What is going on with the PBR Testing regions?

[WillowdaleEstate]

3 days now since I've been able to test PBR Materials.  I can't TP, can't upload mesh, can't upload materials, my avie doesn't rez, my inventory won't finish loading.  I tried all the Rumpus Room regions and it's the same.  I've been working away and am very anxious to test my latest builds.  Does anyone know what is going on?

Edited August 1, 2023 by WillowdaleEstate

[Rowan Amore]

57 minutes ago, WillowdaleEstate said:

3 days now since I've been able to test PBR Materials.  I can't TP, can't upload mesh, can't upload materials, my avie doesn't rez, my inventory won't finish loading.  I tried all the Rumpus Room regions and it's the same.  I've been working away and am very anxious to test my latest builds.  Does anyone know what is going on?

 

[WillowdaleEstate]

Thanks for the link to this thread.  Glad to hear it's not just me.

Edited August 1, 2023 by WillowdaleEstate

[Qie Niangao]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. There are Rumpus Room test regions on Agni now, too, not just Aditi. Just tested and I had no trouble getting in to those. Of course that won't help with inventory only uploaded to Aditi, and there's no free uploads on the main grid, but it's an option for testing PBR materials at least.

 

[WillowdaleEstate]

Thank you so much for posting this.  I didn't realize!  You are correct, we can no upload PBR Materials on the main grid on the Rumpus Room regions.

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. There are Rumpus Room test regions on Agni now, too, not just Aditi. Just tested and I had no trouble getting in to those. Of course that won't help with inventory only uploaded to Aditi, and there's no free uploads on the main grid, but it's an option for testing PBR materials at least.

 

 

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Reflections on glass are a bit wonky. The darker parts are alpha blending, but above a certain threshold, it becomes masking (100% opaque) instead. I'm not sure it that's because of technical restrictions or unintentional, or maybe I missed a setting.

[Update] In most environment settings, especially high-ambient lighting, it looks fine. With the standard 'Midday' setting it looks weird. But then everything looks weird with Midday.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Jenna Huntsman]

4 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Reflections on glass are a bit wonky. The darker parts are alpha blending, but above a certain threshold, it becomes masking (100% opaque) instead. I'm not sure it that's because of technical restrictions or unintentional, or maybe I missed a setting.

[Update] In most environment settings, especially high-ambient lighting, it looks fine. With the standard 'Midday' setting it looks weird. But then everything looks weird with Midday.

That's about correct. This is because of a quirk of legacy materials having transmissive properties when using alpha blending, but no transmission (correct!) rendering when using alpha masking. This behaviour was carried over for legacy materials, as fixing it was deemed to be too disruptive.

(Because the glass has transmission, it reflects light, so more light will mean higher intensity reflections. Because the sky is HDR, it's much brighter than the rest of the scene (especially as you're in an empty region), the horizon being very bright and showing intensely in the reflection is correct)

[Qie Niangao]

It's probably related: Blinn-Phong alpha textures (blended) render very strangely underwater when the cam is above water (i.e., viewing through the water surface).

Left is the PBR viewer; note how white the almost-transparent parts are, and the hairy white edges. I don't think it matters, but this is testing in a non-PBR region because I don't know a PBR sandbox with Linden water.

Incidentally, I first noticed this with underwater alpha particles which got me wondering: is there any talk of glTF materials used for particles—especially ribbon particles?