PBR WOW!

[Quartz Mole]

Please try to restrict the discussion to PBR without going off on tangents like speculating about what research Linden Lab do or don't do, or what they did or didn't get right when introducing new features in the past.

[Rowan Amore]

Amusing as this has become, I'd just like to say that I haven't noticed a degradation when using the FS PBR viewer.  Not one digit of a drop in fps.  I actually rezzed ALL but one avatar in a place where there are usually numerous avatars who don't load completely on the non PBR viewer.  Shadows on does give a hit but it does that regardless of the viewer.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

Maybe places I visit do not partake of the bar but I am at a loss as to what I should be seeing. Other than an odd house and such as I posted previously… what exactly am I supposed to be seeing? 

[arton Rotaru]

6 minutes ago, SpiritSparrow Skydancer said:

Maybe places I visit do not partake of the bar but I am at a loss as to what I should be seeing. Other than an odd house and such as I posted previously… what exactly am I supposed to be seeing? 

You aren't supposed to be seeing anything specific. If you don't notice much of a difference on the grid, than that is a good sign.
Because it was one of the goals to keep the look and feel of SL as close to what it always has been.

[Jenna Huntsman]

13 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I am hoping that this move will open the way, eventually, to other visual enhancements that I will find more useful.

It certainly will.

As an example: Glass isn't great in PBR. In my opinion, well-made Blinn-Phong is actually better than PBR for glass right now.

But, that will change when / if the glTF extensions for Transmission ( https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/blob/main/extensions/2.0/Khronos/KHR_materials_transmission/README.md ) and IOR ( https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/blob/main/extensions/2.0/Khronos/KHR_materials_ior/README.md ) are implemented.

[Charlotte Bartlett]

23 minutes ago, SpiritSparrow Skydancer said:

Maybe places I visit do not partake of the bar but I am at a loss as to what I should be seeing. Other than an odd house and such as I posted previously… what exactly am I supposed to be seeing? 

If this helps (and I just uploaded this material so it's rough and not prime time so just for the purpose of a rough demonstration. I quickly uploaded both legacy and PBR type materials for this (legacy would need some work)).

Same basic environment used in each for ease and same model. The 1 and 2 have additional HDRI and Reflection Probe Ambiance set in the EEP in the LL Viewer.

1. PBR Materials on LL PBR Viewer - >  https://gyazo.com/9cef5a1681c72d2f8fad816d97ace8f2

2. Legacy Material on LL PBR Viewer - > https://gyazo.com/15032b5eaf0e96d126f1853fe41e36e3

3. Legacy Material on Firestorm Legacy Viewer - >  https://gyazo.com/02cd218ca354abff0e43ee9ab3031f28

Legacy has a base, normal and specular included - on this one using these settings I would redo legacy textures if moving this item to PBR too.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Charlotte Bartlett]

8 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

It certainly will.

As an example: Glass isn't great in PBR. In my opinion, well-made Blinn-Phong is actually better than PBR for glass right now.

But, that will change when / if the glTF extensions for Transmission ( https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/blob/main/extensions/2.0/Khronos/KHR_materials_transmission/README.md ) and IOR ( https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/blob/main/extensions/2.0/Khronos/KHR_materials_ior/README.md ) are implemented.

Glass and things like Pool Water have been where I have done extensive testing and torn my hair out multiple times.  The two beta releases I got out I landed in a position where it was "good enough".  I disagree though that you can't still beat Blinn-Phong at the moment but it takes some finesse in the workflow and post editing of the materials before importing into SL.

I did some glass bulb yesterday (string lights) where I think I finally landed on better than good enough.  But it took quite a bit of editing between SP and SL to get.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Arielle Popstar]

28 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

You aren't supposed to be seeing anything specific. If you don't notice much of a difference on the grid, than that is a good sign.
Because it was one of the goals to keep the look and feel of SL as close to what it always has been.

Then why bother? Plenty of other areas they could have addressed where there would have been a greater return on investment with less concern for the substandard hardware something like 30% use to connect to SL.

[arton Rotaru]

11 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Then why bother? Plenty of other areas they could have addressed where there would have been a greater return on investment with less concern for the substandard hardware something like 30% use to connect to SL.

I have mentioned it a few times by now. But here we go again. Linden Lab is about to implementing the glTF standard into Second Life. The glTF PBR material is phase 1 of this implementation. Have to start somewhere, right?

