Stuff you're not buying, pending PBR?

[Qie Niangao]

Every time there's a big new feature, some items become obsolete. Mesh, for example, made most sculpted content passé almost overnight. Physically Based Rendering (PBR) and in particular universal Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) in every viewer will change our tolerance for some (a lot of?) content, pending only the rollout across the main grid and TPV adoption which might be very quick given the faster rendering as well as the new aesthetics.

What stuff, on sale today, will look ridiculous with PBR?

My shortlist:

• Latex clothing items (the ones with shine highlights baked-in)
• Any other attachment with baked shine/"reflections"
• Other baked shine stuff like vehicles, furniture, building components
• Items with heavy baked lighting

I may be more bothered than most folks by baked lighting (even with ALM disabled), with each item's immutable light source mismatching all others like some old "Magic Eye" stereogram that just won't fuse. But once all viewers always show proper scene lighting, it's going to conflict with those funky old baked light sources, especially the extreme ones, and everybody will be able to see how murky and strange it all looks.

But much worse, shine highlights and reflections. They're going to look as primitive as 2D cardboard cut-outs pasted on the world, just completely wrong when the viewing angle changes—which happens for everything when the cam moves, but for attachments it happens whenever the avatar animates, even with a fixed cam.

There are certainly more ways PBR can advance our expectations of SL content (e.g. replacing render-killing superficial geometry with materials, now universally visible), so there are surely more "low-hanging fruit" of obsolete content. Any favorites?

[Rowan Amore]

43 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Any other attachment with baked shine/"reflections"

THIS^^^^

I just tried on several skins from the Skin Fair.  With darker skins especially, they put some awful 'shine' on one side.  Now, if it were symmetrical it might look ok but usually it's way too much.  If I want shine, I can do that with other things.

ETA...I don't actually know if that's baked shine but it looks awful.  

This would have been a purchase for me but nope...

Edited March 10, 2023 by Rowan Amore

[Bree Giffen]

Not just items with baked in shine but items that are not mod or don't have a scripted menu where reflectivity cannot be turned on. 

[Ceka Cianci]

I haven't really bought much of anything with lighting baked in or shadows since we've gotten shadows and  also the material layers.. I have some older houses that have the baked in shadows that I pretty much have to cover up if I want to move things around like pictures or furniture..

Anything where  they are adding shines or shadows I avoid like the plague..  Some skins are ok because of shadowing for  creases and things like that, but the ones doing half face like lighting coming from one side or leg and butt and breast shines.. I just can't understand why they are still doing that to be honest since materials came along..

Hopefully my things I've gotten since materials came out will be fine.. And like Bree said, being able to mod is a factor as well..

 

[Istelathis]

I don't think it will have very much of an impact on my purchases, things will look funky and mismatched, but I am used to that with older games that have had updates throughout the years so the chaos of what is old and new being mixed into one setting doesn't really bother me as much.  I will of course, admire the work others put into their homes and fashion to accommodate PBR.

Realism in virtual worlds is not a goal I seek, if anything I kind of favor cartoonish graphics and wish the viewers offered us a setting to render everything with such a filter.

[Janet Voxel]

13 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I don't think it will have very much of an impact on my purchases

This part. I played around with PBR on the test grid and while there’s a difference, it’s pretty minute. I did a dinky little build to see how it works. The ALM stuff still works the same as it always did. It’s a improvement, but not an earth shattering one. Things seem to render faster and your graphics card will noticeably be doing work, that’s about it.

I think it’ll be a couple years until we start seeing a lot of objects only done in full PBR glory, so it really shouldn’t stop you from buying anything. The pipeline is pretty simple, so hopefully my timeline is off. I am a little curious as to how it would affect skins, but I don’t see it altering how you see SL to cause too much concern.

