PBR Materials folder to appear gray as to indicate that its function is unavailable

[Vlad Breyer]

How do I make it available? Does anyone know? I can't be the only person with this issue, why is it so difficult to find answers on how to solve this quickly? 

[Henri Beauchamp]

What viewer are you using ?... Why is is so difficult for people to give proper clues for the problem they encounter ? 🤣

I suppose (wild guess, by lack of information), that you viewer is not PBR-enabled and did not recognize the new Materials folder as a ”valid” system folder.

Make sure you are using a PBR-enabled viewer if you want to test PBR/GLTF materials.

There are currently four of them (by order of appearance/availability):

• LL's PBR RC viewer.
• Alchemy beta viewer.
• Cool VL Viewer, experimental branch (v1.31.0).
• Firestorm PBR alpha viewer.

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

And just to be clear, PBR is not fully released yet. Sure, you can see PBR content in PBR-enabled regions, but many regions and most viewers don't have that functionality yet.

[Flea Yatsenko]

There is also a big warning on PBR test regions that you shouldn't post PBR stuff on the marketplace yet. I don't think you need to rush into making PBR stuff, it's going to be a while before everyone is on a PBR viewer. But you should be learning how to deal with it. Just a heads up, I was ready to go full PBR before I saw that sign and started thinking about it.

[Qie Niangao]

Now that all the RC regions have PBR as of this week's restarts, it's an open question whether all regions will have PBR enabled over Thanksgiving—it's that close. That said, it's very true that some viewers (including my favorite) will lag behind in releasing a PBR-capable version, although I expect the next main release of the Linden viewer (and maybe the others with PBR branches) will include the feature, so it will keep going wide very slowly and then all at once.

And then there shall be much confusion for a while. I'll admit, it took me almost an hour to "discover" that Build / Options / Select Reflection Probes is a thing, and disabled by default. (I may have confused myself by explicitly setting the probe's default click mode to "Ignore object" and mistakenly assuming that was how the thing got so Select-elusive.)

[Flea Yatsenko]

Yeah but reflection probes can cause a ridiculous amount of lag. Not sure how to deal with it as a vendor, if I add it to each piece in a builder's kit it'll make building easier but the optimal way is to place it after the build is done where it's needed. There are going to be a lot of teething issues for sure. But PBR is going to be amazing and we're going to get a lot of stuff that looks amazing in SL that people aren't expecting.

[Qie Niangao]

33 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

Yeah but reflection probes can cause a ridiculous amount of lag. 

And it's weirdly "jerky" lag too, at least in my experience. That said, I've been satisfied with just one probe per major build volume, so I don't think I'm abusing the feature. Probably helps that I have low standards and don't yet know to obsess over this stuff: if it reflects mostly the right stuff, good enough for me!