PBR WOW!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

6 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

On the plus side, I just saw that we don't need to change all of our prims to convex physics to enjoy the bennies of having our Li brought down, having 28 prims linked together only show 14 Li while using prim physics 😁 

 

Well, thank god for small mercies!

The problem of course with using "planar" rather than default is that those are meaningful distinctions with regard to mesh. I have for instance blank mesh building pieces that need to be set to planar, and others for which that produces strange results.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Apparently you can't tile PBR materials? They can only be STRETCHED???? (I tried this both in BD and the LL Viewer. Unticking "Stretch Textures" does nothing: it still just stretches.)

Either that's insane, or I'm doing something seriously wrong. HELP!!!

The whole "Broken PBR not fit for release" thing about PBR gltf materials breaking texture tiling/scaling was mentioned some MONTHS ago in some tech thread.

Apparently Nobody on the dev team thought texture tiling/scaling was important enough to fix, despite the use of TILED textures being one of the basic requirements in REAL PBR systems.

42 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

It doesn't seem to work with default for me

I sort of remember that the thread where this problem was mentioned, said something about it happening depending on what order you set up the texturing on something, ALM vs PBR, etc. get it right by accident, you can tile/scale, get it wrong by accident, you're forked. 50/50 coin flip.

 

 

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

So, here's an issue that people are going to definitely have.

This is a brand new dress. It's so new, in fact, that it only comes sized for Maitreya Lara X, Maitreya Lara X Petite, and Legacy. And it's from a pretty well-known and reputable maker.

Below, I've put side by side images of the same dress, using the same EEP, one in the new PBR-capable LL Viewer, and the other in current (non-PBR) Firestorm Viewer. (I also took pics in the Black Dragon PBR viewer, but they are very close to the LL ones, so I've omitted them.)

I don't think there is any question that the dress top looks better in PBR. And overall, the environment is nicer. (The default wooden texture in the Firestorm shots is because of course materials don't show there, and this texture didn't come with separate diffuse/normal/specular maps.)

But under any sort of reasonably bright EEP setting, the sequined skirt looks as though it's been drenched in vaseline. So too does the PBR texture on the wall behind me (although that, I think, might be adjustable?). Under dark light, the skirt shines like it's emitting light particles.

I think an awful lot of older clothing, especially "shiny" fabrics like latex, satins, and leather, are going to start looking like this.

Honestly I KNOW it sounds like I'm just crapping all over PBR.

But I actually want this to work, and I'm making a real effort to learn the ropes so that I can make it work.

But gosh, this really isn't looking ready for primetime to me. And it's going to be a bumpy road for the next year or two.

Edited December 20, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Scylla Rhiadra]

9 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Apparently Nobody on the dev team thought texture tiling/scaling was important enough to fix, despite the use of TILED textures being one of the basic requirements in REAL PBR systems.

Well, yeah. First of all, tiling is of course absolutely necessary to texture larger objects such as walls, ground features, etc.

And making it possible to do so only using scaling adjustments just makes it crazy hard if you're texturing a surface that isn't using a simple 1:1 aspect ratio (or a simple multiple thereof).

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

under any sort of reasonably bright EEP setting, the sequined skirt looks as though it's been drenched in vaseline

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Under dark light, the skirt shines like it's emitting light particles.

I've said this already, but it's worth saying again.

Ambient in EEP/PBR is basically "controllable fullbright".

This is especially true of the probe mapped fake lighting cube things in PBR.

See, in actual 3D renders, when IBL "image based lighting" was first shoved at people, really stupid people said "this will eliminate the need for slow to render actual lights, hurrah!", and tended to use IBL to supply ALL the lighting in scenes, problem was IBL back then didn't do specular highlights or shadows AT ALL, so everything tended to look washed out, desaturated, low contrast, and shadow-less, flat matte, somebody once described this look "watered down coloured ink on unglazed porous ceramic".

 

What you were SUPPOSED to do was use IBL as a "global filler light", set to a low value, say 30% of full bright, as the "indoors n the shade in daylight" base lighting level, than add ACTUAL lights to the scene for, well, lighting.

 

See the OTHER PBR thread, where @Arduenn Schwartzman posted a pic of "midday" and half the room is black.

