PBR Materials @SL University

[EliseAnne85]

21 minutes ago, Gavin Hird said:

SL on Xbox is my 10 cents

As far as commercial, I think more along the lines of items to sell to other games or for commercials on YouTube which I see every day and which look like they were made with PBR.  And, you know those commercial sites where you can buy 3D stuff but there is no MMO/MMORG, it's just 3D stuff?  That's where I think SL is headed.  Below is a pic from a YouTube I'm listening to now...looks like PBR.  PBR was designed by the film industry for commercials.  Some of it comes across a bit garish or not really my cup of tea.   

[EliseAnne85]

21 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

PBR and the reflection probes doesn't come across in static pictures.

I took the pics (screenshots) from the machinema itself which is posted in the OP.  So how is the machinema picking up those fake looking shiny parts?  Besides people love pictures.

Edited February 11, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[Gavin Hird]

1 minute ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Some of it comes across a bit garish or not really my cup of tea.   

My main objection to most of the 3D stuff churned out by Substance Painters is, it is overdone. The closer we get to reality, the more complicated it is to get it right, because the difference between fake and real is very often subtle, and both the tools and the renderers have a hard time to recreate subtle. 

The reason why I say Xbox is that we have a chief technologist at the Lab who is a Microsoftie.

Note the announcement video and the focus on Kronos "standards" like Vulkan. – Guess who don't support Vulkan at all: Apple and Apple will turn off OpenGL when the lights goes out on the last Intel Mac in marketing; the Mac Pro. 

With the Lab failing to write a Metal renderer, the current Mac users in Second Life will be toast, but more important they miss completely out on the iOS market with now 1.5 billion active users. So putting the SL Viewer on the Xbox can compensate for both the loss of the Mac users and also provide for moderate growth. – All Microsoft style of course. 

[arton Rotaru]

16 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

I took the pics (screenshots) from the machinema itself which is posted in the OP.  So how is the machinema picking up those fake looking shiny parts?  Besides people love pictures.

I did not watch the video, but what is shown in these 2 images is what is called programmer art. 😁 It's the graphics devs area where they make proof of concepts. Nothing more. The project is also not even in it's beta phase, so things are changing on a daily basis.

I guess what you call fake reflections is the current implementation of screen space reflections.

Edited February 11, 2023 by arton Rotaru

[Nalates Urriah]

14 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

I took the pics (screenshots) from the machinema itself which is posted in the OP.  So how is the machinema picking up those fake looking shiny parts?  Besides people love pictures.

I think what is being expressed is one can't see the PBR effect in a still image like they can in a video where you can see the reflections and shading changing with camera angle and movement. With movement many of the aspects are VERY obvious. Not so much in a still image. They do show up in the still image. Just not as dramatically.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

Well I finally decided to roll the dice and run the risk of my antiquated hardware bursting into flames in order to hop onto the beta grid.  Unfortunately I couldn't test much since I guess my request to have my account updated on Aditi hasn't been processed yet though I did manage to log in on a very old account (which spent the entire visit as a cloud with absolutely no inventory) so got a chance to see how it's currently running on low end hardware and honestly it ain't that bad!

With the default settings I was getting a pretty dismal 15 fps but after tweaking things a little and turning things down to about the same settings I use on the main grid (while still leaving things like local lights, shadows and reflections enabled) I was getting around 25-30 fps.  That may seem low but bear in mind this is on a refurbished office PC you can pick up for around $150-$200 with an upgraded graphics card costing about $100 new, so in total about 250 to 300 dollars worth of hardware.

Essentially performance is not a lot different from my average fps with the current implementation of ALM when most features are enabled, and for those worried that they won't be able to use SL at all if ALM is made mandatory I tried turning off things like shadows, reflections and local lights and even my $250 potato is getting 70-80 fps while wandering around the Rumpus Room test regions with my draw distance set to 256m (and about 50-60 fps with a draw distance of 512m).

 

[Arlequin Carter]

A) Quel dommage, je n'ai reçu l'information qu'hier.

Je vais essayer de faire quelque chose avec cela ce week-end.

B) Je viens de créer un petit truc, par contre je ne comprends pas à quoi sert la sonde, la réflexion fonctionne que je la mette ou pas.

What a pity, I only received the information yesterday. I'll try to do something with that this weekend. I just created a little thing, however I do not understand what the probe is for, the reflection works whether I put it or not.

secondlife://Aditi/secondlife/Rumpus%20Room/167/133/24

C) Ok, j'ai compris le principe de la sonde. J'ai ajouté un miroir au fond de la scène.

- Si on  regarde de coté, cela fonctionne correctement,

- De face ça ne va plus.

Je vous joins des photos pour expliquer.

Ok, I understood the principle of the probe. I added a mirror to the back of the scene.

- If we look from the side, it works properly,

- From the front it does not go anymore. I attach photos to explain.

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, EliseAnne85 said:

We were talking about ALM.  In the new PBR viewer they are saying it will be forced to on at all times.  Oh my gah.  This is the problem.

As to what gamers on the forum have said that 60 is too low [for them], it's neither here nor there really.  It's all their opinion or first impression of SL.

I don't care about FPS at this juncture but I'm not so sure I want to run ALM if it causes fan problems, which it does for many.  Narrowing down the why of that is more important.  ALM is an energy hog that is for one reason.  ALM needs a stronger power supply, I'm guessing.

Yes, the newest viewers have better performance with ALM on than any previous viewers.  I never got 120 ever with ALM on or off.  Keep in mind, I've always run wirelessly.  With the newest viewers, I capped my fps at 60 so my fans didn't have to run all the time.  If I didn't cap at 60, it would be well over 100 fps.  Like you, I don't want noisy fans running all the time.  The cap option is somewhere in Preferences, I believe?  Not logged in so someone correct me if I'm mistaken.  

Edited February 11, 2023 by Rowan Amore

[EliseAnne85]

12 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Yes, the newest viewers have better performance with ALM on than any previous viewers.  I never got 120 ever with ALM on or off.  Keep in mind, I've always run wirelessly.  With the newest viewers, I capped my fps at 60 so my fans didn't have to run all the time.  If I didn't cap at 60, it would be well over 100 fps.  Like you, I don't want noisy fans running all the time.  The cap option is somewhere in Preferences, I believe?  Not logged in so someone correct me if I'm mistaken.  

I see.  

 

[Gavin Hird]

This is rendered in good old Windlight. Does not look too shabby

 

[benchthis]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

capped my fps at 60 so my fans didn't have to run all the time.  If I didn't cap at 60, it would be well over 100 fps.  Like you, I don't want noisy fans running all the time.  The cap option is somewhere in Preferences, I believe?  Not logged in so someone correct me if I'm mistaken.  

That would be cool to cap the FPS in the official viewer, i've never seen that setting. For me it's not really lag it's just the computer fans going crazy prolly due to higher FPS? Anyone know what the debug setting for this is so it can be capped in the official viewer? I'd love to try this. 

[Rick Nightingale]

@benchthis I don't think you can in LL's viewer. There is Vsync, but not a software rate limit even in debug settings I don't think.

You can probably rate limit your graphics card in its own settings though, and maybe set a profile for the viewer. If you have an nVidia card, you can limit the framerate through the nV control panel or the Afterburner bloatware.

I have mine capped in Firestorm to 60fps - that's all my monitor will run at so no point heating up the GPU to do more. I really don't think high framerates are useful in SL anyway. It's not an FPS or racing game where it might make a difference if the monitor can go faster.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Rick Daylight

[benchthis]

46 minutes ago, Rick Daylight said:

@benchthis I don't think you can in LL's viewer. There is Vsync, but not a software rate limit even in debug settings I don't think.

You can probably rate limit your graphics card in its own settings though, and maybe set a profile for the viewer. If you have an nVidia card, you can limit the framerate through the nV control panel or the Afterburner bloatware.

I have mine capped in Firestorm to 60fps - that's all my monitor will run at so no point heating up the GPU to do more. I really don't think high framerates are useful in SL anyway. It's not an FPS or racing game where it might make a difference if the monitor can go faster.

I think every cool setting offered in third party viewers is located in official viewers debug settings. It's painful going through every debug setting to find something that could control FPS and I hope this isn't the one because it says it's obsolete (would be cool to know when it became obsolete). The value is confusing, i'm not messing with that one. Still looking to see if there's a non obsolete setting. 

