Why I Don't Like PBR

[Zalificent Corvinus]

15 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

because, that doesn't really happen in the real world anyway

Except at noon, on the Spring or Autumn Equinox, for people living on the Equator.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

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?

CAN you set the "time of day"?

[Jenna Huntsman]

6 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Except at noon, on the Spring or Autumn Equinox

Not quite.

For example, the meteorological data for San Francisco on the Spring Equinox 2023 at midday places the sun distinctly not at a 90 degree elevation.

https://www.suncalc.org/#/37.7771,-122.4197,12/2023.03.20/12:00/1/3

6 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

for people living on the Equator.

This is closer to being true, although, again, not quite 90 degrees.

Today's date, for example:

https://www.suncalc.org/#/-0.0201,109.337,14/2024.03.01/12:00/1/3

 

 

[Porky Gorky]

39 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

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.

 

 

To be honest this post is all news to me as I’ve been gone for 12 years. I’ve never heard of Numb and Crawl and find it interesting that there is at least some widespread consistency to be found in the EEP settings currently being used on the grid, beyond the default. 

It makes me wonder if someone could leverage the popular “brand names” of Numb and Crawl and create PBR compatible versions of the EEP’s, branded under the same well known names. What we really need is for one single PBR friendly EEP to become dominant amongst all the other's. If one EEP is favoured and used by the majority of PBR users then it would offer content creators an option to use it as a basis under which to develop future PBR. It could steamroll from there into a world of joyful consistency.

[Persephone Emerald]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

CAN you set the "time of day"?

I can adjust the time of day with a slider, but I admit to being lazy and usually going around SL with Midday (shadows off) and a bit of gray added to my Personal Lighting. If I think I'm missing the intended environment, then I switch to Shared Environment, but I mostly just want enough light to see clearly.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I can adjust the time of day with a slider, but I admit to being lazy and usually going around SL with Midday (shadows off) and a bit of gray added to my Personal Lighting. If I think I'm missing the intended environment, then I switch to Shared Environment, but I mostly just want enough light to see clearly.

I just didn't remember a TOD function 🙂 (Only moving things around sun-wise, etc.)

[Rowan Amore]

29 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).

Just tried both on the official viewer and it actually looks better with the legacy midday, IMO.  The other is too dark.

First is the new default and the second is the legacy

Now, if you're going to say...but probes and this and that, ok fine.  But, your average SL user is NOT going to know nor want to fiddle with all that.  All they'll see is their avatar not looking as they want it to look.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

Not quite.

For example, the meteorological data for San Francisco on the Spring Equinox 2023 at midday places the sun distinctly not at a 90 degree elevation.

Sn-Fran is not on the equator, and it's not the Spring Equinox.

8 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

This is closer to being true, although, again, not quite 90 degrees.

Today's date, for example:

Still not the Equinox, go away and learn some science.

Quote

An equinox is one of two days in the year when the sun crosses the equator and day and night become equal in length.

Your second example is not only not on the Equinox, it's at timezone noon, which isn't exactly the same as LOCAL noon (sun at peak elevation) and its not exactly on the equator either.

 

LOCAL noon ( sun at highest elevation, on the Equinox, on the Equator.

You might find this a bit closer.

https://www.suncalc.org/#/0.0001,109.3367,16/2024.03.20/11:50/1/3

 

[Porky Gorky]

5 hours ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

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 !

Sorry I should have been more specific. I don’t care about MY legacy content, that I sell. If LL breaks the grid for ALL legacy content then that is obviously a bad business move and bad for the future of SL. But that is not my problem to solve, it is LL’s. So when I say I don’t care about legacy content, I mean I dont care about solving the problem of my old legacy content looking bad. If it doesn’t work anymore then I will just stop selling it rather than adapting it. Right now i'm only focused on PBR and the problems that presents for my specific PBR content. I shall rely on LL to sort out the rest 🤣

Edit - to add the reason I don’t care about my legacy content is that I haven't created anything for SL in 12 years! All my stuff is diffuse map and prim/sculpties based. Yet still, every single day for the last 12 years I make at least one sale. In 2024 my general response in my head to making sales is “WTF is wrong with you people, stop buying crappy old content and find newer better stuff”. I’ve always supported customers though as it's the right thing to do.

Edited March 1 by Porky Gorky

[Zalificent Corvinus]

20 minutes ago, Porky Gorky said:

It makes me wonder if someone could leverage the popular “brand names” of Numb and Crawl and create PBR compatible versions of the EEP’s

Essentially NO.

