RTX Remix Connector for InstaMAT

Pull a captured mesh from NVIDIA RTX Remix into a paint-ready InstaMAT project, paint your PBR material, and push the finished textures straight back — one click each way.

InstaMAT2Remix is a C++/Qt6 plugin for InstaMAT Studio that bridges it with the NVIDIA RTX Remix Toolkit. It is the InstaMAT counterpart of the Substance2Remix plugin for Adobe Substance Painter, and behaves 1:1 with it. Rendering happens in a separate helper process, so a Push can never crash Studio.

⚠️ Early alpha (v0.0.2-alpha). It works, but expect rough edges and bugs. If something misbehaves, please open an issue with your Diagnostics → Copy to Clipboard output. Feedback is very welcome.

Features

• Pull From Remix — resolves your current Remix selection and automatically creates a linked InstaMAT project from the mesh. Zero prompts. Optional simple tiling-plane substitute and optional Blender Smart-UV auto-unwrap.
• Import Textures from Remix — downloads the linked material's current textures (DDS→PNG via bundled texconv, canonical names) for reference/reuse.
• Push To Remix — auto-saves, renders your painted PBR outputs at the resolution you baked the project at, ingests them through Remix's ingestcraft pipeline, retargets the material, and saves the layer.
• Force Push to Remix — relinks to whatever is selected in Remix now and writes under a fresh, non-overwriting filename root.
• Out-of-process render worker (InstaMAT2RemixExport.exe) isolates rendering so it can never take down InstaMAT Studio.
• Settings (5 tabs), a one-click Diagnostics health report with copy-to-clipboard, and persistent file logging.

Requirements

Component	Requirement	Notes
OS	Windows 10/11 x64
InstaMAT Studio	3.x, activated	Push renders through the same license
RTX Remix Toolkit	REST API on http://localhost:8011, a project open	default host/port
Blender	3.6+ (optional)	auto-UV-unwrap on Pull; set path in Settings > Paths
Bundled	texconv, InstaMAT2RemixExport.exe, Qt runtime, MSVC runtime	shipped in the zip — nothing else to install

Install (from the release zip)

1. Download the latest InstaMAT2Remix-v*-win64.zip from Releases and unzip it.
2. Close InstaMAT Studio if it's running.
3. Run the installer: powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1
4. Start RTX Remix Toolkit (with a project open), then InstaMAT Studio.
5. An RTX Remix Connector menu appears in Studio's menu bar.

The zip is self-contained (Qt runtime, texconv, the render helper, and the MSVC runtime are all included). The in-zip README.md has the full walkthrough plus a manual, no-script install path. To remove the plugin later, run uninstall.ps1.

Usage

Menu action	What it does
Pull From Remix	Reads your Remix selection, resolves its mesh + material, and auto-creates a linked InstaMAT project — choose Asset Texturing (default), Element Graph, or Materialize Image (the material's Remix texture is downloaded and loaded as the source image). "Remember my choice" restores zero-prompt pulls.
Import Textures from Remix	Downloads the linked material's textures (DDS→PNG, canonical names) into Documents\InstaMAT2Remix\Pulled Textures\<project>\, registers the folder, and opens Explorer. Drag each map onto the matching channel.
Push To Remix	Auto-saves → renders PBR outputs at the baked resolution → ingests → retargets the linked material → saves the Remix layer. Pushes every texture type Remix supports — incl. subsurface scattering (transmittance/thickness/single-scattering/radius) and anisotropy; opacity is merged into albedo's alpha; glass materials get only their supported channels. Renders out-of-process.
Force Push to Remix	Like Push, but relinks to the currently selected Remix material and writes under a fresh, non-overwriting filename root.
Settings…	Connection / Paths / Pull / Export / Advanced.
Diagnostics…	One-click health report (versions, path checks, link state, live connectivity), Copy to Clipboard.
About…	Plugin name, version, and repository link.

Typical session

1. In Remix Toolkit, select the mesh (or its material) you want to retexture.
2. RTX Remix Connector > Pull From Remix — an InstaMAT project opens with the mesh loaded.
3. Paint / drag library materials onto it. Set your bake resolution (e.g. 4K) for a high-res push.
4. RTX Remix Connector > Push To Remix — Push saves, renders at the baked resolution, and updates the material in Remix.

