Why I Don't Like PBR

[Porky Gorky]

12 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Perhaps it helps to have done PBR before on some other platform. Or maybe that's a handicap, it's hard to tell based on this thread.

The main purpose of PBR is to accurately simulate the physical behaviour of a light beam as it interacts with any given surface. PBR surfaces should be authored using realistic data values (all available online) in order to simulate the realistic absorption and reflection of light. This means PBR materials should render consistently across multiple platforms when placed within realistic lighting environments and indeed they do. 

So the problem with SL as discussed at length in this thread, is that the default lighting environment is not realistic, the light rays that are absorbed, scattered and reflected are too blue. The only solution is to change the environment to one that simulates light more realistically. @Jenna Huntsman free EEP on the marketplace is a good example of one that works. The sky still looks blue but the way the light interacts with various rough/metallic surfaces is acceptably realistic. So on a personal level the problem is solved. My 10 test materials look acceptable with my customised EEV. They look as good as they do in Unreal Engine before lighting is baked and post processing added, but that’s ok, they look acceptable considering this is SL.

So my 10 test PBR materials of varying roughness and reflectivity look good in my EEP. I have achieved consistency in my little bubble of SL. I now know with confidence that I can import any of the 1000 + PBR materials I have authored in Substance Designer over the last 10+ years and they will look acceptable in my consistency bubble. 

So here is my prediction for the future. As people adopt PBR we will see lots of little consistency bubbles pop up on individual parcels and regions. They probably won't be exactly like my consistency bubble but they will be similar, they have to be if they want the PBR materials to look anywhere near realistic. As I mentioned earlier PBR relies on real data values for surface creation, so any roughness/metallic PBR materials sourced from websites or Substance Source or Megascans or wherever, should all be using consistent RL data values. SL users will tweak their EEP to make their PBR look more realistic and they should all arrive at settings that are fairly similar. 

I foresee a world of semi-consistency bubbles, my PBR materials may not look exactly the same in someone else's bubble but they should look close enough. If they don't then the EEP probably won’t be suitable for ANY PBR, so the end user will tweak their EEP until they create their own semi-consistent bubble. It won’t be perfect but I think it will be workable.

Edited March 1 by Porky Gorky

[Henri Beauchamp]

30 minutes ago, Porky Gorky said:

The only solution is to change the environment to one that simulates light more realistically. @Jenna Huntsman free EEP on the marketplace is a good example of one that works. The sky still looks blue but the way the light interacts with various rough/metallic surfaces is acceptably realistic. So on a personal level the problem is solved. My 10 test materials look acceptable with my customised EEV. They look as good as they do in Unreal Engine before lighting is baked and post processing added, but that’s ok they look acceptable considering this is SL.

Perform the same test, on a platform at, say, 500m over the ground, not using any reflection probe (typical conditions, matching the gazillion of such platforms and sky boxes which exist in SL). Do it with both PBR metallic objects and legacy shiny ones (they suffer from the blue shine in the exact same way).

Good luck with eliminating the blue shine via EE settings without having the sky turn either grey or pink ! 🤣

As for the ”fixed” mid-day setting by LL (yes, the one with broken, static clouds too), you will get the same thing I got: see the screen shots I attached to my reply to Dan Linden in this feedback thread.

Beside, I won't consider the problem ”solved” if the ”solution” implies modifying all the existing EE settings in SL to have existing contents to properly render with the PBR viewer !

An acceptable solution would consist in a workaround/kludge/hack being added to the renderer so that the EE parameters involved in that ugly blue hue are automatically and appropriately corrected instead of being used ”as is” in the shaders while rendering the reflections (and only them)...

Edited March 1 by Henri Beauchamp

[Ceka Cianci]

18 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

First of all, there are no working mirrors yet. What we currently see on a highly reflective surface is the reflection map generated by reflection probes.

Nothing of that is tied to membership levels.

Mirrors are currently in development though. They do work by setting up mirror probes. At the moment it is one probe at a time. Though, one mirror probe can be used for multiple mirror surfaces, when they are positioned on the same plane and direction as the mirror probe. How many will be rendering at the same time is still to be determined. This will be tied to computer specifications, rather than membership levels.

This is only working on a few Aditi regions with a prototype viewer as of yet.

Well, I'm glad they weren't mirrors on the panel set.. hehehe

I tried to make sure I put that hearsay in there, because when it comes to all of this, that's all I'm going on at the moment..

I kind of had a feeling those weren't actual mirrors, but someone selling a reflection item, but couldn't remember what the reflection probes were called.. hehehe

Thank you for the information.

[Extrude Ragu]

16 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

As for the ”fixed” mid-day settings by LL (yes, the one with broken, static clouds too)

Yeah, that is one thing that I do actually have a gripe with, LL seems to have deluded itself that this is OK and the answer is NO.

Then again, I'm not so fond of the current cloud system we have in SL either. It's always been a bit 'meh', feel like SL could use better.

[Love Zhaoying]

46 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

Nothing of that is tied to membership levels.

Shhh! Let the hoi-polloi think that we elites have special features that they don't! 

LOL!!!

 

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Yeah, that is one thing that I do actually have a gripe with, LL seems to have deluded itself that this is OK and the answer is NO.

Then again, I'm not so fond of the current cloud system we have in SL either. It's always been a bit 'meh', feel like SL could use better.

I didn't even notice that clouds don't move with the "new" MidDay settings!

[Porky Gorky]

29 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Beside, I won't consider the problem ”solved” if the ”solution” implies modifying all the existing EE settings in SL to have existing contents to properly render with the PBR viewer !

Despite still selling 1000’s of my own “legacy” products across various accounts I don't consider legacy content as part of the problem I am trying to solve. In fact I couldn't care less about legacy content. The problem I have been trying to solve is consistent rendering of PBR materials under different SL lighting environments.

Edited March 1 by Porky Gorky

[Henri Beauchamp]

12 minutes ago, Porky Gorky said:

In fact I couldn't care less about legacy content.

Yes, let's wipe out from SL everything that has been built before PBR release ! 🤪

Cannot you understand, that no, this will not happen (thankfully, since it would mean killing SL !), and that, as a creator, you must also care about legacy contents, a contents among which your shiny new creations will be rezzed as well ?!?

Such a state of mind as carelessness for legacy totally baffles me: if you want to kill SL, then by all mean, keep acting this way !

Quote

The problem I have been trying to solve is consistent rendering of PBR materials under different SL lighting environments.

Well, good news then: this is the exact same problem (the blue hue impacts legacy and PBR contents alike) !

Edited March 1 by Henri Beauchamp

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 hour ago, Porky Gorky said:

The main purpose of PBR is to accurately simulate the physical behaviour of a light beam as it interacts with any given surface.

No, not really.

When PBR was showcased back at Siggraph 2010, it's main purpose was to be a HARDWARE based system that could do quick-n-dirty renders that looked similar to SOFTWARE based raytracing with energy conservation, and do them at frames per second instead of minutes per frame.

This opens up the possibility of having better looking rendering in for example, games.

The problem is it's a unified system, like using metric units for science.

You use PBR light sources, to illuminate PBR surfaces, with PBR materials, and render that in PBR colours.

 

If ANY part of the system isn't PBR, it fails, it's like trying to calculate F=Ma with the Mass in Kilo's, and the acceleration in feet per second squared, the number you get for Force wont be in imperial unit or metric unit, it's a busted ass useless number.

 

Guess what SL doesn't have. That's right, it doesn't have PBR lighting, or PBR colours.

 

1 hour ago, Porky Gorky said:

PBR surfaces should be authored using realistic data values (all available online) in order to simulate the realistic absorption and reflection of light.

Which becomes meaningless if you don't have realistic values for lighting.

 

1 hour ago, Porky Gorky said:

The only solution is to change the environment to one that simulates light more realistically. @Jenna Huntsman free EEP on the marketplace is a good example of one that works. The sky still looks blue but the way the light interacts with various rough/metallic surfaces is acceptably realistic. So on a personal level the problem is solved

No, not really, in fact not solved at all. First of all, not everyone want their SL lit HER way, and second, EEP is only PART of the lighting setup. There are point lights, and projector lights too. You're trying a King Canute solution, sitting on a beach and telling the tide to turn back 

 

1 hour ago, Porky Gorky said:

SL users will tweak their EEP to make their PBR look more realistic and they should all arrive at settings that are fairly similar. 

Dream on King Canute, most SL users have little idea how to "tweak" an EEP preset at all, and even less of what "tweaks" to make to work with LL's busted ass Not-Really-PBR.

 

This isn't like making PBR materials for Useless Engine, and why "useless" because that's the verdict when ever somebody suggests converting SL to run in it. By the time you'd re-written it to work with SL, it wouldn't be the same engine at all, and all the supposed advantages would have vanished.

 

1 hour ago, Porky Gorky said:

little consistency bubbles

Let's pretend you are a pro, working on a new game in Useless Engine, for release next Giftmass.

Crypt Bandit Ep. 27 - Cara Loft and the Jewelled Tool.

You are supposed to make the big cave lit by 20 burning torches, that is the level 14b map.

So you lovingly craft the cave interior, and the PBR materials for it, and all the fixed elements, the wooden torches, the metal torch brackets, the debris on the floor of the cave, all of it.

You ADD 20 suitable lights to the scene, and bake a light probe, then remove the actual lights, export the map level to Useless Engine where it will be lit only by image-based-lighting using that baked probe.

The only ACTUAL light source that will EVER be seen in there is the explorers belt light worn by the Cara Loft player character.

It all just works. Well done.

 

Now you get hired to design a dance club in SL, you craft your mesh, and materials, and your EEP, to create your "consistency bubble", it look ok to you, and then the club open it's doors, and 20 people turn up, every one of them using a different EEP, 19 of them think your work looks like crap.

5 of them are wearing body lights, that ruin your bubble, another 7 are wearing face lights, the club owner put in a projector spotlight over the stage. The guy who lives next door to the club has rezzed a Lighthouse, next to their beach. The woman on the other side has a sci-fi airship fitted with random search lights. The clubs assistant manager puts in a set of scripted disco lights over the dance floor.

 

Where the fork did your "consistency bubble" go to?

1 hour ago, Porky Gorky said:

It won’t be perfect but I think it will be workable.

Hahahahahahaha.

No.

You're trying to ice skate up a frozen waterfall while towing a 50,000 gallon tanker trailer filled with raw sewage.

Long before you get a quarter of the way up, you'll end up back at the bottom neck deep in a huge puddle of sh*te.

 

Edited March 1 by Zalificent Corvinus

[Jaylinbridges]

A smart club owner won't hire anyone to rebuild the club with PBR materials.  They will avoid PBR, use the same point lighting the club has always used, and maybe, if they even know how, set the EEP to a Shared Environment that looks like it always has.  The "cool" clubs that want a shiny PBR disco ball and greasy floors will lose patrons using their Mac laptops.  Although the clientele in some of these light show clubs are too stoned to notice anything different.

Old wood in classic club builds does not shine or reflect anything but  dust.

[Jenna Huntsman]

1 hour ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Which becomes meaningless if you don't have realistic values for lighting.

This is actually coming as part of the glTF stage 2 (mesh and scene import) project.

Lights will be able to be defined in physical units, as opposed to the arbitrary 0-1 scale that is currently used.

[Flea Yatsenko]

1 hour ago, Jaylinbridges said:

A smart club owner won't hire anyone to rebuild the club with PBR materials.  They will avoid PBR, use the same point lighting the club has always used, and maybe, if they even know how, set the EEP to a Shared Environment that looks like it always has.  The "cool" clubs that want a shiny PBR disco ball and greasy floors will lose patrons using their Mac laptops.  Although the clientele in some of these light show clubs are too stoned to notice anything different.

Old wood in classic club builds does not shine or reflect anything but  dust.

There are only a few projector lights rendered at a time. They are only meant to be used sparingly. That said the biggest problem with PBR isn't the PBR content, it's the scene they are in (EEP, reflection probes, etc). It also seems like people don't like the general idea of PBR. PBR is supposed to mimick the real world. A PBR club with proper reflection probes and lighting would be one of the best use cases for PBR. One of the worst use cases is making avatar clothing that is viewed in all sorts of scenes and environments, some which won't be set up for PBR, some will be set up for PBR incorrectly (like the blue glow problem), and some will be set up properly. Which is why people are (understandably) upset about PBR.

And about lower end hardware, the default PBR recommended settings are way too high and it's causing a lot of negative feedback. The default, new user PBR experience is horrible between the poor environment settings and the recommended settings being way too high.

Edited March 1 by Flea Yatsenko

[Rowan Amore]

44 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

One of the worst use cases is making avatar clothing that is viewed in all sorts of scenes and environments, some which won't be set up for PBR, some will be set up for PBR incorrectly (like the blue glow problem), and some will be set up properly. Which is why people are (understandably) upset about PBR.

This right here. ^^^

Just because someone will know HOW to make a texture using PBR doesn't mean they'll know how to use it correctly.  We've seen this already with clothing before PBR.  Things look like crap because everyone and their brother makes content for SL which of course is the beauty of SL.  User-generated content.  Users are NOT game content creators and using a system meant for qualified game content creators in this environment is folly.

It's the same thing we're still dealing with with mesh content.  Some know how to do it efficiently while a vast majority do not.  This affects everyone when it's done badly.  Same thing will happen with PBR, IMHO.  

One creator can make nice hair with low triangle count while another uses 500K triangles for basically the same dang hair.  Which would you prefer?

[Extrude Ragu]

 

General problem with adding basically any feature to Second Life

[Porky Gorky]

3 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Guess what SL doesn't have. That's right, it doesn't have PBR lighting, or PBR colours.

Well that’s obvious to anyone reading this thread or trying PBR in world. The ONLY solution is to change the lighting model to one that is more realistic. I already create PBR for cross platform use, created using industry standard, realistic lighting models. I use realistic values for lighting just as I do for PBR surface parameters which is the universal system you speak of. This practice has been adopted widely, at least in the games industry from my experience. The only way to get PBR created using industry standard practices to work in SL is to change the lighting.

3 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

No, not really, in fact not solved at all. First of all, not everyone want their SL lit HER way, and second, EEP is only PART of the lighting setup. There are point lights, and projector lights too. You're trying a King Canute solution, sitting on a beach and telling the tide to turn back

Maybe people don’t want SL lit Jenna’s way but they should want it lit in a way that is fairly similar because it simulates realism to some degree. I am not using Jenna’s EEP but I am using something similar. Either way, both work with a standardised roughness/ metallic PBR workflow. I can import materials created for another platform and they work well enough using one of these EEP’s. Maybe the surfaces look slightly different due to the 2/3 ACES but it’s close enough given the inadequacies of SL. It is what it is.

3 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

This isn't like making PBR materials for Useless Engine, and why "useless" because that's the verdict when ever somebody suggests converting SL to run in it. By the time you'd re-written it to work with SL, it wouldn't be the same engine at all, and all the supposed advantages would have vanished.

This is not my experience at all. I create content for Unreal Engine. I have taken a modular Scifi pack that I have been selling on Unreal Marketplacee for years and imported it into SL and built a scene with it. With the EEP's discussed earlier it looks close enough, in fact considering this is SL it looks great. Right now I am in a position where I can import PBR content created for other plaforms into SL and the only customisation I need to do is to reduce LOD's. I tried doing this with ALM and BP years ago but it was a still too much work to customise assets. That is no longer true today.

3 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Let's pretend you are a pro, working on a new game in Useless Engine, for release next Giftmass.

By “Useless Engine” I assume you mean Unreal Engine, the most popular and accessible game engine in the world for developing AAA games, second only to Unity in general game development (I am a Epic fanboy!) ....but go on.

3 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Now you get hired to design a dance club in SL, you craft your mesh, and materials, and your EEP, to create your "consistency bubble", it look ok to you, and then the club open it's doors, and 20 people turn up, every one of them using a different EEP, 19 of them think your work looks like crap.

5 of them are wearing body lights, that ruin your bubble, another 7 are wearing face lights, the club owner put in a projector spotlight over the stage. The guy who lives next door to the club has rezzed a Lighthouse, next to their beach. The woman on the other side has a sci-fi airship fitted with random search lights. The clubs assistant manager puts in a set of scripted disco lights over the dance floor.

Regarding the EEP's. If a PBR user has a PBR friendly EEP then the PBR should still look ok. If 10 users are all in the same space using different PBR friendly EEP's then the PBR will look diferent to each viewer as their lighting will be different, but the PBR materials should still be reflecting their lighting in a consistent and realistic way, if it doesnt then their EEP is not PBR friendly and they probably shouldnt be in a PBR environment.

Regarding the club scenario with all the different lights, that is just chaos and you are right, my consistency bubble is well and truly burst here.