[Aeromia]

PBR doesn't currently work with BOM, it also needs items to be rezzed out, the materials item dragged into it for it to work, (haven't seen anything about being able to be put in via appliers)
So I don't think the standard way of doing materials is going to change at all due to creators not wanting to allow modify on items, things being too complex to trust the average user who struggles with the build window and just wants something to 'slap on and go' or 'just works'. If we were still in the long gone days of shared creative learning, I think it'd be neat. But as it is, right now it's just kind of disappointing because it doesn't seem like it's going to really be creatively used the way it could be.
It feels really clunky for what we're supposed to get. So I think while some things will be made with the ability to do so, it's not really going to change HOW some folks do things right now (baked shine has -always- been the bane of my existence since materials became a thing)

[Ayashe Ninetails]

PBR isn't on my radar at all as far as purchases go. After it's out, I'll worry about updating my inventory as new items are released, if needed. Until then, I'm shopping as usual.

[Qie Niangao]

38 minutes ago, Aeromia said:

PBR doesn't currently work with BOM, it also needs items to be rezzed out, the materials item dragged into it for it to work, (haven't seen anything about being able to be put in via appliers)

Yeah, BOM never tried to handle materials at all, so we've been stuck using either appliers or mod-enabled body surfaces. That said, there will surely be appliers for PBR, using the upcoming script features such as llSetRenderMaterial(). It'll still be a hideous kludge, like all appliers, but that's what we get unless they decide to extend BOM.

[ETA. Patch talked very briefly about the NUX avatars at Lab Gab today and somewhat addressed a question I asked about how "PBR ready" they'd be. There's a thread about Lab Gab, with the NUX/PBR nexus here. Now that you mention PBR appliers, I'm thinking the NUX dev kit may end up being the standard for applying PBR materials, hopefully familiarly incorporated in all mesh bodies and materials-relevant products, kinda like Omega used to be.]

Edited March 10, 2023 by Qie Niangao

[PekeNL]

The fact that this thread only touches on 'shine' says enough about the knowledge of most folks regarding PBR.

[Qie Niangao]

2 minutes ago, PekeNL said:

The fact that this thread only touches on 'shine' says enough about the knowledge of most folks regarding PBR.

I suppose, but honestly I expect the pressure on content obsolescence to be largely lighting and materials effects that are mostly apparent pre-PBR with ALM enabled (using legacy materials) but now all viewers will be seeing that lighting and creators will use materials (legacy or GLTF) with confidence that people can see them. To me, the big gating function is really universal ALM.

[Fenimore Hapmouche]

 

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

There's some skins I would like --- but their "shine" thing causes me to go no-sale on them.

[Nika Talaj]

I'm also in the "wait and see" camp.  The only baked-in shadows that really bother me are on prefab homes (GAH! window shapes on floors!), or really extreme furniture ones.  I suppose I should be bothered by baked-in corner shadows on Linden Homes and the back recesses of bookshelves and cabinets, but since I only rarely am walking around with AL on, they actually help my daily experience. 

I don't think I'm alone in walking around without AL on.  Honestly, materials usage by creators seems so random that in most environments having AL off results in a less chaotic-looking world.  That may just be because I'm such an oldbie   I'm kinda hoping that PBR completely obsoletes the current materials.  I'm hoping against hope that between PBR and the Vulkan API we see enough of a performance boost that a lot of folks choose to have reflections on.

I've always assumed that people buy skins with baked-in shine for selfies, not caring how it looks when they're just walking around.  It's particularly weird when their clothing seems to have a different light source, but I'm rarely looking that closely.

[Love Zhaoying]

Not buying a new PC, pending PBR.  I bet it looks fine on my old potato.

 

[Polenth Yue]

I don't see why I wouldn't buy something I liked, because it's not going to suddenly look different after the update. If I'm okay with it now, I will continue liking it later.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

What"s happening now PBR what?

[steeljane42]

Nothing. I already don't buy things with heavy bakes. And sadly I don't really expect creators to drop the highlighting via bakes for a long long time after PBR is out. Also if Bento and Animesh is something to go by, it also will take a really long time until good quality products will start to show up.

Compare 2016 bento heads to the today ones or even ones from 2020 - 2021 (Evo - Evox launch times), it's day and night difference. Same for the animesh. Early animesh pets/animals weren't any good, these days there's some really nice ones around. Textures might be easier to make than complex meshes, but I still think it'll be a long while until people learn "how-to".

As for the skins, I actually have no idea if it's going to benefit them much at all, unless someone uses a materials enabled shine/tattoo, those might become even more interesting with PBR, but it's just not something most people use at most times.

