Cynite00

Same process as in Photoshop, go to the channel layer select the Green channel (in Photo 2 it's not as clear but you will see an eyeball light up on it) then Ctrl=I (Invert) Unreal has a node that can flip this easily, so I would like to see similar functionality in the Material Editor, should a DirectX normal texture make its way in (and it has happened to me as a newbie and I was confused as to why my normals looked backwards) Blinn-Phong normal textures and PBR normal is the same texture. It's how BP and PBR calculate the light reflections using ALL the maps provided is the difference.

That's terrible numbers hahaha I only name it because it was part of LL's lineup, and how it relates to how they develop and treat all their platforms... the same workflow, same results!

Ok, so if this change sticks, then we need to move the conversation away from ACES type chat but to an OCIO config chat, as the same issues will persist across softwares, as they will all have to have acess to the ocio file to represent the colors accurately between applications. I'll have to read up a bit more about that, and try out the demos at Khronos\ToneMapping\PBR Neutral to see if that is feasible too. Preferrably I don't want to change my entire workflow and colorspace JUST to suit SL, as I work in a variety of software and engines, and tired of 'customizing for SL Khronos Tonemapper vs ACES comparison and what it all means

Imagine if SL had that kind of character creation and at that level of quality. Character creation is the entry point and most important feature for virtual worlds, RPG games and has ALWAYS been a point of contention for gamers. The Senra avatars are so uncanny valley and ugly, SL is LOSING customers just by providing them. It was the same as their other project, Sansar. The avatars were ugly and even the default suggestions were even scary and uncanny valley as well. I would even go so far as to say, what will draw more users to SL that could probably be measurable (and even documented by YouTubers) would be their avatar creation screen. I know I'd be happier with such an interface and quality. Who cares about PBR and shiny things when the intro avatars are FUGLY. I'm also an advocate of having a quality standard avatar, so that all of us can make clothing ,accessories and w/e for them - without having to beg for kits or 'be friends' with the 'top creators' bodies. I'm all for competition and letting the best designs and innovation win - not taking away tools from people so there is no competition. Sansar and its users were fortunate as they had secured a deal with CLOE to provide the ability to make and upload clothing that could be simmed on the avatars - not just the standard but ANY avatar given enough effort. This allowed so many more creators to participate, got CLOE more MD sales, and everyone wins with so much choice. For those who made rigged clothing items, they at least had a standardized avatar to rig for, that gave many other non-MD sim clothing options. Standard sizing is important. LL is missing the ball on so many things, and are pigheaded. On a social platform that is mostly AVATAR BASED, one would think they'd be flexing their muscles at the front door starting with an amazing avatar. Then.. then.. yes only then, could anyone even consider that LL is competing with anyone.. Right now they're just laughed at. Picture: INZOI can even 'cartoonize' their avatars, to take the 'realism' edge off of them, to fit sims and worlds like GTA4 like - would be a good feature for SL avatars to do the same thing.

To clarify, to even compete at anything, you actually have to be in play. SL isn't even on the map in the grand scheme of things, and therefore has no competition, and can't compete with anyone.

1) Would be helpful to have a G Channel flipper built into the material editor, so if the need should arise, it can be flipped. 2) ACES... what a bold move, which isn't standard yet even on many engines, unless their focus is on CGI. Guaranteed most creators won't be retooling their entire workflow to an ACES workflow, and especially since SL decided on an older 1.03 model. ACES is quite the commitment to make, as it requires ACES to be loaded between ALL software on a creators workstation, AND even requires the adjustment of all old materials, that will now appear darker. I won't be adopting SL's custom ACES workflow anytime soon and willing to put up with the slight difference in appearance in SL - as my PBR workflow is just fine for every other platform and game engine that still expects standard RGB.

Check out modern clubs in RL. Very sad really. It's just guys and girls dancing alone, or in groups of each sort of gaggle. If you wanted to attract these younger gens to SL and want them at your club, you're going to have to get used to them dancing with themselves. After all, "I can dance with myself better, than you can"