Edited March 1 by Porky Gorky

[Rowan Amore]

29 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

General problem with adding basically any feature to Second Life

Yep, pretty much.  However, I really don't see an upside to THIS particular feature.  As someone else mentioned, I've yet to see anything that actually looks better.  Of course, everyone's better might be different than mine but to implement something that will have more of a negative effect than an overall gain is just not a good idea.  

Is LL going to market SL as "Now, with PBR content!"?   Will people then log in to the hot mess and go, "WTF?"

[Love Zhaoying]

36 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

However, I really don't see an upside to THIS particular feature.  As someone else mentioned, I've yet to see anything that actually looks better

In some cases, when I see "side-by-side" photos, I have no idea which is which. They may look "different" but there's no obvious clue for me.

(Often left out, is that some things are now "too shiny, all the time" LOL - but that could just be my poor lighting!)

Edited March 1 by Love Zhaoying

[Zalificent Corvinus]

59 minutes ago, Porky Gorky said:

Regarding the club scenario with all the different lights, that is just chaos and you are right, my consistency bubble is well and truly burst here.

Welcome to the reality of SL, now you are beginning to understand why "Let's get everyone using PBR Cultist approved EEP's" simply won't work.

 

Two of SL's most popular EEP's are the assorted flavours of "Numb's un-optimal Skin & Prim" and "Crawl", both being EEP conversions of the two most popular pre-EEP windlight families.

 

Both Numb's and Crawl, can be described as "Ambient Override Overburn", where the ambient is cranked up to the point where it destroys all shadows, so the user's neck doesn't end up darker than their forehead due to their ego bloated head blocking all the daylight.

All across the grid, there are thousands of "content creators" who swear by these EEP's, and openly state that if their products look crap, and you don't use Numb's/Crawl, you are doing SSL wrong and should change.

Chances of convincing them to all switch to PBR Cultist approved EEP's, ZERO to NONE.

 

SL is NOT like modding a Useless Engine 1st Person Shooter game, let alone making one professionally. It really isn't.

 

 

[Rowan Amore]

21 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

but that could just be my poor lighting!

Which goes right back to my main point.  Everyone, except those using default lighting, have their own preferences when it comes to lighting.  There IS no standard aside from default which, as I've said before, is the worst possible lighting for avatars.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Which goes right back to my main point.  Everyone, except those using default lighting, have their own preferences when it comes to lighting.  There IS no standard aside from default which, as I've said before, is the worst possible lighting for avatars.

Well yes, I am "patient zero" for poor lighting!

[Rowan Amore]

3 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Well yes, I am "patient zero" for poor lighting!

Here's what I mean by Midday being horrible.  The first pic is Midday in Firestorm non-PBR viewer and the second is my personal EEP setting I use most of the time and which I have on my parcel.  The first one may be awesome for some things but it's just awful for avatars.  I don't even care what it looks like in PBR because midday is midday = sun directly overhead.

[Jenna Huntsman]

4 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I don't even care what it looks like in PBR because midday is midday = sun directly overhead.

It is actually relevant as the midday preset was updated in the PBR viewer, and this complaint is one which was addressed.

The new default midday no longer places the sun directly overhead (because, that doesn't really happen in the real world anyway).

[Ceka Cianci]

11 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

It is actually relevant as the midday preset was updated in the PBR viewer, and this complaint is one which was addressed.

The new default midday no longer places the sun directly overhead (because, that doesn't really happen in the real world anyway).

Mid summer in Tennessee around noon or so, it's hard to find a shadow.. lol

[Persephone Emerald]

Why are there only 4 basic time of day settings on the SL viewer?  Most of the day cycle is during daylight, so why doesn't LL (and Firestorm) add Mid-morning and Mid-afternoon quick settings?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

10 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

It is actually relevant as the midday preset was updated in the PBR viewer, and this complaint is one which was addressed.

The new default midday no longer places the sun directly overhead (because, that doesn't really happen in the real world anyway).

Jenna, I've heard that there is yet another revision for the new default midday in the works -- or maybe it's already been deployed?

Most residents are not particularly adept at adjusting PBR themselves, and additionally it would be good to produce some standardized presets so that the experience of moving from parcel to parcel or region to region isn't jarring.

What are the chances that LL will address some of the other EEP settings in the library? Not all of them are a problem under PBR, but a fair number certainly are.