The person who created that ASSUMED that "OBVIOUSLY ALL the lighting will be done with probe mapped IBL Ambience"

 

Then there's the other problem. Because IBL tends, when badly used to do that "badly pastel painted porcelain bisque" look, you need ACES tone mapping to fix the colours, by oversaturating/over contrasting, to counter the undersaturated/under contrasted effects of crap IBL. But SL wasn't made with crap IBL in mind, so everything ends up oversaturated.

They kludged around this with a 2/3rds Aces / 1/3 SL botch.

The ratio should have been the other way round, or even 1 to 3 aces to SL.

 

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

 

This is what's happening here, the shadow from the "wall" shows you standing in the shade, but the ZERO quality EEP, with its UN-realistic Ambience, is basically setting your entire avatar to partial full-bright This shows up more in lighter colours, so you have slightly glowing skin and the skirt is neon metal.

The combo of Broken PBR and sh*te EEP preset is a disaster. As for the skirt glowing that bright in the second pic, is that skirt supposed to be "PBR ready", because if it is, the creator fubared shoving their ALM-Mat textures into the wrong channels on the PBR material, they have apparently put a pale grey/white image into emissive.

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

 

See, the moon light EEP has a more controlled ambience, low levels, a universal background filler light, for everywhere that isn't in direct illumination from an actual light source. This is how it's supposed to be.

That skirt though, if that's "PBR Enabled", never buy from them again, that's just poor.

Edited December 20, 2023 by Zalificent Corvinus

[Qie Niangao]

9 hours ago, Istelathis said:

It took me a while to figure out why it was such a pain to select the reflection probe 🤣 I had to select everything around it at first, then deselect everything. 

We're long past this point of the discussion, but I stumbled on something relevant yesterday, trying to select another invisible non-selectable thing*: open the build tool (Control-3) with nothing selected, then use Build/Pathfinding/"Region Objects" to get a handy sortable list of stuff you can manipulate on the region, and select the reflection probe from there. Of course it helps if you named it something relevant. For me, it's easier to grab these things that way than to burrow my mouse rodent-like through surrounding stuff.

____________________
*an object freshly sculptmapped in a PBR viewer

[Love Zhaoying]

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

It's nuts that you can do that, but can't simply tile it using the "Stretch" tool.

Oh, OK - I had only used the "Edit" dialog IIRC.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Honestly I KNOW it sounds like I'm just crapping all over PBR.

Don't stop, you are bringing up educational points. Personally, I think the PBR pictures in that post look better (so the complaint is confusing).

 

[elleevelyn]

9 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

The striping artifacts on the Ocean are coming from the Screen Space Reflections. I keep those turned off.
And yes, it's a known issue since February actually. Unfortunately it hasn't been fixed yet.

thanks much !

i am happy now. have final set my computer up and is great!

[arton Rotaru]

5 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Apparently you can't tile PBR materials? They can only be STRETCHED???? (I tried this both in BD and the LL Viewer. Unticking "Stretch Textures" does nothing: it still just stretches.)

Either that's insane, or I'm doing something seriously wrong. HELP!!!

ETA: I've just worked out that you can manually adjust the scaling. That is STILL insane, however.

I filed that one for ya! Good catch!

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234872

[Theresa Tennyson]

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

So, here's an issue that people are going to definitely have.

This is a brand new dress. It's so new, in fact, that it only comes sized for Maitreya Lara X, Maitreya Lara X Petite, and Legacy. And it's from a pretty well-known and reputable maker.

Below, I've put side by side images of the same dress, using the same EEP, one in the new PBR-capable LL Viewer, and the other in current (non-PBR) Firestorm Viewer. (I also took pics in the Black Dragon PBR viewer, but they are very close to the LL ones, so I've omitted them.)

I don't think there is any question that the dress top looks better in PBR. And overall, the environment is nicer. (The default wooden texture in the Firestorm shots is because of course materials don't show there, and this texture didn't come with separate diffuse/normal/specular maps.)

But under any sort of reasonably bright EEP setting, the sequined skirt looks as though it's been drenched in vaseline. So too does the PBR texture on the wall behind me (although that, I think, might be adjustable?). Under dark light, the skirt shines like it's emitting light particles.

I think an awful lot of older clothing, especially "shiny" fabrics like latex, satins, and leather, are going to start looking like this.

Honestly I KNOW it sounds like I'm just crapping all over PBR.

But I actually want this to work, and I'm making a real effort to learn the ropes so that I can make it work.

But gosh, this really isn't looking ready for primetime to me. And it's going to be a bumpy road for the next year or two.