There will certainly be people who won't be able to point their finger on the differences between PBR and good made Blinn-Phong materials. But even then, even those will be perceiving the more life like characteristics of PBR materials, and be it just unconsciously.

Edited December 30, 2023 by arton Rotaru

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, arton Rotaru said:

I have mentioned it a few times by now. But here we go again. Linden Lab is about to implementing the glTF standard into Second Life. The glTF PBR material is phase 1 of this implementation. Have to start somewhere, right?

There will certainly be people who won't be able to point their finger on the differences between PBR and good made Blinn-Phong materials. But even then, even those will be perceiving the more life like characteristics of PBR materials, and be it just unconsciously.

Spelling it out for dumb people like me, isn't adding glTF supposed to give us some theoretical compatibility with the standard used by other games, graphics engines, etc. and allow for a general higher quality and more consistent workflow supported various industry graphics creation tools..?

 

[Rowan Amore]

40 minutes ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

If this helps (and I just uploaded this material so it's rough and not prime time so just for the purpose of a rough demonstration. I quickly uploaded both legacy and PBR type materials for this (legacy would need some work)).

Same basic environment used in each for ease and same model. The 1 and 2 have additional HDRI and Reflection Probe Ambiance set in the EEP in the LL Viewer.

1. PBR Materials on LL PBR Viewer - >  https://gyazo.com/9cef5a1681c72d2f8fad816d97ace8f2

2. Legacy Material on LL PBR Viewer - > https://gyazo.com/15032b5eaf0e96d126f1853fe41e36e3

3. Legacy Material on Firestorm Legacy Viewer - >  https://gyazo.com/02cd218ca354abff0e43ee9ab3031f28

Legacy has a base, normal and specular included - on this one using these settings I would redo legacy textures if moving this item to PBR too.

Honestly?  I prefer the legacy materials. 

[arton Rotaru]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Spelling it out for dumb people like me, isn't adding glTF supposed to give us some theoretical compatibility with the standard used by other games, graphics engines, etc. and allow for a general higher quality and more consistent workflow supported various industry graphics creation tools..?

 

That's pretty much the point of it. Doing away with all the SL specific quirks in content creation.

[Arielle Popstar]

2 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

There will certainly people who won't be able to point their finger on the differences between PBR and good made Blinn-Phong materials. But even then, even those will be perceiving the more life like characteristics of PBR materials, and be it just unconsciously.

So really only of benefit to graphic designers and professionals rather then 95% of the masses who will see little to no difference nor be able to appreciate it. 

[arton Rotaru]

Just now, Arielle Popstar said:

So really only of benefit to graphic designers and professionals rather then 95% of the masses who will see little to no difference nor be able to appreciate it. 

Mhm, no! Everybody will benefit from better content. Those who create, and those who use it.

[Henri Beauchamp]

6 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Honestly?  I prefer the legacy materials.

It depends if you prefer latex (the legacy render looks like it) over leather (the PBR one), I guess... 😛

But what would be interesting to know is whether this piece of furniture is supposed to be made out of one or another (or none of them, which would be rather embarrassing 🤣 )...

[Rowan Amore]

Just now, Henri Beauchamp said:

It depends if you prefer latex (the legacy render looks like it) over leather (the PBR one), I guess... 😛

But what would be interesting to know is whether this piece of furniture is supposed to be made out of one or another (or none of them, which would be rather embarrassing 🤣 )...

The legacy, to me, looks like a well-worn leather couch found in an estate library.  The PBR is the one that looks like latex, IMO.  

[Arielle Popstar]

Just now, arton Rotaru said:

Mhm, no! Everybody will benefit from better content. Those who create, and those who use it.

They can't appreciate what they don't see. Reminds me of when I went shopping years ago for a better audio system and after testing many systems came to realize my inability to recognize the difference between a $2000 stereo and a $10,000 one. The 10K system was only for a tiny percentage of the market who could recognize the difference in quality.

This sounds like the same sort of thing except in graphic quality rather than audio and will require a significant portion of the populace to upgrade to a better computer for something they are unlikely able to appreciate.

[Charlotte Bartlett]

12 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Honestly?  I prefer the legacy materials. 

I think a lot of people will too - Chic showed some great pictures of her items on the new viewer and they looked fantastic and I think that's the good news that legacy content won't be broken by PBR generally (kudos for that to LL).

I used a dampened environment for this so the key part will be how different EEP interacts.

Also I think this may revamp people doing mods on items and editing in world by retexturing with PBR (my hope anyway).

