Bagnu

You and I have taken a lot of pics together. Some of it was capturing, and some of it was creating. Photography can involve both. Our posed pics involved a lot of time and effort, and creativity. Even the one I "captured" of us dancing at Hipiestock took me an hour from start to finish. That involved both capturing AND creating.

I ran a test to see if a mirror will reflect projectors. Cat's mirror shows the light source, but the light isn't reflected into the room by the mirror.

I remember my art "professor" at U of T saying that it can take years to be able to make art look like stuff made in kindergarten. We got along well, but we had a few disagreements on the concept of art. I think kindergarten art stuff should be left in kindergarten.

I like it!!! It would be fun to sit up on that!!!

LOL, I like it!!!

I didn't take many pics at this year's Hippiestock. I was too busy dancing with @Cinnamon Mistwood, and discussing PBR with @Scylla Rhiadra. Not at the same time though. Each Lady had my full attention. I know I took pics of the "pyramid", but for some reason, they didn't show up in my folder.

Well, I DID create a Blinn-Phong diffuse map, and yes it DOES show more detail. The first pic with my rock on the right has a metallicity texture. In the second one, I have set as blank. What I'm seeing is the EEP affecting the surface more than it should. Hence, the vaselinity. And why it's mostly mirrors that are sold on MP IMHO.

I can create a building, but it's time intensive. I would rather buy a building and retexture it, than spend a month or more, making one from scratch. Caitlin and I have been doing that. I watched Cinny do it with many of her buildings. So I absolutely agree with Love. Sell MOD items if you don't want to create PBR materials. If you aren't creating the materials yourself, then there really isn't much to learn. It doesn't affect how you build anyways.

TBH, I haven't found PBR to be drastically different to work with. On the material side, it's just a few added options, and we can actually see the loaded image in the material editor. The probes are definitely something new though. I didn't have to remake anything I created, just update the materials.

And yes, a probe can be used as a light and projector. Only inwards though.

This is what I meant. Some people have never used the anything beyond "diffuse", even after having been on SL for over a decade. It doesn't mean they don't care about what their SL looks like. They just aren't "techie".

In some ways it might be LESS complicated. We can drag a material onto an object, and not have to worry about settings. I don't usually do that though.

What project setting did you use? Now you have me curious.

You have to create a probe, and put it inside the surface, just like I did with Cat's vanity mirror. Like you can see in my previous post. You have to change the size and position of the probe to get the reflection you want.

LOL!!! I had to reread this a couple of times. I know PBR loads it all separately. Combining in Photoshop can't work, because it will all look like one flat image to SL. There is no way to distinguish a fold in the background curtain from shading if it's a single image combined with PS. I found something called "Quixel" that can supposedly output Blinn-Phong. I haven't found a way in Substance Painter. But honestly, I won't be spending my time creating Blinn-Phong materials, even if I DID find a way, when PBR is the future.

I don't know if Substance Painter supports Blinn-Phong export. I have to look into that. I used SP to create the material, and it's UV mapped to the rock specifically. I hand painted the rock. I assembled the outputs with GLTF Packer. So I have all the individual textures/maps.

And this IS interesting. A PBR material, as compared to a standard one, shows a lot more surface detail. I used the exact same "base colour" and "normals" on both copies of a rock and I had made. The rivets are clearly visible as such in the PBR material, but wash out in the standard version. There are four on both rocks.

Right, and this is where I have to learn that what I take for granted in 3DSMAX doesn't necessarily apply in SL. I find it very annoying that EEP reaches inside everything. I made an enclosed structure. EEP reaches right in. And I had to create a prim light in order to get a shadow on the floor. Which is also annoying. So hopefully, we WILL have to have interior lighting. I want my interiors pitch black if there are no windows or lights. We don't actually have to be inside the reflection probe to get a mirror to work. I made my probe semi-transparent to show how I positioned it for Caitlin's vanity mirror. I selected the face of her vanity mirror when I moved the probe into it. Size and position affected the reflection perspective.

What I didn't understand about reflection probes until I watched the end of the tutorial, is that we are meant to be INSIDE them. I was thinking of an old school static HDRI light probe, where it was basically turned inside out and applied to the environment, and used as a projector. If I understand this correctly, this is a more advanced version, which can be dynamic as well. My first question was: "How do we get the probe to project light inwards?". The mirror I made for Caitlin's vanity captured my image quite nicely. But, results can vary depending on...?

I can't comment on the new rendering system. I don't know anything about it. But I don't know how to use the probes in SL other than to create a mirror. They are normally used to create a lighting environment in a 3d modeling program. They might be necessary in SL to do that too, to prevent the vaseline look. I'm just guessing. Also, geometry affects everything too. I used a simple cube for testing. Things could look vastly different with more complex geometry.

It's the same "material" on both cubes, except the first one has more options with PBR. The second has the base texture, normals, and specularity only. But I did up the shine, which to me makes it look worse. I agree with you that the legacy texture looks better. I'm feeling that until everything in SL has a PBR material, we are going to have to pick and choose when and where to use the materials. I also think we need to experiment more before we really can see what's possible.

The cube on the left is from a PBR material I made in Adobe Substance Sampler. I had to use GLTF packer to be able to import the material into SL. The second is standard, with shine upped just a bit, to match the top of the PBR based cube.. The two pics are under different lighting. I can't remember the EEP settings. I took these pics in the Beta Grid.

It IS the skylight. We experimented to check. My FS PBR alpha didn't show the shadows and projectors at first. I had to switch my preset, and then switch back to see everything. But it IS an alpha.

It could also be a from a simple prim with light emitting from only one face, and focussed. I have used that technique many times.

I always have shadows and projectors turned on by default. I've never seen that square before. It might have something to with the settings combined with PBR.