Toolbag 4 runs on Intel Macs with macOS 10.15 Catalina or later. No Apple Silicon native build yet — it runs as an x86 64-bit process.
It sits beside your modeling app and your compositor. Where a full DCC handles everything, Toolbag focuses on one thing: seeing your work clearly and quickly. It imports lights and cameras from FBX files, updates the mesh when the source changes, and gives you fine control over materials, lighting, and the camera. No scene prep, no waiting.
Viewer
- Lossless normal maps for clean surface detail
- Camera limits for controlled exports
- Automatic mesh updates while you work
Fit
Toolbag doesn't replace your modeler or your renderer. It fills the gap between them — a fast, precise window for material and lighting decisions. English is the only interface language.
Soft gradient backdrop
You open a character model. FBX, straight from Blender. The mesh lands on a soft gradient backdrop. You drag a studio HDRI into the sky slot. The metal fittings catch the light.
You notice the leather looks too glossy. Click the material — roughen it by 0.2. The preview updates before you lift your finger. You set the camera to a low three-quarter angle, lock the focal length, and hit render. A still goes to the art director. No round-trip. No export script.
Later, the modeler sends a revised mesh. Toolbag notices. The updated file pops in. Your materials hold. Your camera holds. You render again.
Portfolio map assignment
A hard-surface asset needs presentation for a portfolio piece. You have the high-poly, the low-poly with UVs, and a set of baked maps.
Load the low-poly into Toolbag. Assign the normal map, the roughness map, the metallic map. Switch to the sky lighting preset called “Studio Neutral.” Rotate the HDRI until the edge highlights feel right. Add a child spotlight for a rim hit — cool blue, low intensity. The metal panels separate from the dark body.
You add a camera. 85 mm. A gentle orbit, three keyframes, ten seconds. Ease in, ease out. The turntable renders overnight. In the morning, four hundred frames sit in a folder. No compositing needed. The fog softens the background. The reflections are real-time but look offline.
Empty FBX fix
Imported FBX looks empty. The scene scale is probably tiny. Check your DCC export units — centimeters work better than meters. Scale the model on import or fix it at the source.
Tooltips crash the window. Fixed in 4.02. If you stayed on an earlier build, turn off tooltips in preferences until you update.
Text looks soft at 125% scaling. Also fixed in 4.02. A quick restart after changing DPI scaling clears any remaining flicker.
Viewer exports ignore camera limits. The camera object needs its near/far clipping range set explicitly. The limits checkbox reads those values.
Emissive materials use the wrong UV set. Select the UV set from the emissive shader’s dropdown. The option is per-material, not global.