Sigh.. no they won't. Why is it up to us to have to do everything FIRST, with a set of hokey tools (and do it for free) in some foolish bid to convince LL to do anything? They've had plenty of examples to date, both here and on their Sansar, and didn't inspire them to move the needle on anything that they didn't already want to do anyway. LL follows their own path mostly - there's no reason to encourage people to invest so much time in these sorts of things - that will only be present on SL - when they could be spending their time developing a REAL game in a fit-for-purpose game engine that can be marketed on multiple platforms. Potential doesn't really mean anything if it is never realized. We have had years of 'it has potential'. Now we would suggest that LL tries to become a game engine too? Now SL will try to compete with fit-for-purpose game engines and with such a small and limited audience? The whole experience is really all here, as many regulars proclaim daily "You can do anything". Ok great, so make the platform run like a top and make it hum and make it fast. Improve and update documentation and access to it so that users can find it easily. Improve the buying and selling experience, optimize search and marketplace, etc. This needs to be forefront in people's minds, and though we could go about our critiques and comments and takes a bit more gently, let's not focus on the messenger but the content of the message, and not let LL just coast along taking years to do the most basic things other platforms would have completed already. Okay, but why would anybody? And if they could (like many claim they can) why haven't they yet? There's a lot of people who will talk the talk, but have nothing to show for their claimed expertise, and they never do it in SL, or anywhere else. SL is more suited to basic interaction (which is lacking already), and mini-games to facilitate the social aspect of the game, and to allow more immersion. Coming to SL to actually play a game is what an even smaller minority of the SL population does, but I maintain if you really want a quality experience when you're in the mood to game, this ain't the place, and there's nothing wrong with that. SL should focus on it's strengths and its goals. But hey, I could be wrong. Let a 'programming expert' here prove me wrong and show me their SL-based Fortnite or World of Warcraft clone, and explain to me why I would come and play a substandard version 'just because'. I see a lot of standing around, editing and playing of animations. I'm not convinced in the slightest that I could do anything with this system as presented. It's sad how LL puts these kinds of things out on the reg, that amount to pretty much lies and deception - instead of hunkering down and actually making something that makes us would-be devs drool. It's not an ad, it's a straight up lie. It doesn't even show anything that can be done, nor does it include any narration, any selling point, any motivation to even explore it further. Much like most of LL's delegation to whoever makes this marketing stuff, its bad, bad, bad. Okay, so Coke and Always both succeeded on selling you on using the product.... did this ad make you excited and sold on exploring further?

I don't know why anyone would suggest any more than what SL can do right now... Imagine the work it would/going to take to compete with a 'fit for purpose' FPS gaming engine using the existing architecture, where frankly, if someone wants a similar experience in SL... to just build an SL clone with it's own game engine to do so.. then find out it will just fail anyway - because most people have tried 'make your own game' platforms already - they're not that popular. Add to that, if I am going to play Fortnite, Call of Duty, or any other high frenzy FPS type game, I'm not going to come to SL to do it anyway.

:: shrugs :: Oh SL!

I just upload each texture individually up into SL, then construct Materials from those. This allows reuse of common textures, roughness, normals, etc. The SL Viewer also provides a way for you to tweak your roughness by editing the "Roughness Factor" itself.

Good, because you wouldn't have any valid claim to this. Not one person on the forums can be quoted 'demanding entry to private parcels'. I have read suggestions to keep the exploration of mainland areas relatively open and free, without unfair or strict interruptions like 0-second orb kicks. I think it's time. There are a few loud voices who have parcels in mainland areas that want privacy using ban lines and 0-second orb practices, but refuse to pay for more private options. Perhaps they would be served better and be much happier not being part of an publicly-accessible area if provided their own private instance. This kind of solution would seem to be able to make both parties happy. The paranoid 'get off my lawn' type and the average user flying around exploring SL. The question is though, is the 'leave me alone' 'get off my lawn' type going to pay for a private space? I agree with this wholeheartedly. In a way, those expecting 100% privacy from publicly-accessible (and expected public access) and enforcing it with disruptive ban lines and ejection orbs should be encouraged to move to private parcels. Of course, those are higher priced, so it's just easier (and more selfish) to impose restrictions on everyone else for their own benefit. For those who seem to crave a high level of privacy, this should be the answer, and make mainland return to more open (and perhaps more conducive to social interaction, meeting new people, new experiences), it may be better for everyone involved. Look to Sansar, as an example, that all were instanced worlds. Even then, many of the owners there also didn't like to be found in their own worlds, and would go to many lengths to have hidden rooms, secret chat areas, etc - and it always struck me as odd "Why continue to have public access to your area/world/experience if you want the privacy?" Sansar offered blocklists/whitelists etc including 'friends only'. It kinda harkens to "I want privacy, but I also want to be seen" at the same time. Always that conflict of interests. "Don't bother me, stay off my lawn, I will block and ban you.... buuuuuuutttt I want the pleasure or selfish satisfaction of imposing myself in the process"

Be advised that many of those textures are inefficient, and I have found them to simply be replicated 512x512 textures in many of them, including the 4K textures available on these CC0 sites. If I liked the material enough, I take it into Photoshop and double check that it isn't a repeat (Most of the time it is) and downgrade it to the original 512x512 (or 1024) that it was originally. Strange to me that these sites (and even paid sites like GameTextures) are willing to waste their bandwidth/storage and yours just to have the appearance they have 2k-4k texture available, but they do it.

