Normal & Specular Maps

[kodex]

any new information on how close they are to releasing these new features?

[Coby Foden]

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kodex wrote:

any new information on how close they are to releasing these new features?

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I guess this is the latest what is publicly kown:

http://blog.nalates.net/2013/03/26/second-life-normal-textures-tutorial/

The Materials System Project is steadily progressing. We do not have an ETA, yet. We do have a bit of a place marker in that we are told projects are moving in the order of;

  • Chat HUD User Interface

  • Server Side Appearance

  • and then Materials

So, we know it will arrive soon, but is still a ways off.

[unquote]

What we don't know exactly is how soon this soon is.  Could be soon... :smileyindifferent: 

[Alana Pyara]

This may have come up, but I did not find the answer in this thread in clear terms. My question is:

What does this mean for current regular textures and their use? Will they still be used? What does this mean for texture businesses? Or for people who have collected textures for years?

Will people sell textures that take these new features into account in the way the texture is compiled or more like with sculpty kits that come with a shadow map that can be compiled with a regular texture? I am not confusing sculpt maps with this, just using it as an example on how creators will in the future expect merchants behaving.

This sounds like it will require a lot from computers, so will it make SL difficult to reach for a regular user, or is this going to be usable by choice and basicly remain a trend for people with more advanced computers?

[Coby Foden]

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Alana Pyara wrote:

What does this mean for current regular textures and their use? Will they still be used?

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Nothing will happen to current texture use.  They will be used as they have been used so far.

In technical terms terms the current textures are called "Diffuse maps".

What materials system brings to Second Life (in addition to the current textures) is:

• Normal maps

• Specular maps

These don't replace the current diffuse map textures.  What they do is that they add more detail and "realness" to the overall appearance of textured surfaces.  Things can be still be textured only with diffuse map textures.  They can be textured with all three types too.

This link has all the good info of different texture types.  It is worth reading and watching the video:

http://blog.nalates.net/2013/03/26/second-life-normal-textures-tutorial/

[Tali Rosca]

As for the performance issue: If you have a graphics card from the last 10 years, it will have this technique embedded deep in the hardware, as part of the rendering pipeline. And in this case, pipeline is a rather literal image of it, as calculations flow from one part to the next; projecting to 3D, coloring, lighting etc.

The feature is simply unused by SL currently. Using it means beginning to take advantage of a step which is really already there. There is obviously a tiny performance impact, as the hardware needs to move the extra textures into active memory, but the calculations are pretty much free, as part of what is already being done by the hardware.

And since the normal mapping allows you to very convincingly fake details which would otherwise need to be calculated and projected as actual 3D modeling, if done right, this can actually help performance.

[Ciaran Laval]

You can now grab the project viewer here:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers#Project_Materials_Viewer

Release notes here:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers#Project_Materials_Viewer

[Qie Niangao]

I thought normalmaps were supposed to work on surfaces with alpha-blending. That's not what I'm seeing. The normalmap works fine on a surface with the Alpha Mode set to None or masking, but with blending the normalmap effect disappears completely. Not sure if this warrants a jira, is a known problem, or if I had unrealistic expectations all along.

[Tali Rosca]

Does specular work on alphas?

I am almost entirely sure that it was once mentioned that lighting would now work with alpha surfaces too, and I went YAY, finally! Shiny reflections in glass!

[Qie Niangao]

Yeah, that was going to be my next experiment, but I got sidetracked. (The upshot of that bug is to always work in a sandbox for now if one doesn't want stuff unexpectedly returned to Lost&Found.)

ETA: Well, it's extremely flaky, but as with normalmaps, I eventually managed to get a specularmap to apply to an alpha-masked diffusemap. No such luck on (the familiar) alpha-blended diffusemaps, at least not yet in my attempts to skirt the glitches.

[Ceri Quixote]

So the SL Beta has been released and so far I'm happy with the implementation - normal and specular maps can easily be added to existing objects and even with very basic building blocks, the visual effects that can be created are amazing.

That said  I am curious if there are any plans in the works to add the new maps to the skin and clothing layers for the basic avatar?  I can see where some of the alpha quirks might need to be worked out, but the addition of these options at the avatar level could give a dramatic and much needed boost to its appearance without having to rebuild the model from the ground up.  

[Sarah91 Tremor]

I tested normal maps and specular maps in the Second Life 3.6.0 (276475) May 24 2013 17:23:26 (Second Life Project Materials) environment and it works like a charme in a nVidia graphics port setup. I did not experience viewer slow-downs or additional lag under massive use of normal maps and specular map.

As two wishes (improvements in my eyes)...

#1 I would prefer buttons for switching between the different maps instead of a drop down box.

#2 add a copy&paste feature for the offsets/repeats/rotations between the maps would be helpful.

[Cezka Straaf]

It's a wonderful addition to SL builder's toolboxes, i tried it out and it looks amazing, metal for instance has never looked so real.

Unfortunately, there is a pretty massive down side to the way this is currently implemented. By forcing users to turn on the "Advanced lighting and shadows" options you're drastically increasing the GPU workload, which in my case lead to some pretty substantial lag, and i like to think of my system as fairly high end, i7 hex core cpu, 16gb of ddr3 and an aging but still powerful GTX 460.

From what i have observed only a small fraction of second life's user-base (about 10-25%) can even use the above mentioned settings on a regular basis in midly crowded areas without their systems grinding to a halt, adding specular and normal maps to it would only make things worse, and would render the new features unusable for most people.. kind of a wasted effort at the end of the day.

A proposed suggestion could be to split off these advanced lighting options into multiple sub categories, like; Advanced lights, Advanced shadows, Advanced materials. users would not be forced to turn everything on and could pick the options they actually want. And so be able to enjoy the new materials without for example, shadows, which i know are the root cause of the graphical lag i suffer from with advanced lighting.

I know it's not a perfect option, some of the above mentioned features are tied into others but i'm sure a lot of optimization can be done here.

[Drongle McMahon]

In the oofficial viewer, at least, you can turn off shadows while ALM is on by simply setting the shadows option selector to "None". Someone else reported that this removed most of the lag otherwise caused by ALM on their system.

[Lorek Eusebio]

You know, the funny thing is that I'm willing to bet that the lag is most likely coming from poor building practices in Second Life and the lack of proper use of these new materials. I'd guess you're probably in a typical sim that has tons of unique high resolution textures along with meshes that have an excess of polygons. 

I'm pretty sure that when used correctly, these materials and meshes will result in more detail for the price of much less GPU load.

I'm not saying that that IS what's going on, but I am saying that I'd bet a bunch money on it. 

Try going to Milk & Cream (It's an adult sim though so uh, be aware of that!) and see if you still get that drop in performance. The builders there know a thing or two about building efficiently.

[Piter Redstar]

when the client is on the main slot for materials and when it will be updated on phoenix firestorm

[Gael Streeter]

Hi everybody,

does someone know if there are LSL functions planned to be released soon in order to manage the new materials options by script ? And if yes, when ?

TX