Edited February 12, 2023 by benchthis

[EliseAnne85]

5 hours ago, Gavin Hird said:

My main objection to most of the 3D stuff churned out by Substance Painters is, it is overdone. The closer we get to reality, the more complicated it is to get it right, because the difference between fake and real is very often subtle, and both the tools and the renderers have a hard time to recreate subtle. 

A problem for me is I believe many companies in SL already have that subtly and realism along with their craftmanship.  Nutmeg, Apple Fall, and so many others.  Yes, perhaps the fabrics that drape on furniture and beds still don't look 100% real, but tables, chairs so many other things do.  The problem is that some of this PBR stuff isn't as good as what we have now and I don't know where it's being generated from but the PBR stuff I see on my YouTube looks not all that thrilling to me and you yourself used that word that I have about it - underwhelming.

The first photo is another pic from my YouTube where PBR shows up all the time and the spots that are supposed to look like light looks fake to me.  The 2nd photo is from SL and from the video about PBR in the OP of this thread.  The white parts again look fake, like toys.  Which leaves me going...? (why fake).  It's worse than the painted on white to look like a highlight we have now that people complain about.  So, I don't get it.  

[Janet Voxel]

6 hours ago, Gavin Hird said:

Lots of reflection bling, otherwise underwhelmed...

[arton Rotaru]

1 hour ago, EliseAnne85 said:

The 2nd photo is from SL and from the video about PBR in the OP of this thread.  The white parts again look fake, like toys.  Which leaves me going...? (why fake).  It's worse than the painted on white to look like a highlight we have now that people complain about.  So, I don't get it.  

Do you mean the MeetMat army? That's programmer art, as I mentioned before. Those are for testing the render engine. These are naked, "untextured" guys just for testing the different values of metalness, roughness etc..

[EliseAnne85]

6 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

Do you mean the MeetMat army? That's programmer art, as I mentioned before. Those are for testing the render engine. These are naked, "untextured" guys just for testing the different values of metalness, roughness etc..

Oh, thanks for explaining that.  So, those long white streaks on that MeetMat army will tone down.  It seems they put those out for showing us what PBR is, which is kind of strange since it looks terrible, silly even.  I didn't watch the whole video in the OP yet.  

Edited February 12, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[arton Rotaru]

14 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Oh, thanks for explaining that.  So, those long white streaks on that MeetMat army will tone down.  It seems they put those out for showing us what PBR is, which is kind of strange since it looks terrible, silly even.  

Well, like I said, I did not watch the video, because there would be nothing in it that I didn't know already.

But, here is the thing. First of all, it seems they kinda winged the video. I guess it was on the agenda to put something out to the broader public.
As of now, it's only a few people who are actually helping testing the whole lot. More eyes, more good, though.

Then, Runitai (DaveP) is the lead graphics programmer at LL. See, he is a programmer, not a texture artist. Probably he hadn't pretty content at hand with the permission to publish in the video. So what he has shown is his "programmer art", and probably some stuff that is laying around for month in these regions. Some crude objects, where people did some testing with.

The gist of this is, more people should try this out on their own, to see what is right and what is wrong. This video doesn't look like it is the awsome, polished presentation of a finished project. It just isn't a finished project at all right now.

Edited February 12, 2023 by arton Rotaru

[Rowan Amore]

21 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Oh, thanks for explaining that.  So, those long white streaks on that MeetMat army will tone down.  It seems they put those out for showing us what PBR is, which is kind of strange since it looks terrible, silly even.  I didn't watch the whole video in the OP yet.  

Maybe instead of focusing on the unfinished SL project, watch the video from several years ago that was posted on the first page.  This gives a better idea of the possibilities with PBR.  It's really pretty awesome.

On 2/10/2023 at 8:39 PM, benchthis said:

This has some pretty good demonistrations of what PBR will look like. The cool thing about how SL is doing it is way easier for me to understand than setting it up in blender. I never learned PBR in blender because of the nods and was too confusing. With this SL system at least I was able to create my first PBR material today. That's crazy cool. They're goal is to make it user friendly. I don't have substance painter. I moded a material I had but just goofing around. Getting the material file was little wonky. 

