What can you expect to see on a viewer that doesn't conform to the new material system

[Nacy Nightfire]

I set up a test using a bump/normal map and a spec map.  It looked great to me.   Then I asked a friend to take a look from a different viewer.  She set properties to viewing advanced materials, but I suspect her viewer doesn't yet have the capability to see custom materials.  What she saw (she sent me a pic)  looked awful, the texture was flat but with some other horrible bump map (concrete?) added from the default bump map options and I believe the spec was  overlaying the ambient occlusion map I used as the diffuse texture.

I expected that anyone who wasn't set up to view materials would just see the intended diffuse texture but not the bump or the specularity or anything about those last 2 maps.  Can someone please enlighten me about what folks can expect to see if they don't have viewers or systems that enable them to see custom maps? 

Thanks and apologies in advance if I missed that this was answered previously.  

 

[Rahkis Andel]

I assumed the same thing.

How can she be using a viewer that doesn't support materials if she was able to set the properties to view advanced materials?

I have a feeling something else is going on, but I couldn't tell you what it was.

[Nacy Nightfire]

Yes, I agree it's somewhat odd that there was a parameter for my friend  to set preferences for "advanced materials" yet she wasn't seeing them correctly.  I thought perhaps as it's been recently introduced it might not have been fully implemented in her viewer (her's is a non SL viewer..firestorm?).

Either way, and if it's just not set up correctly in her viewer, I'm surprised that it shows ANY bump and that it mismatches the loaded textures.  I would hope the viewers would just default to just the diffuse.  Otherwise it's going to be really tricky to use these maps and hope that folks new to SL, and or with limited graphics capability, and/or confused are going to see something very ugly and very unexpected on the part of the creator.

Here's what I see:  

 

And here is what she sees:

 

[Rahkis Andel]

Sounds like a bug that needs fixing with the particular viewer.

That's a little disconcerting, but just as mesh had compatibility issues when it was first introduced, so to will the new materials.

[Chic Aeon]

I just checked the Firestorm blog (nicely there was new info that I needed to read anyway).

I have the latest viewer according to the blog. I cannot set advanced materials anywhere that I have found and I have looked. I suspect that you friend may have a "beta" of an upcoming viewer as Firestorm instigated a pre-release program a few months ago -- something that goes out to people who have signed up to be testers.

For me, I see everything fine without the materials viewer -- even objects that have the materials (Cheeky Peas latest releases are coming with both versions so I checked and have the materials version out so that I can see it in all its glory when the time arrives.

SO -- that might answer a bit of the question. It could possibly be that they turned on the materials and didn't have all the other settings needed to go along with it. Don't know. But asking your friend some pointed questions seems like a good idea.

[Cerise Sorbet]

I wouldn't worry about it too much yet. The materials repository still has patches flowing in to deal with problems with incorrect interactions between the new materials and legacy bump maps. So, it's quite possible that editor bugs stuck attributes on your object that you didn't intend to put there.

[Nacy Nightfire]

Thanks Rahkis, Chic and Cerise!  I appreciate your help with this.  I agree I'm  just "jumping the gun" a bit and the material system is still in it's beginning stage.   It's going to be really terrific when it's fully implemented.  

[Pamela Galli]

I thought I had read that if you had Advanced Lighting activated, even without shadows etc turned on, you could see the new materials. 

So people are going to need a viewer update to see them?

[Coby Foden]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I thought I had read that if you had Advanced Lighting activated, even without shadows etc turned on, you could see the new materials. 

So people are going to need a viewer update to see them?

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To see material effects - viewer settings:

• One must use materials enabled viewer

• Advanced Lighting Model checked

 (also the other ones checked above it what are checked in the picture above - else one cannot activate Advaned Lighting Model.  Surely it is nice to check also: Transparent Water, Local Lights, Ambient Occlusion - but not necessary to see material effects.)

And indeed, the shadows need not to be enabled. Which is great because the shadows lower frame rates radically, but the Advanced Lighting Model has no lowering effect in frame rates.

Here is a sample how it looks in non materials viewer and materials enabled viewer:

The simple prim sphere above has the following textures:

 

• Diffuse map

• Normal map

• Specular map

The non material viewer can render the only the diffuse map (i.e. the normal texture what we have been using so far). It has no idea at all what Normal map and Specular map are and thus it cannot render those.

So people need to update their viewers to see material effects. Latest Linden Lab beta viewer is already materials enabled, and so are the servers in main grid and in test grid too.

 

[Pamela Galli]

Ah okay thanks, then I can't see it with Firestorm; I assume they will have a materials version out ASAP. (I can't use the LL viewer because it has essential building and business tools that I can't do without.)