New FS Viewer...6.4.13...Looks Like BLEEEEEEEP!

[FairreLilette]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I'm only talking about YOU and YOUR viewer and builds.  I don't care about skins which you brought up.  Just your stuff.

I thought you answered about my comment about the reviewers leaving bad reviews because the picture was photoshopped, which that isn't the problem - the problem is users not even knowing there are lightings to enhance their avatar in the viewer itself.  These were not photoshopped photos but just avatars with CalWL probably on.  

Oh, thanks for clearing that up because I do need to go now and do stuff.  

[Rowan Amore]

And you pick out the least important part of my post?

[FairreLilette]

5 minutes ago, Tarani Tempest said:

Catwa heads have had materials enabled for years. I used the specular slider way back when Catya was first released.  What is new about the HDpro is more about the "HD" textures now being used.  Materials are nothing new in SL for mesh heads... or anything for that matter.

I didn't know that.  But, not everyone uses materials 100% of the time.  I never did.  I used lighting 1001 different ways - all kinds of ways for photographs.  

This is the thing here that some people don't realize is that one can get all kinds of cool lights without materials, and I kind of lean with Chic that things should be more baked into the texture itself - at least as much as possible.  It takes awhile to learn how to bake these things in though.  I'm fooling around with shine maps into the texture itself myself.  

 

[Gabriele Graves]

25 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

Oh, that's interesting.  But, it doesn't have anything to do with my original post and point which is the skins receiving bad reviews on MP for not looking like the photo that shows on MP was that those photos are not photoshopped as the reviews say but the lighting exists already in the viewer which many don't know about nor know how to use.  As far as bump and shiny on faces, it's quite far pronounced now with the new Catwa HDPro which many of us received for 1 linden, even eyes have it now.   Plus, now eyebrows one can buy too.  But, still those photos are not photoshopped was my point.  

You are making statements like this I have highlighted below:

54 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

That wasn't my point.  You don't have to view skins with advanced lighting on.  Why would you need to view a head with no bump maps or shinies with materials on?  You don't, and as a matter of fact, just changing to Annan Adored or Nam's or CalWL without materials on your older heads when trying on skins makes a vast difference in how a skin looks - a vast difference.  Materials for heads is new.  K, this is enough now.  

that have falsehoods in them and my post is to correct that primarily.  You are simply twisting in the wind to avoid being wrong, yet again.

If you start a post with "That wasn't my point" and then follow that with a bunch of stuff, then what else are people expected to read into that except that you are reiterating your point.  To then say, that wasn't my point again is just being disingenuous or you are a very confused person.

[Rowan Amore]

8 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

You are making statements like this I have highlighted below:

that have falsehoods in them and my post is to correct that primarily.  You are simply twisting in the wind to avoid being wrong, yet again.

If you start a post with "That wasn't my point" and then follow that with a bunch of stuff, then what else are people expected to read into that except that you are reiterating your point.  To then say, that wasn't my point again is just being disingenuous or you are a very confused person.

Yet my posts, actually addressing her main issue of this whole thread and totally on topic, are apparently ignored.  I give up.

[Gabriele Graves]

Yep, you along with all the others, did your best.  You can only do so much.

[Silent Mistwalker]

[FairreLilette]

3 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

You are making statements like this I have highlighted below:

that have falsehoods in them and my post is to correct that primarily.  You are simply twisting in the wind to avoid being wrong, yet again.

If you start a post with "That wasn't my point" and then follow that with a bunch of stuff, then what else are people expected to read into that except that you are reiterating your point.  To then say, that wasn't my point again is just being disingenuous or you are a very confused person.

I never brought in materials in my point about the fact that the photos are NOT photoshopped in the bad reviews, she did.  And, with materials in the heads, I never noticed all these years and now it's making me wonder why.  I just downloaded the old FS viewer without EEP, there isn't much difference in my skin from Annan Adored w/out materials to Annan Adored with materials.  So, I never noticed any difference at all.  There is a huge difference if one just changes to a skin windlight from Midday, however.  