I started watching this lots of pretty things PBR this uploaded 7 years ago. 

  

 

[Janet Voxel]

15 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Maybe instead of focusing on the unfinished SL project, watch the video from several years ago that was posted on the first page. 

Or…hear me out…I know it might sound crazy: download the project viewer, get access to the beta grid and try it out!

It seems to me, you don’t have to be into 3d modeling to play around with this. Most modern texture packs come with more than a diffuse, normal and specular map. Take your full perm thing into the beta grid and mess around with it. 
 

Reading “I don’t know what pbr is, I didn’t watch the video and it’s just shiny…but I don’t like it” is vexing. There’s a lot to be excited about with this, from objects, to clothing, to skins, to photography….there’s a lot to be excited about with this.

Edited February 12, 2023 by Janet Voxel

[Ayashe Ninetails]

If you want to see what PBR is about, you're better off watching gameplay that uses it to help visualize what we're going to (hopefully) get. The movement of the camera and character and the lighting and how it plays off of the different materials in the environment are what makes it interesting. Static photos don't really do it justice.

Check out Red Dead Redemption 2. To be fair, that game uses a million different techniques and tricks to make the game look amazing, but PBR is among them (pay close attention to the leather, cloth fabrics, stones, horse sheen, metals, mud, wood, glass, etc. and of course, the lighting playing across all of it).

Actually here's a short scene where a person just roams around to show it off:

[Rowan Amore]

5 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

Or…hear me out…I know it might sound crazy: download the project viewer, get access to the beta grid and try it out!

It seems to me, you don’t have to be into 3d modeling to play around with this. Most modern texture packs come with more than a diffuse, normal and specular map. Take your full perm thing into the beta grid and mess around with it. 
 

Reading “I don’t know what pbr is, I didn’t watch the video and it’s just shiny…but I don’t like it” is vexing. There’s a lot to be excited about with this, from objects, to clothing, to skins, to photography….there’s a lot to be excited about with this.

I agree.  It's pretty exciting.  I, personally, don't make things in SL but I'm anxious to see.what others do.  

[EliseAnne85]

7 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

Or…hear me out…I know it might sound crazy: download the project viewer, get access to the beta grid and try it out!

It seems to me, you don’t have to be into 3d modeling to play around with this. Most modern texture packs come with more than a diffuse, normal and specular map. Take your full perm thing into the beta grid and mess around with it. 
 

Reading “I don’t know what pbr is, I didn’t watch the video and it’s just shiny…but I don’t like it” is vexing. There’s a lot to be excited about with this, from objects, to clothing, to skins, to photography….there’s a lot to be excited about with this.

This is what SL needs to be.  It needs to be accessible to all who want to create and exciting.  With cutting out PS, I don't want to learn a whole new graphics program, let alone pay for Substance Painter.  Plus, I agree with Gavin who said Substance Painter is a bit overdone and often times it's just tinted a color on the albedo, no real depth to it.  

However, what Rick showed in this thread is kind of cool.  I know this is nascent for SL, but perhaps eventually they could create a slider for reflections as it looks like too much.  I'm sure things will progress in a few years but still wanting to get started may take a whole new program to learn which I know I don't want to do at this time nor do I want to lose great things I already have.  Post some pics from Aditi so we can see how it looks.  Rick showed his wall panel, which does look good.  

[arton Rotaru]

8 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

This is what SL needs to be.  It needs to be accessible to all who want to create and exciting.  With cutting out PS, I don't want to learn a whole new graphics program, let alone pay for Substance Painter.  Plus, I agree with Gavin who said Substance Painter is a bit overdone and often times it's just tinted a color on the albedo, no real depth to it.

It's not cutting out PS. You can still create textures the traditional way. It's just that tools like Painter make it more convenient. In the end it's just texture maps. No matter with what they are created. It's also never the fault of a program when the result isn't what you expect it to be. It's ALWAYS the artist who is to blame.

[Janet Voxel]

2 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

It's not cutting out PS. You can still create textures the traditional way. It's just that tools like Painter make it more convenient. In the end it's just texture maps. No matter with what they are created. It's also never the fault of a program when the result isn't what you expect it to be. It's ALWAYS the artist who is to blame.

Thank you….