I've been pleasantly surprised with how well the PBR viewers are working for me. However, I spend most of my time in areas that are set up with the default environment. I've always relied on placed light sources, and I haven't messed with reflection probes yet.

However, yes - if I go to places that have environments that have custom EEP's made for the old lighting engine, indeed - sometimes it looks GAAHHH!!!. If that "realistic ambient" lighting isn't made for how lighting works now - yes; it won't look realistic.

And there was one place I made myself that was just nightmarishly bright even with the default environment - however, I realized that I'd placed three lights blasting out maximum power in a small space. In a real-world situation someone walking in there would be frizzle-fried in seconds. I rolled them down from intensity 1.0 to intensity 0.6 and things looked fine later. Under the old situation the constrained contrast meant that I didn't realize how over-lit it was.

Yes, there are problems with the viewer, but they're being fixed pretty quickly and to be honest I'm adopting it a lot faster than the original materials viewer, which broke a lot of things with lighting in the first few iterations. And some of the "problems" here come down to not knowing how things work, which for some people will be a learning process and for others, dare I say it, a case of, "Dinnae mess wi' things ye ken nothin' about."

[Jenna Huntsman]

5 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

But under any sort of reasonably bright EEP setting, the sequined skirt looks as though it's been drenched in vaseline.

This is likely because the autoprobe for the area you're standing in is in the wrong position. Autoprobes are placed approximately, and placement isn't always correct (hence, why manual probes are recommended).

 

4 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

you need ACES tone mapping to fix the colours

This is not quite true - the reason why ACES was implemented is the requirement for HDR lighting by the glTF standard - tonemapping is a de-facto requirement in order to display HDR lighting on SDR displays, as otherwise colours would end up out-of-gamut.

See the gamut difference here (Rec. 709 (sRGB) and BT. 2020):

https://www.benq.com/en-us/business/resource/trends/understanding-color-gamut.html

Other tonemappers are available, but ACES is the current industry standard choice, hence why it was chosen.

[Frionil Fang]

7 hours ago, Istelathis said:

On the plus side, I just saw that we don't need to change all of our prims to convex physics to enjoy the bennies of having our Li brought down, having 28 prims linked together only show 14 Li while using prim physics

That doesn't seem to be the case, completely plain blank textured old prims linked together still count as 1 LI per prim for me.

If you put PBR materials on said prims (or diff-spec materials, or change the alpha mode from default), it has the same effect as switching to convex hull, making them count with mesh-style impact calculation.

The LI discount only applies to download cost anyway, as far as I recall the announcement saying. Prims have almost no download cost and their impact is almost all physics/server. If the total LI of the object/linkset wasn't determined by download cost, there wouldn't be a visible change.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

4 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I think the PBR pictures in that post look better (so the complaint is confusing).

You think the PBR in the examples by @Scylla Rhiadra look BETTER?

I know you're old, Love, but even by your rez date, setting everything in SL to Fullbright and Glow was considered a bit "Clueless Fossils of 2003 Fail-Build".

[Luna Bliss]

4 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

I know you're old, Love, but even by your rez date, setting everything in SL to Fullbright and Glow was considered a bit "Clueless Fossils of 2003 Fail-Build".

Nah.  Recently I created a moonlight garden for vampires (made for night environment settings) and I did exactly that.  It was beautiful.

[SandorWren]

9 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, yeah. First of all, tiling is of course absolutely necessary to texture larger objects such as walls, ground features, etc.

And making it possible to do so only using scaling adjustments just makes it crazy hard if you're texturing a surface that isn't using a simple 1:1 aspect ratio (or a simple multiple thereof).

Tiling isn't necessary for larger objects. The house Caitlin and I have is made up of multiple segments, with each having individual 1024x1024 seamless textures. Tiling IS preferable though, when it's possible, to save on texture memory. 

I posted this a while a go, of a flat mesh object I made, and it is made up of 4 individual 1024x1024 textures. on 4 parts.

 

Edited December 20, 2023 by Bagnu

[Zalificent Corvinus]

3 hours ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

tonemapping is a de-facto requirement in order to display HDR lighting on SDR displays

Yes, that's what I said, the tone mapping is required to correct the inherent potential problems with image based lighting, and that's what HDR lighting is, image based.

And that informative link refers to overhead projectors, and has sod all to do with game engines, and PBR or HDR-IBL.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

30 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Nah.  Recently I created a moonlight garden for vampires (made for night environment settings) and I did exactly that.  It was beautiful.