Currently best practice on both mesh bodies and heads is to actually turn down or completely disable the glossiness and intensity for the better compatibility between meshes/materials made by different people, or the neck seam becomes rather obvious since it'll never match how light reflects from said different meshes. PBR is unlikely to change anything in that regard.

[EliseAnne85]

8 hours ago, Aeromia said:

PBR doesn't currently work with BOM, it also needs items to be rezzed out, the materials item dragged into it for it to work, (haven't seen anything about being able to be put in via appliers)

What?  I was wondering about skins considering the base color area.  Oh my gah.  Dinkies are BOM.  I cannot lose my Dinkie BOM skins!  

[Gwin LeShelle]

11 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

THIS^^^^

I just tried on several skins from the Skin Fair.  With darker skins especially, they put some awful 'shine' on one side.  Now, if it were symmetrical it might look ok but usually it's way too much.  If I want shine, I can do that with other things.

ETA...I don't actually know if that's baked shine but it looks awful.  

This would have been a purchase for me but nope...

Omg I really thought I'm alone in this XD you find a cute skin and boom weird painty shine on it. They should make that shiny stuff an extra layer if they like it so much, but you can also have a less shiny skin if you prefer it T^T 

Don't bake in shine in 2023 x3 I get why they did 16 years ago when I started but it's really not needed anymore today. Use materials T^T.

But then again when I think about it...I run around in SL only Ultra with all dem shiny and shadows on even in packed events, maybe someone with a bad PC can't and they love those baked in shines?

[Jenna Huntsman]

14 hours ago, Aeromia said:

PBR doesn't currently work with BOM, it also needs items to be rezzed out, the materials item dragged into it for it to work, (haven't seen anything about being able to be put in via appliers)

PBR does work with BoM (insofar as being able to use bakes textures on the Base Color map) - the material drag&drop is how regular textures are applied (PBR can also be done via the Build floater, should you desire).

Appliers are a vendor-specific thing, so will depend on body creators (and / or 3rd parties in the case of Mod-enabled bodies) on updating their content to accept materials created with the new system (Likely this will amount to applying a material asset by UUID) - This will have a benefit in the sense that users are handed more control over how their bodies look (as, you get access to all material parameters via material assets, rather than pot-luck of whatever the applier creator's script allows).

[Marianne Little]

I never heard about PBR. I am in a low shopping mode, buying mostly in weekend sales.

So most of the furniture and garden items I buy are modify. I can edit something on that? I really hope all my Konoha plants will look good.

Clothes, meh, I am using a lot only once. But the no modify clothes I have from well known stores like ISON, are making me worry a bit. I am using those clothes a lot. Clothes has turned to no modify and scripted 99% over the last years. I have to buy the no mod or go in old clothes. Eek! To stop buying clothes is like punishing myself, not the creator.

Expensive purchases might be put on hold... But knowing LL, it can take months or years before this is rolled out.

[Qie Niangao]

7 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

What"s happening now PBR what?

You asked, and the Lab answered: At yesterday's Lab Gab, Mojo Linden (VP of Engineering) talked about PBR. He made it sound scarily technical, but as he said "a picture is worth a thousand words" and encouraged folks to try the project viewer (currently 7.0.0.578613) on Aditi, particularly in the several "Rumpus Room" regions. There was also a Second Life University YouTube video a little while ago that shows PBR in action with some explanation of the new GLTF material assets and some hints about tools and workflow for content creation.

53 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

But knowing LL, it can take months or years before this is rolled out.

Yeah, Mojo also says (copied from the YouTube transcript), "so in truth we don't plan to release it until we're really confident that it's ready to go and it might be another three months". (To be honest, that was a little longer than I expected when I started this thread.)

[EliseAnne85]

15 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Not buying a new PC, pending PBR.  I bet it looks fine on my old potato.

 

What kind of potato?  I'm not sure exactly what potato means other than older.   Can you give a little more info on potatoes as it was rumored people will need a gaming computer to run PBR.  

Edited March 11, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

What kind of potato?  I'm not sure exactly what potato means other than older.   Can you give a little more info on potatoes as it was rumored people will need a gaming computer to run PBR.  

I'll let someone else explain the concept of "potato computer". Thanks for asking!