Charlotte Bartlett

For me: The challenge is more EEP if you tweak it to work with the PBR materials then other items look less stellar on non PBR viewers. That example pic above demonstrates it. That bottom pic on my old EEP setting looks fine with standard textures. Tough when you have four regions that will gradually move over PBR so I will organize region by region to start I think. Once Firestorm is out of Beta that will be the game changer and we can then embrace if fully.

I am including probes to start as I find my way but mod so customers can adjust. And then yes setting Ambiance. Plus with EEP packages. But it’s a learning curve So will adjust as we all become more commercial. For content creators we need a consistent output between viewers so are straddling right now.

Play with your Sun colour first. Some examples as I changed the sun to a darker grey to desaturate. The challenge as I mentioned on another thread are creators now going to have to bundle EEPs with products? Customers are doing to pull their hair out trying to understand why it doesn't look like the picture due to their own EEP settings. (I am going to be included EEP settings with my PBR products as houses especially glass can have some bizarre interaction).

To give you an idea of how different things can now look. These are raw rough screen captures from both the new PBR viewer from LL and the current non PBR viewer from Firestorm. Image 1 with a PBR visioned EEP set up for lighting plus all PBR materials in the latest SL Viewer. (note Scene lighting not finished yet so ignore those!) Image 2 regular 2d texture export from the same substances on the same house (same EEP setting) on the latest Firestorm Viewer. It's honestly making creators pull their hair out so I can't imagine how confusing for users too if you have been away for a bit. I would for now stick with the older viewer until PBR is more widely adopted if easier for you for now. Whilst there are still bugs with the latest PBR deployment from LL, Firestorm I believe hasn't yet released PBR as more bugs are yet to be resolved (albeit it is now in Beta versus Alpha so I am going to test it this weekend myself too) - Hopefully I have that correctly stated @Beq Janus @Whirly Fizzle I think I will still end up releasing my new PBR items soon, with non PBR as a second version for now.

It’s your SL EEP settings your substance ones look good. i have a stack of PBR items ready to go. I have had to create 4 new light settings EEP that I will bundle with the items. The challenge is a lot of regions if using their settings, lighting creates a lot of “blue”. I would be happy to send you one of my EEPs to play with, IM me in world. I have held back on mine due to Firestorm holding back atm.

My favourite are the ones who use our brand name in their keywords (for selling other creators' gacha items that are nothing to do with us). There is one particular store that does it to the point we have to flag them eventually.

No it was treating it as part of normal workflow that it will default to the wrong format. I think I am doing it through the lens of people new to PBR - and always explaining "why" something is the way it is if you are having to make an edit in Second Life - leads to better education in "is this the right approach". If I hadn't questioned it myself and thought this "can't be right" I would have never known why the default was occurring. I have been doing this for years and I yet if followed that video blindly I would have spent hours as a creator fixing it each time without knowing the issue was something very simple in Substance I could control. I wouldn't have known without your reply We don't get a lot of people in the forums so any Second Life University videos should be more informative and pure to correct workflows to my mind. I had quite a few comments on that video as mentioned. before just this point. If it was a tutorial outside of the SL University - anything goes!

And as always - you showed me the right solution. Thank you! I have edited my post and I am going to make a comment on the SL University video as it's incorrectly guiding users on workflow. Hopefully if others see the issue they will find this post!

I am wondering if then it's because I have Opacity at 1 versus removing it...I have become a compete newbie again with SL creation Are you when uploading the GLB then opening the material - what are you seeing in the base color for Alpha setting? Interestingly they include the "same workaround" in the SL University - link below at 4 minutes in. If you go to 8 minutes 30 seconds in - you'll see how even on a one material item he is having to change it. No explanation on "why" in that video they are having to update the material in SL from Blend.