As far as me never knowing there were materials makes me wonder, however, as there isn't much difference at all with materials on with Annan Adored Optimal Skin, No Shadow.  

Now I need the desk head-banging gif because I needed to get stuff done and there is just some ridiculous stuff in this thread.  If you don't like it, block because I am ready to do the same.   

Edited April 13, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Solar Legion]

Lighting makes a difference as does the particular materials settings used for the item in question. For many heads, hair and such this is going to be subtle and easily enough overwhelmed by certain lighting conditions.

Further both pre and post EEP there are some lighting condition/settings combinations that simply will not show any hint whatsoever of the extant materials. To see some of them, you need a normal or darkish ambient lighting and a local or point light nearby (aimed at you for point lighting).

As a personal point of note, I have found that any windlight or EEP preset marked as Optimal (insert thing here) is designed exclusively to bring out color/tone. Some are what I have used in the past for color matching varied bits of clothing (and other 'parts').

as far as the whole back and forth over what particular environment setting is used by most ... It is irrelevant. No one actually knows. No, no one actually knows. Polling in Second Life is a joke and always has been.

If you have things to be doing, go do them. No one is forcing you to come here and view/read the thread. No one. Stop it.

[Rowan Amore]

I brought up advanced lighting not materials as that will be what effects what you are able to see.  Materials have no bearing on my view whatsoever if I have ALM.turned off which I often do in crowded places.

[FairreLilette]

54 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I brought up advanced lighting not materials as that will be what effects what you are able to see.  Materials have no bearing on my view whatsoever if I have ALM.turned off which I often do in crowded places.

Advanced and materials are used interchangeably.  It's often called materials lightings by builders also.

Can we drop it now because if this utter nonsense about nothing continues, I'm using the block.  I've had enough.  I had a relevant point about bad reviews and customers thinking the photos are photoshopped when they aren't, but you just don't get it and keep making posts about it.  I would like to drop it.  

I do not use materials all the time either.  You can try to figure out what lighting I mean when I say materials here because I've had enough.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

23 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

Advanced and materials are used interchangeably.  It's often called materials lightings by builders also.

Can we drop it now because if this utter nonsense about nothing continues, I'm using the block.  I've had enough.  I had a relevant point about bad reviews and customers thinking the photos are photoshopped when they aren't, but you just don't get it and keep making posts about it.  I would like to drop it.  

I do not use materials all the time either.  You can try to figure out what lighting I mean when I say materials here because I've had enough.

Some of them are indeed photoshopped. 

[Rowan Amore]

Some people only hear what they want to hear.

As you can't turn materials off in the viewer (isn't the viewer what the OP was about.and why some creators put the option on their product), my comments were about advanced lighting.  

Block, don't block.  You don't listen anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by Rowan Amore

[Gabriele Graves]

2 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

I never brought in materials in my point about the fact that the photos are NOT photoshopped in the bad reviews, she did.

I don't care.  I quoted what you actually said which is actually false and that's that.  Stop squirming.

[Qie Niangao]

6 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

Advanced and materials are used interchangeably.  It's often called materials lightings by builders also.

I don't understand anything in this thread anymore, so I just hope it's redundant to note: Advanced Lighting Model affects much more than Materials rendering. Without ALM, light sources are limited to the six nearest-to-avatar old-school non-projection "lights" that illuminate in all directions, including through walls. (These freaky obsolete lights can even block light sources with other black-emitting lights, completely changing the lighting compared to the same scene viewed with ALM.)

Whatever claims some customers may make on Marketplace about photoshopping (or realistically, illustration from inside Maya instead of a Second Life viewer), one virtue of EEP is that, unlike Windlight, it's trivial to simply bundle with any product a handy asset that captures the lighting environment (with or without any projection light sources) used in the product photography. Surely that would shut up any "it's photoshopped" whiners.