Or the entire store. Until the whole PBR thing settles, and how they will represent a product, and how the end user will see everything, might be an opportunity to rebrand, restart or not return at all. LL needs to get on the ball with this, and not take too long to make this transition.

It's a valid strategy around here.

For SL to compete with anyone, it has to be on the map and it is not. It is a niche platform serving a niche market of users and creators, with a developer who spends it's time experimenting and researching and is quite happy for it to remain niche. The end.

Good words. Now let's compare it to PBR in Sansar.. wasn't even an issue and creators who were there got to work immediately with no issues - because it was fit to purpose. The problem isn't PBR, but PBR on SL. LL platforms have always had a problem with it's resident hardcore group who defend it to the last user... it's one of many reasons, but a significant one which prevents the platform from growing. The same method that has been in existence for a long time now, and what MOST of the products on the MP and inworld are textured with. A baked diffuse texture, what was seen by anyone who had ALM turned off. How weird now, to then not provide the same functionality, with an option to 'not see PBR materials' that will default to the same texture - no need to upgrade millions of products.

When those classic internet and LAN fps games servers suddenly got filled with bot players, we knew our beloved game was dead. I'm certainly interested in how it will be used, but have no interest in interacting with AI agents as part of a regular experience in SL. If we have to turn to AI agents for this, it just goes to show how weak the social has become.

This is where LUA enters the arena, as it can be used to make scalable, responsive HUDs and UI elements, and run on top of SL. Most UI addons in WoW were made with LUA scripts. eg. https://docs.zerobot.net/lua_scripting/functions/hud/

PBR is not the issue. Many of you will have already seen PBR used on other platforms, and looking beautiful and performing well. This is a LL-implementation of PBR issue. The other issues are increased workloads for creators, also a higher skill level to not only properly create PBR materials, but even BP materials, which were mostly unused anyway up to this point since so many users had ALM turned off - and would complain about creator's products that "actually did it correctly". So to have PBR + a fallback to BP is kind of hilarious, as now creators who only used baked textures on the norm, or sim owners who would default to baked textures to save bandwidth not displaying normals and specs - might have issues because BP was never their standard to start with. This kind of thing is glossed over all the time in these forums, lost in all the showboating and tech-speak. Idealy you would create your product with PBR textures, upload them and they work out of the box - and they do (everywhere else). It's not machine problems, because people can run PBR and shaders on all sorts of computers - again this is LL-specific. What software have you actually had to white-list in order for your antivirus to not thrash your machine trying to use it. When even a simple game like Minecraft is now letting people run PBR and advanced fancy shaders on 'potato' computers because some skilled programmers created optimization mods to run them. The more layers of difficulty or requirements that LL needs to run this is going to be the problem. The custom workflows and 'workarounds' (that tend to stay that way over time) is enough to discourage many from continuing, or even starting in the first place. To complain about PBR is very weird, when the complaints should more accurately focus on LL's implementation of it. PBR was provided initially by Pixar/Disney to create a streamlined and easy workflow for 3D artists to work with, it's goal not actually being 'realism' but easily understandable and an accessible 'close enough' representation of light and reflections. This is not what will draw people into SL anyway. PBR and 'fancy graphics' are already shoulder-shruggingly common and the addition of this will be 'like, duh, it should look nice' and then will be quickly assumed as default - and then we're back to square one - how do we engage and keep new users.

I can't see past the massive "Fifty Lindens Fridays" sign put prominently in front to advertise the group.

https://www.andnextcomesl.com/2020/10/hyperlexia-air-writing.html

We're not going to, and we're done with SL' s non "Industry Standard" way of doing everything. At the least, no action will be taken to update anything, or upload anything until we see what LL does. The ROI is simply no longer there for the amount of skill, time and dedication required to put out a good product for the platform, for pennies in return, and no support, and no care for us. Fanbois will be fanbois though, and they will always continue to jump through LL's hoops, and the population will remain stagnant and insignificant as usual.