CozyBlanket 2.0 Released

CozyBlanket 2.0 is now available: the upgrade to the iPad app includes manual retopology, seam-based UV unwrapping, packing, and baking. The app allows preparing models for animation, video games, real-time rendering, and surfacing.

CozyBlanket is now split into 3 different stages, which change the tool behavior and mesh rendering modes to perform different tasks.

Retopology

For the retopology stage, the creators overhauled the viewport rendering for better contrast and readability. Wireframe drawing is now GPU-accelerated and includes new animations. The target mesh can now be rendered with smooth shading and with vertex colors, imported both from .obj vertex colors or ZBrush polypaint.

CozyBlanket 2.0 supports multiple viewports so you can see different views of the data you are working with. In the Retopology stage, you can now see a semi-transparent overlay and a shaded preview of the retopology mesh so you can easily check the low poly model shapes and readability while building a new mesh.

The retopology Pencil gestures and actions also got some changes:

• There is a new SurfCut action that allows creating arbitrary cuts on the Editmesh.
• ExtendB can now reshape the locked boundary vertices if you draw a new line with the Pencil.
• The Move action has been updated, it now calculates its falloff through the mesh surface.
• There is a new PathD action and gesture for repositioning a set of vertices into a straight line.
• When using Tweak or Build actions, Editmesh vertices can be snapped to the Target mesh vertices by holding an extra finger over the viewport.
• Initial support for pencil hover overlays for the new M2 iPad Pro has been included; it is available in the Relax, Move and Build actions.

Unwrapping

In the UV stage, you can draw, delete and extend UV seams by drawing over the mesh edges in the 3D viewport. Actions and gestures are now consistent between stages. 

The UV stage supports multitouch texture repositioning when using the Tweak action. You can load a tillable texture and adjust how it wraps over the model without dealing with a 2D UV view.

Additionally, the Tweak action has an expanded set of functionality when editing the UV island packing: it can move, rotate, scale, and distribute islands. It can also perform these transformations to individual vertices or to all visible islands.

CozyBlanket 2.0 includes multiple snapping modes for UV: you can snap vertices or islands to an adjustable grid, pixel center, pixel corners, and symmetry lines.

The new version also got new functionality for dealing with complex UV layouts, such as support for automatically straightening UV grids, copying UVs from one island to another, and automatically symmetrizing and unfolding UV islands.

Baking

The baking stage allows creating tangent space normal maps and color maps from the imported Target mesh. You can export a ZIP file including baked maps, the model, and MTL files ready to import into another software.

When using multi viewport, you can now see the imported target mesh and low poly baking version side by side and move the scene light to check for possible shading and projection artifacts.

The feature for fine-tuning the baking process was also introduced so great results could be achieved even with complex geometry.

Moreover, the baking stage allows changing the shape of the baking cage by using the Tweak, Relax and Erase actions for fixing possible intersection artifacts as well as defining component links. 

Other Changes

The developers updated the Python network API for pulling the entire model, with its textures and UVs, to desktop software so you can integrate CozyBlanket with any existing DCC software or game engine. 

CozyBlanket was designed to be able to handle high-resolution meshes coming from scans and desktop DCCs in mobile devices. It allows you to import a high-poly sculpt and export a game-ready asset without common pipeline issues, such as scale mismatches, tangent space errors, and snapping artifacts.

You can get CozyBlanket 2.0 for free but without the ability to save or export. You can unlock those for $19.99 or purchase a Standard license for $89.99, which provides access to advanced features.