I think houses PBR edges the lead for me. I played with some slate flooring and it really was highly improved in terms of interaction with light (with PBR).  I am about to create a house that is wet with a storm (my group asked for it) over the next month or so and building on interaction with elements like puddles, wet glass etc.  That's where I am excited to try things, but perhaps I am just a weirdo LOL.

[Henri Beauchamp]

5 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The PBR is the one that looks like latex, IMO.  

Ah, if you speak about the PBR viewer with legacy material vs legacy viewer with legacy material, then yes, the PBR viewer renders it much more like latex, but it renders the PBR material properly, like leather...

This is indeed the thing that annoys me most, for now, with the PBR renderer: it renders very badly legacy contents !

See: BUG-234816

It also recently broke shadows: BUG-234564

And finally renders water bodies like sh*t (artifacts when enabling water reflections, water is ”sky blue”, waves are not as pretty as with WL/EE, etc)...

But hopefully, these bad rendering discrepancies will get fixed over time... I just wish LL had kept the PBR viewer longer as a RC, until these bad issues would have been properly fixed.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp

[Charlotte Bartlett]

10 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

It depends if you prefer latex (the legacy render looks like it) over leather (the PBR one), I guess... 😛

But what would be interesting to know is whether this piece of furniture is supposed to be made out of one or another (or none of them, which would be rather embarrassing 🤣 )...

Gimp outfit repurposed for a couch?

It's actually a shiny leather (over shiny) as a dummy material I knocked up in a few minutes just to show how things look different. I would not be releasing something so slippery (well unless asked nicely for slippery furniture!).

This is the native version in SP to show the comparison (environments obviously different) - https://gyazo.com/4744db6dd8d8125e3981d3645163ca4e

Edited December 30, 2023 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The legacy, to me, looks like a well-worn leather couch found in an estate library.  The PBR is the one that looks like latex, IMO.  

At least both are easily cleaned.

[arton Rotaru]

2 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

They can't appreciate what they don't see. Reminds me of when I went shopping years ago for a better audio system and after testing many systems came to realize my inability to recognize the difference between a $2000 stereo and a $10,000 one. The 10K system was only for a tiny percentage of the market who could recognize the difference in quality.

This sounds like the same sort of thing except in graphic quality rather than audio and will require a significant portion of the populace to upgrade to a better computer for something they are unlikely able to appreciate.

To each their own.

[Love Zhaoying]

I can imagine the ads now..

* NEW * Made with PBR Materials!

* NOTE * This looks best in total darkness. [ Provides information on EEP settings for total darkness ]

 

[Charlotte Bartlett]

19 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

So really only of benefit to graphic designers and professionals rather then 95% of the masses who will see little to no difference nor be able to appreciate it. 

You don't need to be an artist to mock up PBR materials - plus I think people will sell them on marketplace just like the old days when you brought say a wood texture and applied it to a mod item or your own.  I think that has more scope that right now with "baked" textures which limited editing significantly of mod items imho.

[Extrude Ragu]

In general I expect that PBR materials will by and large look better than blinn-phong most of the time.

Metals are a big part of the PBR improvements but in general any surface with environment reflection will benefit from having proper environment maps. Materials like leather suede etc will render much nicer. The lossless normal maps that were part of the PBR work will also be great for surfaces with finer undulations.

Of course, the untrained eye won't be able to spot such differences in non metallic textures so easy until the content has really permeated the market.

As Chic mentioned, the use of material assets in the inventory is going to make it very easy for noobs to create things that look nicer, since pre-made materials can be shared and I know that there are people already going to work putting up lots of CC0 materials on the MP for people to play with for free.

Another reason PBR materials will end up looking better is because they follow a standard format that creative applications generally export to because they're used in modern games. It might not sound like that makes a difference, until you realize that a huge % of Blinn-phong stuff uploaded to SL is simply not uploaded correctly, because most creators take the labels "Diffuse Texture","Normal Map","Specular" at face value and do not realize for example that the Alpha channel in their Normal Map is specular exponent, or the Alpha Channel in their Specular map controls environment reflection. This simple SecondLife quirk leads to missing data and uglier materials and makes creating less accessible as it requires arcane knowledge of SecondLife that most residents simply don't have.

Also coming down the pipes is PBR terrain support. Seriously, teleport to the mainland and look at the floor. You can see the pixels.

LL is also currently exploring the possibility of 2K material support, but they want to make sure texture LOD's work so it will still work on old hardware.