Known limitations

• Intermittent 1×1 render collapse under GPU load. The InstaMAT standalone renderer occasionally emits a 1×1 map for some channels, especially when another GPU-heavy app is running. The plugin automatically retries with fresh worker processes; if none renders clean it stops the push and leaves your Remix textures untouched — close other GPU apps (reboot if it persists) and Push again.
• Single selected mesh only. Multi-mesh material-group bundling on Pull (present in Substance2Remix) is not yet ported.
• Import is reference-only. InstaMAT's plugin SDK has no API to auto-assign textures into an open project, so imported maps must be dragged onto their channels manually.
• Element Graph pushes read your graph output parameters — name them after PBR channels (Base Color, Roughness, Normal, …). A single generically-named image output is pushed as Base Color with a note.
• Live in-Studio smoke (2026-07-12): Asset Texturing pull + full push, Element Graph pull + push (incl. the lone-output Base Color fallback), and Materialize Image pull + full push are user-verified end-to-end. Remaining paths (SSS/glass pushes, opacity-merge visual check) are still being validated by the community — please file an issue with your Diagnostics output if anything misbehaves.

Building from source

cd InstaMAT2Remix
.\build_plugin.ps1                     # build + dev-install to this machine
.\build_plugin.ps1 -InstallMode None   # build only
.\package_release.ps1                  # produce dist\InstaMAT2Remix-v<ver>-win64.zip

Toolchain: Visual Studio 2022 or 2026, Qt 6.5.3/6.6.3 (MSVC x64), CMake. build_plugin.ps1 auto-detects all three.

Tests:

cd InstaMAT2Remix
cmake -S . -B build_test -G "Visual Studio 18 2026" -A x64 -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="C:/Qt/6.6.3/msvc2019_64"
cmake --build build_test --target TestRemixConnector --config Debug
ctest --test-dir build_test -C Debug -V
python -m pytest InstaMAT2Remix/tests/ -v     # from the repo root

Note: on machines with Visual Studio 18 / 2026 the CMake generator string must be "Visual Studio 18 2026" ("Visual Studio 17 2022" fails there). Qt 6.6.3/msvc2019_64 is ABI-compatible with both.

Troubleshooting

• Log file: Documents\InstaMAT2Remix\logs\remix_connector.log.
• RTX Remix Connector > Diagnostics… gives a one-click health report (paths, settings, live Remix connectivity) with Copy to Clipboard.
• Settings > Connection > Test Connection verifies the Remix REST API.
• "Push stopped to protect your Remix textures" — see Known limitations; close GPU-heavy apps and Push again. Nothing in Remix was changed.
• "Live export failed" — check the ExportWorker: lines in the log and confirm InstaMAT Studio is activated (the helper renders through the license).

Repository layout

Path	What
InstaMAT2Remix/	Plugin source (C++/Qt6 against the InstaMAT Plugin SDK)
InstaMAT2Remix/ExportWorker.cpp	InstaMAT2RemixExport.exe, the out-of-process render worker
InstaMAT2Remix/tools/imp_packaging.ps1	.IMP (MAT container) package builder
InstaMAT2Remix/dist_template/	End-user installer + docs staged into the release zip
docs/wbc_parity_audit.md	Feature-parity tracker vs Substance2Remix
CONTRIBUTING.md · CHANGELOG.md	Contributor guide · release history

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Third-party components (texconv/MIT, Qt/LGPL-3.0, the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime, and the InstaMAT Plugin SDK) are documented in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.

Credits

• Behavioral inspiration: Substance2Remix / WholeBodyCapture (WBC) for Adobe Substance Painter.
• Built on the InstaMAT Plugin SDK (© InstaMaterial GmbH).
• Interfaces with the NVIDIA RTX Remix Toolkit REST API.
• Bundles texconv.exe from Microsoft DirectXTex (MIT).
• Qt 6 used under LGPL-3.0. Ships the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime.