PBR materials creating a white haze on meshes

[myvegancookbook Bolissima]

Is anyone else having a problem with occlusion maps causing a white haze on their meshes with pbr materials? I had to invert the AO map to fix the problem. The left fig has a an uninverted AO map, the right fig has the inverted. Do you see the white haze on the left fig? Maybe AO maps have to be inverted? Idk. It looks fine in Blender but when the material is exported into SL it has a white haze in world. I even tried creating the roughness map by hand in photoshop to make sure it wasn't something Blender was doing during export. But even the hand created roughness map created a haze when the red layer included an uninverted AO map. Had the same problem with a seat cushion I was working on. 

[arton Rotaru]

No the AO map does not have to be inverted. The AO map in the glTF PBR material will only be shown in areas that are actually occluded from light. When you place your inverted AO map object in shadows, it's likely rendering completely black. So that won't be the solution.

The sheen is likely coming from the sky of the midday environment. We don't like it that much as well, so we are hoping some tweaks will be made to the default midday environment to lessen the effect.

 

See. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234789

Edited December 9, 2023 by arton Rotaru

[Jenna Huntsman]

Please also note the official advice from LL:

Quote

If you upload a piece of PBR content which does not match your editor, the advice from Linden Lab is to STOP: File a JIRA. Do not attempt to "fix" the content.

But, pretty much what Arton has said. Midday should be getting some tweaks soon to resolve this issue.

[myvegancookbook Bolissima]

 

5 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

No the AO map does not have to be inverted. The AO map in the glTF PBR material will only be shown in areas that are actually occluded from light. When you place your inverted AO map object in shadows, it's likely rendering completely black. So that won't be the solution.

The sheen is likely coming from the sky of the midday environment. We don't like it that much as well, so we are hoping some tweaks will be made to the default midday environment to lessen the effect.

 

See. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234789

Changing my enviroment to Sunset, Sunrise and everything inbetween had no effect on the white haze, the white haze remained. In fact midnight exposed the haze problem to the extreme. It looks like garlic instead of a fig. I'm not sure what the problem is or if it's on my end but something else is happening. I'll file a JIRA.

[myvegancookbook Bolissima]

Started with a fresh Blender file this morning and the white haze is now only happening in midday setting but looks fine in midnight setting. I have no idea what was happening. 

Edited December 9, 2023 by myvegancookbook Bolissima

[arton Rotaru]

3 hours ago, myvegancookbook Bolissima said:

I have no idea what was happening.

Me neither! But if someone would point a gun at me to give an answer, I'd say it almost looks like as the reflection probes were broken, not there at all, in that previous screenshots.

There are a few bugs left in the viewer where reflection probes stop working.

Edited December 9, 2023 by arton Rotaru

[Nagachief Darkstone]

There is supposed to be a sheen on nonmetal objects, though that does seem oddly intense, have you put up a reflection probe in that interior room?

As for AO maps, please don't invert them, white should be no occlusion, black should be fully occluded. You'll get real bad results if you try to use AO to remove the sheen as it will darken any pixel not in direct light. If you have an entirely black AO channel, the object will be entirely black where it's not lit.

[anitabush]

I’ve been really struggling with this one. The latest maintenance viewer has helped to some extent though.

My biggest issue is how different stuff looks in SL vs Substance Painter. I have the recommended HDR for SP but it’s just trial and error to minimise the white glaze at this point 

[Cube Republic]

On 1/15/2024 at 11:31 AM, anitabush said:

I’ve been really struggling with this one. The latest maintenance viewer has helped to some extent though.

My biggest issue is how different stuff looks in SL vs Substance Painter. I have the recommended HDR for SP but it’s just trial and error to minimise the white glaze at this point 

Have you got the rest of the settings correct, for example colour space?

[anitabush]

1 hour ago, Cube Republic said:

Have you got the rest of the settings correct, for example colour space?

As far as I know. I’m certainly in ACES and I attempt to tweak exposure to be as close as I can get it

[arton Rotaru]

1 hour ago, anitabush said:

As far as I know. I’m certainly in ACES and I attempt to tweak exposure to be as close as I can get it

In order to prevent legacy content from being too saturated, and the contrast being too strong from ACES tonemapping, the strength of ACES had to be dialed down by one third in SL.
Furthermore, the default midday is just an approximation of the recommended HDRI. So there won't be a 100% match between Substance Painter and SL. But since it's still PBR, colors, and roughness will be displayed correctly in SL. It's just the little bit more of that greyish shine of the Linear tonemapping in SL. That one third of ACES that is missing.

Especially when you build on a skyplatform, make sure you also have a manual reflection probe rezzed there, which helps to minimize the haze.

Edited January 16 by arton Rotaru

[Cube Republic]

6 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

In order to prevent legacy content from being too saturated, and the contrast being too strong from ACES tonemapping, the strength of ACES had to be dialed down by one third in SL.
Furthermore, the default midday is just an approximation of the recommended HDRI. So there won't be a 100% match between Substance Painter and SL. But since it's still PBR, colors, and roughness will be displayed correctly in SL. It's just the little bit more of that greyish shine of the Linear tonemapping in SL. That one third of ACES that is missing.

Especially when you build on a skyplatform, make sure you also have a manual reflection probe rezzed there, which helps to minimize the haze.

Will they bring that bad boy back up over the coming months? 

[arton Rotaru]

1 hour ago, Cube Republic said:

Will they bring that bad boy back up over the coming months? 

It probably won't be like this forever, but the time frame is rather unpredictable. Might be more like years, rather than month.

[Love Zhaoying]

My vote is for a Purple Haze.

[anitabush]

18 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

In order to prevent legacy content from being too saturated, and the contrast being too strong from ACES tonemapping, the strength of ACES had to be dialed down by one third in SL.
Furthermore, the default midday is just an approximation of the recommended HDRI. So there won't be a 100% match between Substance Painter and SL. But since it's still PBR, colors, and roughness will be displayed correctly in SL. It's just the little bit more of that greyish shine of the Linear tonemapping in SL. That one third of ACES that is missing.

Especially when you build on a skyplatform, make sure you also have a manual reflection probe rezzed there, which helps to minimize the haze.

That’s useful information, thank you. 

[Cube Republic]

45 minutes ago, anitabush said:

That’s useful information, thank you. 

I use 100m2 mega prims around my build platforms, I've not been having any issues and it makes everything look better. I think they can be nested too with a hierarchy, so you could in  theory have a house inside that mega-priim volume. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can correct me if I'm wrong.