EDIT: Issue Resolved and summary here - I am leaving this post here as the SL University Video I include below "shows the wrong solution" to the problem and will mislead users learning PBR upload for the first time. Thank you to @artoo Magneto for the solution. 1. To default to Opaque you need to change the material in Substance Painter. You should NOT fix it in SL as a workaround (unless you like extra work). 2. To fix materials in Substance Painter for non transparent materials (e.g. non glass) exports for GLB, go to Texture Set, Channels and Delete the Opacity Channel. 3. Then export textures using Gitf PBR Metal roughness and the default will be set as Opaque correctly on applying the PBR material in Second Life. Hi all, This is a bug bear of mine across large complex builds. Perhaps I am missing something? Do any of you more involved with PBR know why the GLB materials when applied are defaulting to Alpha Blend versus Alpha Opaque. Is it - 1 How LL coded it. 2 A general limitation of GLB data. 3. The export from Substance painter defaults out to PNG. 4. Something screwy with the material in Substance Painter adding in an Alpha Channel. The SL University video (another bug bear of mine) shows the user doing the tutorial having to go in and changing alpha at the material level out of blend into opaque so they are incorporating an approach that the user has to change it themselves after materials being applied. (I have more issues with that video including how they skipped in the workflow having proper LODS made in the upload showing best practice for users).. This is strange to me as the majority of items will have the majority of materials in the Opaque format versus Blend so causing more work for creators to faff around with settings after each material is applied. I tested a workaround moving the texture files for GLB into JPG format from PNG to strip any alpha data from Substance Painter (just in case) to test if that would force a new default for base color from Blend to Opaque (it did not). I also then tried a basic material with no alpha data in it - same result in SL - Blend set as default for the materials in that GLB. Whilst I can go material to material etc defaults each time, then do elements like glass back to their settings - this is a terrible workflow in terms of efficiency. I have raised a Jira (https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234646) I am fully aware I am still early in on the testing so I am sure brighter minds have already probably discussed/come up with their thoughts on this. Keen to see if I can optimise my workflow as a result or if my JIRA is a valid issue. Thanks

Thank you!!! Obviously I first joined at age 10!! 😂

Yes you can but your avatar account would need to be linked to the business name and Tilia will need your business documentation, EIN etc. You will need to contact them in advance and allow time for the checks and processing in advance.

I beg to disagree my apologies. Not everything costs a lot of money your argument isn't particularly representative of the situation. You can buy a house or close to having a free one - content creators like me do give out 75L houses each week (so that's about 30 cents) on sale (and high quality ones). Also there are freebies out there if you really don't wish to invest 30 cents into a house. Land being free to call a home is a different matter and others have answered regarding that.

I have been testing a bit, but interesting on interiors - when I create the house I can manage that well. When people start adding in their own lamps, (face lights - LOL we know somebody somewhere still is doing that ha), scene management is going to be interesting. I did not like leather results I did on furniture so more focus there needed to figure workaround. I need to get more testing in too for my window glass as that is where I am seeing good results so far.

I only just saw this. Sadly the creator (Jewel Lamourfou) passed away in the last week after an illness. She will always be fondly remembered and was the first friend I made on Day 1 in Second Life. (I landed on her head as a clueless noob in 2006). We may no longer have her soul with us, but her memory and artwork (and RL artwork) will live on. It was lovely to see you were inspired by her work

Hi Nick - always recommend starting with full disclosure as there the age old issue on forums on the internet of low effort posts wanting "something" from the community they are communicating with. Thank you for confirming the information. I would be happy to give some information, I will contact you offline via your profile link above. Re the case you mention there is wider history there in addition that likely would not be appropriate to discuss on the forum of the company involved in it.

which article and which publication?

Now don’t be optimistic 😃 (it’s progressing from what I can see and I have been enjoying testing content).

There is stuff that was for sure but then there was also the crowd that wanted that stuff even when ALM was more used due to their own machine’s capabilities. Any furniture or house should always be mod so you can detach or retexture. Just being able to set shadow prims (the old term) to detach or be 100pct transparent is a must. ita going to be interesting when we are deeper in PBR how older non PBR things are perceived. Time for some new content!

Agree to disagree apologies! For a commercial house that is complex creating 4 LODs is def a day (8 hours) for a regular hobbyist creator if done properly. A box house that is all one piece or simplistic can be done in an hour. Furniture I can do in an hour. I often see examples of technical mesh on this forum that are def easier to do LODs for. However people generally want houses with more modify capability and complexity which bumps up the effort and construction approach.

I am a total hobbyist and have no issue stating this. I do wonder if we could we use better methods to better create LODs with the mindset that a lot of creators are hobbyists and there is a complete lack of quality workflow (officially) for content creation. It's also tedious, time consuming, half the time one small error can blow up your models if you carry the error through on each LOD model and honestly most of your competitors are NOT doing any optimization and customers truly don't "care" as long as it looks pretty (for them). The core issue is creators have (this is a bit tongue in cheek) but example options right now. 1. Do it properly by hand with full control in their 3d Program. Cost: The Creator has to add around 1 day effort per complex build. Mine even more as C4D dae files don't work so I have to FBX each LOD into Blender then export to DAE for the uploader to work for LODS (for auto LODS I can skip this step). Most customer don't notice the difference or understand it and you end up with higher production costs to income per product. Now if fashion did this on top with the number of bodies, sizes and whatnot - I can imagine their workflow would grind to a stop - it's already beyond saturated in effort in terms of the body/coverage issue they face. Benefit: Amazing efficient models across the grid. 2. Semi do it properly blending a bit of the above and some of the bashing the LOD uploader. Cost: The Creator can speed up their workflow a little but knows on some very low settings there still will be trianglefest for the lowest possible setting. Benefit: It's still more effective than doing "nothing". 3. Follow those certain Furniture Makers who just buy in their high poly stuff from websites, texture it to look super realistic and do zero optimization work. Cost: SL grinds to a halt and forget moving around properly in a region populated with the "quality high detailed furniture". Benefit: Those creators make bank (a LOT of bank), sell a lot and have a quicker workflow than anybody else. People still proclaim "such quality" with the 20 x 1024 textures on a blanket and vase and 300000 Tris. The technical experts (I try to be a good citizen and have put in a lot of hours with all my recent new builds to custom LODs) have a lot of great examples and methods, but the reality is the "commercial" gain on content creation comes from being a total LOD butcher and going quickly. As a result, any standards or automation improvements have to be built into the uploader process to act as the gateway for that content coming onto the platform going forward. It has to be something in that process and automated as sadly most commercial high volume creators are not like ChinRey who has shared to much knowledge to the forum to help people like me. There are so many workarounds, specialist bits of knowledge and know how on content creation that the average commercial creator probably gets exhausted by the point they have uploaded something and it "works" versus improving their technical quality in a reiterative fashion each time. Also second to a better screen where you can actually see stuff to upload. Examples like this from Unreal are far easier to see imho.