As for baked lighting in diffusemap textures: yes, it enhances the appearance of that product in isolation, and I can live with very subtle shading, but like shadow prims, anything more looks amateurish in a scene of multiple objects with baked light sources incompatible with each other and with any additional ambient lighting in the scene (which, because it lights avatars, always looks "right" and all incompatible baked lighting sources look "wrong"). 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

As for baked lighting in diffusemap textures: yes, it enhances the appearance of that product in isolation, and I can live with very subtle shading, but like shadow prims, anything more looks amateurish in a scene of multiple objects with baked light sources incompatible with each other and with any additional ambient lighting in the scene (which, because it lights avatars, always looks "right" and all incompatible baked lighting sources look "wrong"). 

I truly hate the underarm shadows that are baked into most mesh clothing.. I try very hard to remove that when i make clothing. For the reasons you state. If my arms are above my head while laying down why would there be shadows in my armpits? 

[Gabriele Graves]

There are dozens of items I have walked away from because the baked "shadows" just look like dirty marks on the fabric.  It's one of the first things I have to check for.  That's why I demo the lighter colours as well even though I tend to buy darker ones most often.

[FairreLilette]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Advanced Lighting Model affects much more than Materials rendering.

In the context in which I was speaking about customers thinking the photos are photoshopped has nothing to do with the materials lighting and everything to do with turning on one of the skin lights - Annan, Nam's or CalWL, as ALM was brought up that needed to be done for skins too which it doesn't to make the skin look different which leads customers to think it's shopped.  Learning the skin windlights is far more important, except now for the high def heads and with a broken specular in the viewers is bad.  I saw a photo yesterday on MP and it's not just my computer - her picture has it too.  The avatars look like the photo was left out in the rain with streaks running down the avatars and the white completely blow out.  She was selling a shiny dress so I guess she wanted to take the photo with the EEP specular and it looked horrid.  I've never seen such a bad picture on SL before, so it is not just me.  The shiny has never looked good in SL and most creators do not even use a spec map because, for one, it doesn't work and adds nothing.

As far as shadows baked into textures, there is no other way for shadows.  Yes, many are over-done to where it looks dirty but that can be toned down in photoshopped and lessened greatly, which a lot do.  I was speaking about shiny being baked in as it's better than the map idea and the shine can be controlled in photoshop far better then with a broken map system.

 

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Tarani Tempest]

1 hour ago, FairreLilette said:

The shiny has never looked good in SL and most creators do not even use a spec map because, for one, it doesn't work and adds nothing.

As far as shadows baked into textures, there is no other way for shadows.  Yes, many are over-done to where it looks dirty but that can be toned down in photoshopped and lessened greatly, which a lot do.  I was speaking about shiny being baked in as it's better than the map idea and the shine can be controlled in photoshop far better then with a broken map system.

 

 

Shine (specular) has looked good in SL for a long time.  There are a lot creators that use it... builders, clothing, hair and applier creators have been using them for years.  It can be abused and/or used wrong.  Settings to high or messing with material sliders while not having Advanced lighting enabled can lead to some very strange looking AVs to those of us with ALM on.  But it is used by many. 

...

Some shadow baking is usually needed, I think most can agree on that.  But to say there is no other way for shadows...is not true.  For those that run on ultra with shadows enabled, they don't need a lot of extra shadow baking. So that is one way, maybe not a way for everyone, but it is an option. 

Maybe ALM and ultra shadows is not an option and/or not wanted by everyone.  That is fine, as we all have the ability to customize our viewer to fit our own aesthetic and/or computer limitations.  That doesn't mean that any option other than what you've chosen is not used by anyone or does not work.

I think it is important that misinformation be nipped in the bud ASAP. 

[FairreLilette]

19 hours ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

Though I hope you provide an 'unbaked' version of those items! I usually have ALM enabled, and I try to buy content which has been made with ALM in mind (uses the norm & spec maps) and doesn't have lighting effects baked into the diffuse layer. Really annoys me. 