The whole point of those style of windlight/EEP is to NOT use "realistic lighting".

They deliberately crank up the strength and brightness of the ambient to DESTROY ALL SHADOWS/AMBIENT OCCLUSION..

 

They are about as UN-PBR-Friendly as you can get.

It's like some American WWII Tank grunt wondering if we could convince the enemy to make a gun that wasn't instant death to Sherman M4's, and rebrand it as an "88mm Flak", and hope enemy anti tank crews wouldn't notice it was half the size and didn't stop tanks.

[Love Zhaoying]

17 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

First is the new default and the second is the legacy

Thanks!

Since LoveX has very dark skin, I wonder which I would prefer with her? Eventually I thought she looked better with a facelight or "not so dark".

[Jenna Huntsman]

Just now, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Sn-Fran is not on the equator, and it's not the Spring Equinox.

Still not the Equinox, go away and learn some science.

Your second example is not only not on the Equinox, it's at timezone noon, which isn't exactly the same as LOCAL noon (sun at peak elevation) and its not exactly on the equator either.

 

LOCAL noon ( sun at highest elevation, on the Equinox, on the Equator.

You might find this a bit closer.

https://www.suncalc.org/#/0.0001,109.3367,16/2024.03.20/11:50/1/3

 

Apologies, I misread what you said.

It is indeed true that if all criteria are met, that it is possible for the sun to be at a 90 degree (or extremely close to it) elevation.

However, the criteria are extremely specific and fall outside what most people would expect.

For example: as you highlighted, the time of midday may not equate to the exact midday point of a given point on the Earth due to the use of timezones. I'd argue, however that most people would think of midday as the time of midday, rather than the solar midday.

I'd also argue that the majority of people wouldn't assume that the midday preset was deliberately made to represent a point on the equator on the day of the spring / autumn equinox. The San Francisco example shows what someone from North America might expect to see at midday.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

I'd also argue that the majority of people wouldn't assume that the midday preset was deliberately made to represent a point on the equator on the day of the spring / autumn equinox. The San Francisco example shows what someone from North America might expect to see at midday.

SL Sun rises due EAST, sets due WEST, and is directly overhead at Noon in the "day cycle".

That is basically "default SL Day Cycle" says all regions are on the equator on a Zero-Axial tilt permanent equinox. planet.

 

[Rowan Amore]

6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Thanks!

Since LoveX has very dark skin, I wonder which I would prefer with her? Eventually I thought she looked better with a facelight or "not so dark".

Please, no facelight!  I use one ONLY if I need it for a pic since I do use region environmental settings.  Most places I do go where I use shared environment are perfectly ok with my skin tone.  It looks nothing like the above picture with NEW default in PBR. because...wait for it....NO ONE USES DEFAULT.    Clubs tend to make their EEP setting to enhance avatars as that's what everyone wants to see best and not the decor.

[Love Zhaoying]

12 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Please, no facelight!  I use one ONLY if I need it for a pic since I do use region environmental settings.  Most places I do go where I use shared environment are perfectly ok with my skin tone.  It looks nothing like the above picture with NEW default in PBR. because...wait for it....NO ONE USES DEFAULT.    Clubs tend to make their EEP setting to enhance avatars as that's what everyone wants to see best and not the decor.

I'll have to check! (I'm pretty sure you would have said something if I was using a facelight when you helped me shop last.)

 

[Jaylinbridges]

At least the PBR Midday settings BOTH look better than on a non-PBR viewer, for face shadows: 

This is how many viewed faces with No shadows and the old Midday default, for years.  Some club point and ambient light can help a little, but this is why Facelights are still in use.   Add shadows to the Midday setting, and the hair shields the face, but it is then too dark.

Next two are on FS PBR viewer.  First is Midday (Legacy), and second is the new Midday. Shadows On in both settings:

New PBR Midday:

All shots outdoors on a mainland mountain top. No external lighting except Midday Sky EEP's. AO was off, since I like sharp shadows.  BTW system head from about 2012, body and head skin also from same Head creator, on a Mesh Bento BOM body from 2021. No neck seam, as old full body BOM skins matched the heads perfectly.  

Of course no materials back then.  Use tattoos, and water drops if you are sweaty.  No Vaseline bodies.

Edited March 2 by Jaylinbridges

[Flea Yatsenko]

22 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

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?

