PBR Substance Painter versus Second Life

[Marcthur Goosson]

Hello, I am new to PBR in general and trying to setup my workflow for creating PBR materials in Substance Painter.

Despite all the advised settings tne material looks different in SL than in SP.

I think I tried everything so please give me new information to try out.

Substance

The images are screenshots of 1 side of a cube.

 

Substance Settings:

Template: '''PBR - Metallic Roughness Alpha-test (starter_assets)'''

Document Resolution: '''1024'''

Normal Map Format: '''OpenGL (Y+)'''
Compute Tangents Per Fragment: '''YES'''

"Display Settings":

 Tonemapping - Function: '''ACES'''

HDRI equivalent of new default midday (for use in third party tools): https://polyhaven.com/a/cloud_layers

When exporting:

    Output Template: '''glTF PBR Metal Roughness'''
    Size: '''Based on each Texture Set's size'''
    Padding: '''Dilation + default background color - 8 bit'''

The Stone texture "stone-wall---02.sbsar" comes from the Substance 3D community.

SL settings:

Viewer Second Life Release 7.0.1.6894459864 (64bit) on the beta grid

Environment Midday (I wonder why the sun is not in the center as it is in the Midday Legacy)

 

Edited December 1, 2023 by Marcthur Goosson
made mistake

[Luna Bliss]

Wow Marcthur, that's quite a difference   

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

1 hour ago, Marcthur Goosson said:

HDRI equivalent of new default midday (for use in third party tools): https://polyhaven.com/a/cloud_layers

1 hour ago, Marcthur Goosson said:

Environment Midday (I wonder why the sun is not in the center as it is in the Midday Legacy)

There's likely your answer. Differences in looks are mostly because of differences in environment settings (especially volumetric atmospheric effect and, in your case, the sun position, in either Substance Painter and Second Life.

In your SL version, there also seems to be a blue light source nearby.

My take home message is: y'all are gonna have to do a lot of trial and error to find your new way in PBR.

P.S. This is probably the wrong forum section to discuss these things.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Marcthur Goosson]

No matter where I put the sun, in SL or SP, I get the same result.

I looked for a blue light source, could not find it and to be sure I rezzed at 1000 meters.

 

[Charlotte Bartlett]

21 hours ago, Marcthur Goosson said:

No matter where I put the sun, in SL or SP, I get the same result.

I looked for a blue light source, could not find it and to be sure I rezzed at 1000 meters.

 

It’s your SL EEP settings your substance ones look good.

i have a stack of PBR items ready to go.  I have had to create 4 new light settings EEP that I will bundle with the items.  The challenge is a lot of regions if using their settings, lighting creates a lot of “blue”.   I would be happy to send you one of my EEPs to play with,  IM me in world.

I have held back on mine due to Firestorm holding back atm. 

[Marcthur Goosson]

Thanks Charlotte, I will contact you..

I am tired of testing, there is blue somewhere and I cannot figure out how to get rid of it.

Even when I apply a blank PBR material the textureface is blue.

Can someone please switch of the blue light .............or tell me the source.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

wondering if it's the default sky of the simulators bounding/sandbox,  if you know gaming you know I'm referring to what a ton of games do.  hm

[bigmoe Whitfield]

okay, did some testing and this in the photo is just a prim with a white face, full shine and no lights,  there is still something there, so guessing it's the bounding box of the simulator.

no light

Light on

Edited December 2, 2023 by bigmoe Whitfield

[Charlotte Bartlett]

Play with your Sun colour first.

Some examples as I changed the sun to a darker grey to desaturate.
The challenge as I mentioned on another thread are creators now going to have to bundle EEPs with products?  Customers are doing to pull their hair out trying to understand why it doesn't look like the picture due to their own EEP settings. (I am going to be included EEP settings with my PBR products as houses especially glass can have some bizarre interaction).

 

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Marcthur Goosson]

I discovered that the Stone texture in SP has a baked height AND a baked normal channel.

When exporting from SP the height adds up to the normal channel, it kind of doubles the normal information.

So I deactivated the normal channel in SP and exported again.

This is how it looks now at midday.

[arton Rotaru]

The blue is indeed coming from the new midday environment in SL compared to the recommended HDRi.
See: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234789

Further than that there are no point lights in painter like the sun in SL. The tonemapping in SL is a mix of 2/3 ACES and 1/3 Linear. Where in Painter it is 100% ACES tonemapping when enabled. This has been done to prevent legacy content with Blinn-Phong materials from being too saturated and contrasty due to the ACES tonemapping.
Then there is the autoexposure in SL which isn't present in SP either.

We are trying to nudge the developer to make some tweaks to the default SL midday environment to get the sky more inline with the recommended HDRi. Best to add your concerns on the Jira.

On 12/1/2023 at 3:56 PM, Marcthur Goosson said:

Environment Midday (I wonder why the sun is not in the center as it is in the Midday Legacy)

Because it's super unrealistic to have the sun dead on like the legacy midday. Indeed, any aspect of this new look of SL requires some time to get used to.

[Carolyn Zapedzki]

Need to get my mind out of the gutter, initially I read it as submissive painter

[Jenna Huntsman]

On 12/1/2023 at 2:56 PM, Marcthur Goosson said:

HDRI equivalent of new default midday (for use in third party tools): https://polyhaven.com/a/cloud_layers

Please note that this HDRi isn't the best match for the SL Midday, the best match is a modified version of this HDRi to better match the luminance levels of SL, found here: https://github.com/Jenna-Huntsman/Second-Life-Resources/tree/main/PBR/HDRi

(This link is also provided on the PBR materials wiki page).

31 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

We are trying to nudge the developer to make some tweaks to the default SL midday environment to get the sky more inline with the recommended HDRi. Best to add your concerns on the Jira.