Normal maps are not baked in.  Normal or bump maps work fabulous.  Specular maps are only needed for shiny things and there aren't that many shiny things in life.  What texture artists do here is something that was invented by the French a long time ago called trompe l'oeil.  Trompe l'oeil is tricking the eye into seeing  3D on a 2D surface because as you know all textures are really 2D.  The bump helps give the illusion of 3D on a 2D surface and that does not need to be baked in other than a texture having what can transform into higher and lower areas so it can look recessed in certain parts.  With shabby textures or where there are cracks, this is how it works but those cracks or shabby parts do need to be layered into the texture itself.  In short, there needs to be an area to "bump".  With trompe l'oeil and shiny, this just doesn't work.  What part needs to be shiny on an object and what part doesn't when making a texture?  That is why putting bits of a trompe l'oeil (kind of fooling the eye) shine (mostly using white with shades of gray surrounding the white) on bits of a texture to mimic a real life shine in a certain area can work on textures but it is difficult to do.  With the SL shine, there is just low, medium and high in the way it is created.  The shine map is, I gather, attempting to override that low/medium/high via a map and give it an increment.  I cannot get a lower than low shine with a map though, mine just seem to come out really shiny or none no matter what I set the map to, and I cannot be sure if this is an AMD problem or not.   If shine as well as full bright could both be incremented that would be far, far better.  

Edited April 13, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Jenna Huntsman]

23 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

Normal maps are not baked in.  Normal or bump maps work fabulous.  Specular maps are only needed for shiny things and there aren't that many shiny things in life.  What texture artists do here is something that was invented by the French a long time ago called trompe l'oeil.  Trompe l'oeil is tricking the eye into seeing  3D on a 2D surface because as you know all textures are really 2D.  The bump helps give the illusion of 3D on a 2D surface and that does not need to be baked in other than a texture having what can transform into higher and lower areas so it can look recessed in certain parts.  With shabby textures or where there are cracks, this is how it works but those cracks or shabby parts do need to be layered into the texture itself.  In short, there needs to be an area to "bump".  With trompe l'oeil and shiny, this just doesn't work.  What part needs to be shiny on an object and what part doesn't when making a texture?  That is why putting bits of a trompe l'oeil (kind of fooling the eye) shine (mostly using white with shades of gray surrounding the white) on bits of a texture to mimic a real life shine in a certain area can work on textures but it is difficult to do.  With the SL shine, there is just low, medium and high in the way it is created.  The shine map is, I gather, attempting to override that low/medium/high via a map and give it an increment.  I cannot get a lower than low shine with a map though, mine just seem to come out really shiny or none no matter what I set the map to, and I cannot be sure if this is an AMD problem or not.   If shine as well as full bright could both be incremented that would be far, far better.  

The 'baked / unbaked' thing was a miscommunication as we were talking about different things ( 'baking' lighting effects into the diffuse layer, vs 'baking' a normal map from a high poly model for use on a low poly (SL ready) version).

Generally specular maps *should* be used, even if the item isn't shiny as you can use it to modify how the light reflects off an item - think about how wood reflects light. It does reflect light, but in a very subtle and uneven way. SL has a bit of an issue because a lot of creators miss the memo about how the Alpha channels are used in material mapping -

The alpha channel on the normal map acts as the 'specular exponent', which allows you to control how intense a highlight is. Useful for creating metal surfaces, without this they would look more like chrome.

The alpha channel of the spec map is used as 'environment intensity', which changes how / where environment reflections are applied to an object. Think about a concrete texture with a pool of water in the middle. Only the water needs environment reflections, but nowhere else), which is why a lot of things in SL appear 'shiny' in an unrealistic manner. A great example of how this could be used is if you have a mesh body. In theory, you could create a specular map with 'drips' on a transparent background, and a script which adds environment to your skin when submerged and for a short time afterwards to create a 'wet' look, without needing to swap the material map texture entirely.

Ideally, we'd have a PBR pipeline, but lord only knows how that'd work with the existing (legacy) content.

Experiment with the alpha channel of your normal map in combination with a spec map (even if this map is a blank white texture). You can create *incredibly* small amounts of shine when using this.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Jenna Huntsman

[KjartanEno]

9 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

The alpha channel on the normal map acts as the 'specular exponent', which allows you to control how intense a highlight is. Useful for creating metal surfaces, without this they would look more like chrome.

