PBR Forge Changelog

Hey! It’s been a little while — I had to step away and focus on some other things for a bit. But I’m back, and I’ve got some updates for you.

New

• Feedback board — You can now suggest ideas and vote on what I should work on next. Head over to the feedback page to share your thoughts — I’m genuinely looking at every submission to decide what to prioritize
• Support & feedback modal — There’s now a quick way to reach out with questions or report issues directly from the app

Fixed

• Empty map exports — Roughness, metallic, and emissive maps were sometimes exporting as blank images. That’s been fixed — all maps now export correctly every time
• Trackpad navigation hijack — If you’re on a Mac, swiping on the trackpad was accidentally triggering browser back/forward navigation instead of interacting with the canvas. No more of that
• Canvas cursor — The grab cursor now only shows up when you actually have an image loaded, and switches to a grabbing cursor while you’re panning around. Small thing, but it feels better :)

The 3D wireframe toggle now overlays mesh edges on top of the textured surface instead of replacing it, plus stability improvements for resource cleanup and WebGL context recovery.

Improved

• Wireframe overlay — Wireframe renders as semi-transparent white lines over the fully textured mesh, so you can see how topology affects your texture (e.g. UV pinching at sphere poles)
• Displacement-aware wireframe — The wireframe overlay follows displacement mapping at any scale, staying perfectly aligned with the displaced surface

Fixed

• Memory management — Images, textures, and background processes are now properly cleaned up when switching files or closing the app, reducing memory usage over long sessions
• Large texture exports — Temporary resources used during chunked exports are now freed between tiles, preventing memory spikes when exporting high-resolution texture packs
• 3D viewer recovery — If your browser reclaims GPU resources (common on mobile or when switching tabs), the 3D preview now recovers automatically instead of going blank

Customize your workspace layout with drag-to-resize panels and improved rendering quality.

New

• Drag-to-resize sidebars — Resize the parameter sidebar and preview panel by dragging their edges to fit your workflow
• Preview sidebar — Dedicated collapsible panel for 2D and 3D preview controls, separate from the main parameter sidebar
• Collapsible panels — Sidebars collapse with smooth clip-path animations and can be toggled with a single click
• Auto-transparency — Transparency in the 3D viewer toggles automatically based on whether your source image has alpha

Improved

• Aspect ratio preservation — 3D plane geometry now matches your source image’s aspect ratio for accurate material previews
• Deferred renderer activation — UI transitions complete before the renderer activates, preventing visible layout jank on load
• Main thread yielding — Long-running file operations yield to the browser between chunks, keeping the UI responsive during exports
• Export pipeline testing — End-to-end and golden regression tests verify that exported PBR texture packs match expected output
• Control ordering — Sidebar controls reordered by relevance: primary parameters first, shared dependencies last
• Tooltip placement — Asset type tooltips moved onto the buttons themselves for a cleaner, more discoverable layout

Full control over 3D preview lighting and a ground-up mobile interface redesign.

New

• Procedural environment map — Built-in environment map for physically accurate PBR reflections and specular highlights in the 3D viewer
• Light intensity slider — Control the strength of the directional light in the 3D preview
• Ambient & environment intensity — Separate sliders for ambient fill and environment map contribution
• Fill light — Secondary light source to reduce harsh shadows in the 3D preview
• Normal preview intensity — Adjust how strongly the normal map affects the lit 2D preview
• AO preview intensity — Control ambient occlusion darkening strength in the preview
• Resolution toggle — Switch between preview and full-resolution rendering with a single click

Mobile

• 4-tier bottom navigation — Dedicated mobile layout with view tabs, parameter controls, and preview drawer accessible from the bottom of the screen
• Touch-optimized controls — Larger tap targets, smooth-scrolling tabs, and swipe-friendly parameter panels
• Mobile preview drawer — Toggle the 2D/3D preview from a persistent bottom button without losing your place in the controls

Improved

• Selective map tracking — The renderer now tracks which maps changed and only updates the 3D material textures that need refreshing
• 3D light rotation — Lights are attached to the camera so they rotate naturally as you orbit the 3D model

Automatic sprite vs. texture detection and major WebGL stability improvements across browsers.

New

• Smart mode detection — PBR Forge analyzes your source image and automatically selects the optimal processing pipeline for sprites or photographic textures
• Inline error banners — File and WebGL errors now display as contextual inline banners instead of transient toast notifications
• Light cursor feedback — The canvas light cursor dynamically updates its size and color as you adjust light parameters

Improved

• WebGL context recovery — Automatic detection and graceful restoration after GPU context loss, with full re-render of all active maps
• Async GPU reads — Pixel readback from the GPU uses fence-based asynchronous polling instead of blocking the main thread
• Safari compatibility — Adjusted WebGL setup with preserveDrawingBuffer for correct rendering on Safari
• Color contrast — Updated text colors across the interface for improved readability and WCAG compliance
• Critical CSS inlining — Above-the-fold styles are inlined for faster first paint, with non-critical styles deferred

New tint color controls for diffuse map customization and a redesigned workspace layout.

New

• Tint color adjustment — Apply color tints to your source image for diffuse/albedo map customization, with a one-click reset button
• Collapsible right sidebar — All surface, material, and lighting controls consolidated into a collapsible sidebar panel
• 2D/3D preview toggle — Switch between 2D map views and the 3D material preview directly from the canvas controls
• View tab scrolling — Horizontal scroll support with mouse wheel and chevron buttons for navigating map view tabs

Improved

• File validation — Browser-native image format detection with clear error messages for unsupported file types
• Sidebar accessibility — Keyboard navigation and focus-visible styles for sidebar buttons
• Viewport accessibility — Removed maximum-scale restriction so users can zoom the page freely

PBR Forge is now available in public beta — a browser-based PBR texture generator powered by WebGL2.

PBR Map Generation

• Normal map generation — Convert any source image into accurate normal maps using GPU-accelerated Jump Flood Algorithm distance fields
• Ambient occlusion — Generate AO maps with configurable intensity and smoothing to add depth to your materials
• Roughness & metallic maps — Create roughness and metallic textures with blur, invert, and per-channel controls
• Emissive maps — Define glow regions with threshold and intensity sliders
• Height maps — Automatic height extraction from source images for displacement workflows
• Alpha-weighted smoothing — Normal map smoothing clips to the original sprite alpha, preventing ghostly rims on transparent edges

Real-Time 3D Preview

• Three.js integration — Preview your PBR materials on plane, sphere, and cylinder meshes directly in the browser
• Lit 2D preview — Interactive light positioning for quick normal map validation without switching to 3D

Export & Workflow

• PBR texture pack export — Download all generated maps as a single ZIP or export individual map channels
• Multi-file support — Load and switch between multiple source images in one session
• Worker thread exports — Large texture exports run off the main thread to keep the UI responsive
• Banding detection — Automatic analysis of gradient-prone maps with user notifications when banding artifacts are detected

Performance & Compatibility

• GPU-accelerated pipeline — All map generation runs on WebGL2 compute shaders for instant feedback
• Incremental rendering — Dirty flag system recomputes only the maps affected by parameter changes
• Mobile & tablet support — Touch interactions for light positioning, zoom, and canvas navigation
• Android Chrome compatibility — Offscreen canvas rendering and explicit attribute bindings for mobile WebGL edge cases
• Keyboard shortcuts — Hotkeys for switching views, toggling help, and common actions