Building clones of James Cameron's "Planet of the 10 ft blue monkey people, by night" is a special edge case.

[Jenna Huntsman]

5 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Yes, that's what I said, the tone mapping is required to correct the inherent potential problems with image based lighting, and that's what HDR lighting is, image based.

And that informative link refers to overhead projectors, and has sod all to do with game engines, and PBR or HDR-IBL.

That link I provided was mainly meant to refer to the gamut mapping chart, wherein you can see that Rec. 709 (which isn't the same as sRGB, but very very close) has a considerably lower gamut coverage than that of BT. 2020 - reasoning being that HDR support is also tied in with support for wide-gamut colour.

For some technical reading on the subject (100% not required, but if you're nerdy and want to), then these offer some further reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2100

 

[Nando Yip]

I've always built in the SL more out of curiosity than out of technical competence, and as soon as I can I'll try to use the PBR, but despite it not being perfect yet for technical reasons, I really liked this mirror reflecting the AV. I thank the builder of this space, and for providing the link to this experience.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

I almost understood all of this! Yay me!  😏

10 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

See, the moon light EEP has a more controlled ambience, low levels, a universal background filler light, for everywhere that isn't in direct illumination from an actual light source. This is how it's supposed to be.

Yeah, this is why when I take interior pics, I almost invariable use Moon Light, or sometimes No Light, as my EEP. It gives me much more control over how the scene is lit, using point lights and projectors. And that's why 1) I'm delighted that I can now use more point lights, and 2) I am cautiously optimistic that reflection probes will be useful.

I can't see my basic operation procedure for pics changing much, to be honest, given how "legacy" items sometimes seem to render under a brighter EEP.

10 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

That skirt though, if that's "PBR Enabled", never buy from them again, that's just poor.

No, in fairness, it is not marketed that way. I mentioned that it was new just so that people didn't think I was dragging out a 2018-vintage outfit to make PBR look "bad."

Arguably anything coming out now should be "PBR enabled," though. This has been in the pipeline for a while, and creators have had lots of opportunity, using early versions of PBR viewers, to test how things will look. I suspect that very very few creators have done that, though. At this point there really are no excuses. In the future, I'll be demoing new items on a PBR-enabled viewer.

Possibly LL might have produced some guidelines specifically for creators and merchants about how PBR would impact on appearance, as well as how to texture them for both the new viewers and legacy ones?

lol.

Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Don't stop, you are bringing up educational points. Personally, I think the PBR pictures in that post look better (so the complaint is confusing).

 

Well, again, parts of the scene and outfit look better, unquestionably. The blouse certainly does. I think too that my skin tones do.

But the skirt . . . uh, no.

PBR really does unquestionably have the potential to improve how SL looks, but we're all going to be wrestling with it for a while to make "legacy" tools and objects work. One problem, as I suggested, is going to be "shiny" fabrics, and possibly also overly-bright plastics and metals.

Another, that Zalificent touched on, is that our old EEPs are not optimized for PBR, and some of them really look bad now. I suspect I'll be scrapping a lot of my custom EEPs (I have probably about 40 of them), and making brand new ones for photos.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Bagnu said:

Tiling isn't necessary for larger objects. The house Caitlin and I have is made up of multiple segments, with each having individual 1024x1024 seamless textures. Tiling IS preferable though, when it's possible, to save on texture memory. 

I posted this a while a go, of a flat mesh object I made, and it is made up of 4 individual 1024x1024 textures. on 4 parts.

No, technically it's not "necessary," but in terms of optimizing both LI and texture rendering, it's far and away the best way to go unless there are specific reasons to use four different mesh surfaces and four textures.

I'm not sure why you used four different pieces/textures in that example -- in order to get a better resolution close up, maybe? -- but it's wasteful of both parcel and computing resources, and it really is only going to make a difference if you zoom right in. That's a choice, and I'm sure you have your reasons, but for building, say, a house? It would be crazy not to tile.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Another, that Zalificent touched on, is that our old EEPs are not optimized for PBR, and some of them really look bad now. I suspect I'll be scrapping a lot of my custom EEPs (I have probably about 40 of them), and making brand new ones for photos.

Since I never used EEP before now, luckily I'm relatively unaffected except I need to start using EEP finally.

[Love Zhaoying]

PBR is great news for merchants, they can sell all new crap!