The alpha channel of the spec map is used as 'environment intensity', which changes how / where environment reflections are applied to an object. Think about a concrete texture with a pool of water in the middle. Only the water needs environment reflections, but nowhere else), which is why a lot of things in SL appear 'shiny' in an unrealistic manner. A great example of how this could be used is if you have a mesh body. In theory, you could create a specular map with 'drips' on a transparent background, and a script which adds environment to your skin when submerged and for a short time afterwards to create a 'wet' look, without needing to swap the material map texture entirely.

This is the way materials should be used. I'd add that these 32 bit textures can often be much lower resolution than the diffuse map they are used with on a UV mapped object, and they will look just as good without taking too much video memory. Any creator making textures should test their creations under a wide variety of lighting conditions using ALM before calling them 'done,' not just A-12pm (Midday) or whatever their favorite preset might be.

[FairreLilette]

10 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

Experiment with the alpha channel of your normal map in combination with a spec map. You can create *incredibly* small amounts of shine when using this.

I see and I will do that.  Thanks.  However, people should look at a lot of their items, many of the great textures artists here "paint" those dabs of highlight-looking shine directly onto the texture as well as that does look good.  As far as wood, as you wrote above, some wood shines while the old weathered woods doesn't so much.  

As far as incrementing shine and full bright I was wondering if that could ever be done?  I've always felt full bright could use increments.

Other stuff, not related to your post - As far as thinking creators will go to modify of all their objects as someone mentioned in this thread, we could wish that but I wonder if we would ever get that?  Creators with a name reputation claim they don't want others modifying their work as it could look ugly and give them a bad name, plus creators are worried about copybotters.  Should we say that copybotters entirely do not exist in order to have more modify items available to us?  

[Rowan Amore]

18 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

wide variety of lighting conditions using ALM

Since having it OFF will give a totally different look.  

 

[Jenna Huntsman]

25 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

I see and I will do that.  Thanks.  However, people should look at a lot of their items, many of the great textures artists here "paint" those dabs of highlight-looking shine directly onto the texture as well as that does look good.  As far as wood, as you wrote above, some wood shines while the old weathered woods doesn't so much.  

As far as incrementing shine and full bright I was wondering if that could ever be done?  I've always felt full bright could use increments.

Other stuff, not related to your post - As far as thinking creators will go to modify of all their objects as someone mentioned in this thread, we could wish that but I wonder if we would ever get that?  Creators with a name reputation claim they don't want others modifying their work as it could look ugly and give them a bad name, plus creators are worried about copybotters.  Should we say that copybotters entirely do not exist in order to have more modify items available to us?  

Protip: Always use TGA style textures for material mapping. It's easier to wrap your head around how the alpha interacts with the rest of the texture (as in photoshop it acts as it's own channel, unlike PNGs).

Fullbright and shine won't ever really work as far as I know. Best you could do is probably something like an emissive mask, which allows you to set which parts of a texture are to 'glow', and how much.

Modify perms have absolutely *zero* influence on whether an object can be copybotted. Really, anything you make in SL can be, aside from scripts (as they are ran serverside, without the client involved). Anything else has to be sent to the viewer and cached and that is how items get ripped.

Anyone who tells you that no-mod protects copybotting doesn't know what they're saying. Ironically they're probably promoting it, as piracy is mostly a problem which is caused by lack of convenience. Think of how Piracy dropped sharply when most content was available on Netflix, but is on the rise again because you'd have to subscribe to about 5 different streaming services to get the same level of available content that Netflix had a couple years back. No-mod just means that if someone wants to say create a custom texture for a chair, they have to then rip the entire object, reupload *then* make a custom texture. They then might resell the item on to spite the creator. You shouldn't do that, but creators should be more open to making mod-enabled items, or at least have them available on request. No mod *is* a good idiotproofing tool.

Take a look at Casper Warden's Wiki article on it. https://wiki.casperdns.com/index.php/CopyBot#My_stuff_is_no-mod.21

Most of the stuff I make is mod-enabled, aside from my scripts.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Jenna Huntsman