Please re-read. It's a lot more difficult to mess up PBR textures than it is spec norm. The problem isn't the PBR textures, it's the environment and scene, i.e. lighting and environment settings. PBR is supposed to emulate real life as much as possible. Please tell me where you can step outside in RL and see a massive blue glow and haze on everything on a sunny day.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

38 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

It's a lot more difficult to mess up PBR textures than it is spec norm

That statement is complete and utter fact free BS.

[Rowan Amore]

55 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

The problem isn't the PBR textures, it's the environment and scene, i.e. lighting and environment settings.

So, unless each individual person/scene has the proper lighting and EEP settings, anything PBR wll look bad?  Do you not see the problem with that?

As I said, that's fine on a game where everything is preset and there is a very limited option to adjust your environment.  Content is created with THAT environment in mind.  In SL, there are a myriad of options for your environment.  EEP was the be-all and end-all for customization.  Now, we take that all away because that PBR house only looks good with this lighting and that EEP?  But the chair looks best with this EEP.  My avatar looks better in that EEP.   Honestly, the majority of SLers are not going to mess with learning any of that and will just wonder why they look like crap.

[Theresa Tennyson]

44 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

So, unless each individual person/scene has the proper lighting and EEP settings, anything PBR wll look bad?

Probably not. It possibly won't look as good as it could; then again there might be so little difference nobody notices it. And odds are if a lighting setup makes something look bad, it'll be making a lot of other things made over the last twenty years look bad too.

[Henri Beauchamp]

For information, I just released the Cool VL Viewer v1.32.0.12 which implements my first workaround attempt for the ”ugly blue hue on shinies” and does not require anyone to touch anything at their environment settings (use the one which suits you best, including an old Windlight one if that's what you prefer). It also makes water bodies look less sky-blue and more realistic.

The workaround is still not perfect, but it does attenuate a lot that silly blue shine by using a desaturation technique on ”blue horizon” and ”blue density” sky colors for reflection irradiance maps renders...

EDIT: and here is the corresponding pull request for LL's viewer code base.

Edited March 2 by Henri Beauchamp

[Rowan Amore]

57 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Probably not

Probably not is not very reassuring.  

[Theresa Tennyson]

53 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Probably not is not very reassuring.  

When you buy a lamp in real life, do you go do elaborate tests with what you already own before you buy, or do you go, "If I'm wearing this sweater I need to store the lamp from Target and get out the one from Macy's"? Probably not.

In fact in real life you probably don't even notice light and color rendering. Daylight, fluorescent light, incandescent light and LED's all make light of different colors and they do have effects on color rendering if you're doing something mission critical. But when you're walking around someplace you probably don't think about it too much because your eyes have "automatic white balance." Most of the time? Light is light.

Of course, if someone lit a room by setting up a dimmed Fresnel with a Roscolux #93 Blue Green gel for the general lighting and then blasted the chair you were sitting in with a spotlight with a #43 Deep Pink you'd certainly notice it, and you'd see things look crazy. But if somebody's doing that, they're trying to make things look unnatural.

Edited March 2 by Theresa Tennyson

[Arielle Popstar]

5 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Probably not. It possibly won't look as good as it could; then again there might be so little difference nobody notices it. And odds are if a lighting setup makes something look bad, it'll be making a lot of other things made over the last twenty years look bad too.

Meh, my face skin on Cawl with PBR and then on Cawl without PBR

 

 

 

All i'm hearing is a whole lot of grasping. This PBR thing seems to only benefit creative types with more crap to sell us in the hopes of fixing what wasn't broke to begin with. 

 

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Most of the time? Light is light.

Then why are we even doing this PBR thing?

PBR is being sold as an enhancement to graphics in SL. Things will look better! SL will look a bit more like the realistic scenes you're used to from a Triple A computer game!

Look, REFLECTIONS!! (But, no, sorry, not real mirrors.)

Now, I DO get that that's only part of the story, and that a lot of this -- maybe, quietly, most of this -- is about updating SL's ancient code base and rendering systems, bringing them more in line (but only very partially so) with industry standards, etc. And, sure, that's worthwhile and maybe even necessary.

But, really, if the best response you can come up to someone calling out the "PBR LOOKS MORE AMAZINGZ!" thing is by arguing that, really, the quality of lighting isn't that important, or is something they should just sort of shrug off, then you're undercutting the public rationale for this move.

If it's true that, as you say, "when you're walking around someplace you probably don't think about it too much because your eyes have 'automatic white balance'" -- then why should we care?