Pretty much this.

I briefly spoke to Runitai Linden, who said that the new Midday preset is due for a quality pass and that they'll try and get the Linden Midday preset looking closer to the recommended HDRi.

[Marcthur Goosson]

Thanks for additional information.

I understand that things might change or ironed out.

I now have these results

.

[Love Zhaoying]

On 12/9/2023 at 6:56 AM, Carolyn Zapedzki said:

Need to get my mind out of the gutter, initially I read it as submissive painter

Let us know if you're looking for one, or offering to be one.

[Carolyn Zapedzki]

21 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Let us know if you're looking for one, or offering to be one.

Brilliant, I have been searching all my life for a submissive painter. Will book you in after Christmas!

[Carolyn Zapedzki]

Just now, Carolyn Zapedzki said:

Brilliant, I have been searching all my life for a submissive painter. Will book you in after Christmas!

Damn read it wrong, I thought you were offering. I amfar from a sub painter, so looking!

[Lindal Kidd]

On 12/11/2023 at 7:58 AM, Carolyn Zapedzki said:

a sub painter

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

This just shows why the next item in line for LL's rendering pipeline is... the terrain 🙂

I mean, to my untrained, un-artistic eye, the only thing I can say is that the SL item looks slightly more dull (but that can be due to the lighting, not how the material reacts). But the terrain — oh my. LL really, really needs to put some serious effort there!

(Note: I'm well aware that they are working on PBR materials on the terrain as well)

   - Gwyn

 

On 12/10/2023 at 2:18 PM, Marcthur Goosson said:

Thanks for additional information.

I understand that things might change or ironed out.

I now have these results

.

 

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

@Marcthur Goosson as mentioned briefly by @arton Rotaru, the extra blue is kind of a "feature" in the sense that it's a "well-known" issue, fully documented on the SL Wiki by the Lindens themselves, and I quote:

Quote

Blinn-Phong content making use of the Specular parameters may look different if the items were never viewed under local lights, as the PBR viewer allows for the environment (sun and sky) to contribute to specular reflections. As such, if the object receives blue specular reflections from the sky, these reflections are tinted, and may look odd. This effect is the same as prior viewers, as if the object was lit by a blue local light.

So, essentially, the blue sky tints everything blue, because... the sky is blue 🙂

One wonders if you could somehow compensate it with a local orange light (being the complementary colour of blue). Or maybe by tinting the sun orange?...

[Marcthur Goosson]

 

8 hours ago, Gwyneth Llewelyn said:

Blinn-Phong content making use of the Specular parameters may look different if the items were never viewed under local lights, as the PBR viewer allows for the environment (sun and sky) to contribute to specular reflections. As such, if the object receives blue specular reflections from the sky, these reflections are tinted, and may look odd. This effect is the same as prior viewers, as if the object was lit by a blue local light.

All the images I posted are PBR Materials.

 

8 hours ago, Gwyneth Llewelyn said:

One wonders if you could somehow compensate it with a local orange light (being the complementary colour of blue). Or maybe by tinting the sun orange?...

There need to be some kind of point zero from where we can tweak. I mean we have to have the same look to start from in the adviced software (SP, Khronos and SL PBR).

Adding lights, environments in SL to match what we made in e.g. SP is not a correct workflow.

Ain't red the complementary of blue?

[Rowan Amore]

Complimentary colors

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 hours ago, Marcthur Goosson said:

Ain't red the complementary of blue?

Hahaha, no.

5 hours ago, Marcthur Goosson said:

I mean we have to have the same look to start from in the adviced software (SP, Khronos and SL PBR).

Good luck with that, Two of those share a base the other is a kludgy mess that has no common lighting standard with the other 2.

5 hours ago, Marcthur Goosson said:

Adding lights, environments in SL to match what we made in e.g. SP is not a correct workflow.

Welcome to SL, where "kludge it so it SEEMS less broken" is the standard operating procedure.

Are you learning yet?

[Marcthur Goosson]

Someone made a jira.

Thanks

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234789?_gl=1*1o5qq00*_ga*MTA2NjA4NjI2MC4xNzAzMTQ4MDY2*_ga_T7G7P6DCEC*MTcwMzE0ODA2Ni4xLjEuMTcwMzE0OTEwNy4wLjAuMA..*_fplc*ZG8xQ3hERnN5QXgwbm1GckwwTUlzSDBkTEx4TVJkUFhRJTJCQmZJVW5jaEQyck5ZUHhkcWE1OE1wSDZaY2g1eWpIcUY4NTUlMkI3YkxQNlR3VHg0Z3QzbGZ3WjdKYyUyRnNWVjlRODRmS1NlREozV1VwSkJIME1YWlFZclloZnNndiUyQlElM0QlM0Q.

[Jenna Huntsman]

7 minutes ago, Marcthur Goosson said:

Someone made a jira.

Thanks

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234789?_gl=1*1o5qq00*_ga*MTA2NjA4NjI2MC4xNzAzMTQ4MDY2*_ga_T7G7P6DCEC*MTcwMzE0ODA2Ni4xLjEuMTcwMzE0OTEwNy4wLjAuMA..*_fplc*ZG8xQ3hERnN5QXgwbm1GckwwTUlzSDBkTEx4TVJkUFhRJTJCQmZJVW5jaEQyck5ZUHhkcWE1OE1wSDZaY2g1eWpIcUY4NTUlMkI3YkxQNlR3VHg0Z3QzbGZ3WjdKYyUyRnNWVjlRODRmS1NlREozV1VwSkJIME1YWlFZclloZnNndiUyQlElM0QlM0Q.

As noted in that JIRA, this problem has been fixed upstream and will be included in the glTF Maintenance viewer.