until you’re happy with the Shadow Blur setting.
Try restarting your browser. Memory leaks in web browser can cause problems if the program isn’t closed occasionally to clear out the memory. If that doesn’t fix the problem, contact support@marmoset.co.
If you’ve embedded the Viewer into your site with an iframe, make sure allowfullscreen is set to true.
Some devices, such as Apple iOS phones and tablets, do not support fullscreen through a browser. In this case, the fullscreen button is hidden.
Texture content authored for the metalness workflow is converted to the specular workflow (albedo, reflectivity/specular and gloss) on export. This allows us to use a standardized shading model and know how many textures will be in use, which is important for mobile performance. The conversion process is lossless; however, your albedo, metalness and or roughness maps may look different in the layers view.
More about the differences between the metalness and specular workflows can be found here.
The Layers view mode will present all normal maps in object space format, yet your final result is still rendered using your tangent space maps. We feel this is the best way to visually present normal maps in 3D. Displaying tangent space maps in 3D has various shortcomings; the most obvious problem is you would frequently notice what appears to be UV seams or other errors across the map, which are not errors but required information to show a seamless end result. Additionally, object space normal maps allow us to rotate the normals when you rotate the lighting, which is cool.
The skybox background is blurred to a uniform value to save memory and improve loading time, so the background appearance may differ between Toolbag and Viewer. For accurate preview, set background mode to blurred in Toolbag.
Security
Much like JPEGs, GIFs, and videos, 3D models & textures must be sent in full to the browser client in order to be rendered. This, in short, makes robust copy-protection essentially impossible for all software that renders 3D on the web. While we at Marmoset do not supply, support, or condone any tools for extracting data from Marmoset Viewer scenes, third party software can be created to accomplish this to varying degrees.
We think 3D content on the web is really cool. It’s our belief that the rewards of displaying high quality 3D content online greatly outweigh the potential risks. For particularly sensitive content, one might opt to share 3D artwork privately; pages like ArtStation offer private, password-protected posts.
The 3D art industry is generally very unkind to thieves and frauds. If you spot stolen artwork online, contact the administrator of the site where it was posted so that it can be removed. Encourage friends and coworkers to take the same action. Theft of this kind is less a case for impenetrable security than a social problem we can all help combat.