I agree! It's all about volume in houses so that's why I always recommend pricing for high volume sales. Nobody should be spending more than 2K on a mesh house in SL regardless of what bells and whistles it comes with. It's also unfair to hike the price for your customers if things are taking you longer due to learning the "trade". 18 hours is for a design you know and already have mapped out. However, honestly, I can spend a week on a house in reality where it's a unique design versus a cookie cutter copy of a floorplan, I am creating procedurals or changing them, researching materials and finishes, then changing things. I go fast on meshing and uv mapping once that is done. I have written a python scripts to speed up material assignment, asset naming etc. I say I have written, I worked with CHAT GPT doing it for my Cinema 4D instance. It took a lot of reiterations (two days effort) and testing, but I cut down 3 hours per house for scene management and prep for Substance Painter and Designer as a result. (Now if I can get this thing to learn to unwrap too, I will be delighted!). Things like this help make the workflow efficient and again that saving gets passed on to the customer and allows more volume to be created. Brand is a big part of it and creating a repeatable situation where people return to your store on a regular cadence which is far harder for Homes than Fashion. People swap outfits multiple times a day, houses not so much. I don't disclose numbers but if you get right over the life of a good house it will bring in sufficient to warrant a proper hourly rate that was invested into it then it also becomes passive income thereafter once you are "paid back" for the time. I use the word good to describe sellability versus quality, technical skill or other. It's tough for new creators as you need enough products and hooks to get that repeatable flow coming in, that can take some time to obtain. But if you create lovely houses and and are good to your customers, people will buy and be loyal to the brand. Family homes are interesting - we did a large survey of our customers last year in our FB Group and most have smaller plots. This surprised us as we expected with Homesteads etc larger plots. However, I did one large family home (well for me, large) with an animated pool and it sold incredibly well (I always launch new products at 75L for the weekly sale then things go to full price) - the volume on that house at 75L was significant so here is a market if you price it right. I tend to only do larger homes every so often due to time required, but also people tend to swap out smaller ones much more often than larger houses (due to the furniture effort!).

I had thought the same, but have the same issue when I try the mix. That’s going to limit folks somewhat especially if they want to modify items after purchase.

Looking at the house I would say if you price around 599-999 you will be in the right ballpark. Some of the prices quoted here are high and from makers who have been doing for years. You are welcome to come visit our store or Trompe to price compare as we both have small to large houses and we both price for volume sales. The one thing I would point out if you are making all the walls as one mesh you are severely limiting the modifications your customers can do. Consider more strategic grouping balancing optimisation v usability, in case they wish to remove an interior wall or change the house shape. There is no need to bake shadows on a house these days. But customers do still like AO as the SL version is at the higher end of settings. Worth also keeping an eye on the PBR developments as this will change workflows. The most time on houses is creating the LODs models. I can easily add on a day to each house in effort creating these by hand. As you get more used to mesh you will speed up for example only make one window with it LODs then copy it once in world. A prim house could take 3 hours, a mesh one easily 18 plus for a simple small basic home. A ratio of 5 is a good yardstick.

The other elements aside, at the base of this is a really good idea. If there was a way for residents to create mods and prepackaged avatar looks that allows them to sell them it would be a great secondary market versus "a notecard stylecard circa 2004" They would be able to add a small % on top and then the original creators of the items included in the package get paid too and the purchase then has the items in inventory. This applies in various concepts like interior designers, avatar designer, landscapers etc. The challenge sadly is the functionality to do that is simply nowhere in the Linden Lab roadmap or I suspect capability based on the system limitation. But the concept still is a fun idea!