Porky Gorky

What lovely shiny balls you have! What software are you using to create these PBR materials? Thanks.

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.

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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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.

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.

Yeah we need a levelling system like D&D. Get to lvl 100 and you unlock height map displacement and ray tracing.

Hasn't this already happened though? Just yesterday I was in a store looking at a PBR chair, basic wooden frame, with a fabric seat. The creator was using 8 materials on the chair, so that would be 32 x 1k textures which is absurd. If 2k textures are rolled out maybe LL could offest the impact by heavily reducing the number of surfaces/faces available on each piece of new mesh.

I was enticed back into SL by the introduction of PBR and have spent a few hours a week over the last month being a PBR tourist. Alchemy is definitely one of the best examples of usage I've seen. Well done on being a PBR pioneer! Are LL actually planning to introduce 2k textures or are you just wishful thinking? I think I remember right at the start of SL that we could import 2k textures but LL put a stop to that for obvious reasons. Maybe it’s finally time for 2k to shine. (apologies for the bad PBR pun).

Since realising I could highlight reflection probes I've been more nosey, looking at them in public spaces as well as poking around a few build platforms looking at WIP’s. I’ve seen a broad spectrum of usage ranging from single box probes around an entire building to numerous overlapping spheres as well as more considered usage focusing on individual spaces. Not much consistency yet in the usage I’ve seen. I’ve also noticed some weird effects with moving objects, for example a door opening inside the probe would cause the probe to recalculate the reflection capture which had a notable effect on the materials within the probe for just for a few seconds. Has anyone else noticed this?

Edit - NVM, I figured it out.

Thanks!. I read the wiki link Viola posted, then googled ”beware the mole people” which took me to a 2008 transcript of a meeting where the LDPW was launched. I was delighted to see the first resident speaker was Prok, calling the Lindens out on their BS and trying to hold them to account. And she is still doing it now in this thread. What a legend!

Who are these mole people? Are they forum mods or something more special? Someone please catch me up on the mole people origin story, thanks!

BTW, learning that you could highlight reflection probes is a top tip! I never realised you could do that. I highlighted the probes at the Alchemy club and was really surprised by how many they used. Spheres within spheres, all the spheres overlapping to some degree. It was a sight to behold and very interesting.

Maybe it could be considered an acceptable problem to live with, given the shortcomings of the platform and the problem discussed in the last few pages regarding shadowed tiled materials. SL must have many thousands of examples already where multiple alpha blended surfaces are visible to people, @Frionil Fang mentioned two examples just looking out the window of their prefab. It’s certainly worth testing in a building I think to see how prevalent the blending order problem is.

The Alchemy club seems to be a mixture of PBR materials with occlusion shadows, maybe baked from the original model and tiled PBR materials that lack shadows from the environment, These seem to work well in some areas and not so well in others. This opinion was formed after I spent 10 mins moving my camera around specifically looking at shadows though. When I step back from that and look at the build from a holistic perspective it looks great. When I came back to SL a few weeks ago Alchemy was the first place I visited to see an example of PBR and on that visit I didn’t notice any issues with shadows because I was not looking for any issues. That being said I can see how various elements could be improved by adding shadows on alpha blended polys layered on top if thats an option. I guess the question is do they need to bother as it already looks good?

Yeah I was calling it the decal approach as it simulates slapping down separate alpha blended geometry, but it’s obviously a poor substitute for actual decals. Please speak more about the blending order problems? Thanks

Thanks! The decal analogy is a good one. I guess creators who want to sell prefab buildings with realistic AO and higher resolution materials have 2 choices: 1. The decal approach which will optimize material usage but cost extra Li due to all the extra polys. 2. The baking AO directly into materials approach which would optimize Li but would result in a performance cost as it would require many more custom made materials. Option 1 is the responsible approach to take. I think Option 2 is maybe the easier approach to take and content may look better. I can see a scenario where creators choose option 2 in order to keep the Li count down and pass the performance issue on to the end user. Maybe there is a balance to be found between the two.

I’m not completely sure I understand this, which I'm sure is due to my brain and not your explanation. The way I interpret this is to have 2 layers of polygons, a base layer with the high resolution tiled PBR materials and then another layer, offset slightly in front of the base layer which contains the occlusion shadows, blending into the alpha. So essentially layering shadows on top of tiled surfaces using extra polygons? Is that the gist?

Hi @Charlotte Bartlett thanks for the encouragement / pep talk. It's genuinly appreciated. I’ve been testing sphere probes in non rectangular interior spaces and I am achieving more acceptable results. Spheres seem to allow some level of overlapping. Do you know how overlapping probes work in SL with regards to their importance? We can’t assign importance values to probes. Unity documentation says “By default, Unity calculates the intersection between the reflective object’s bounding box and each of the overlapping probe zones; the zone which has the largest volume of intersection with the bounding box is the one that will be selected.” Do you know if this how it works in SL? Also I seem to be using a lot more probes, do you know how costly probes are on performance? I’ve used many and haven't noticed any performance loss, but I am using a workstation built for rendering, so not your average rig. Thanks

Yep, apparently you are absolutely right! This is one of them “I feel like a complete idiot" moments. I just assumed you needed edit rights to land to change it. Please forgive my noobishness.

Yes please @Gabriele Graves, I would love to visit! I’ll be the guy wandering around using an avatar made in 2010 🙂 Thanks.

Yeah I guess that is true. I found the Alchemical Sandbox by accident whilst being nosey, looking at thier PBR products. It made me wonder if there are any other PBR pioneers out there who are generous enough to run a sandbox.

Is anyone aware of any privately owned sandboxes that have changed their EEP to better suit PBR? I found the Alchemical Sandbox which has an interesting environment and I am wondering if there are more out there? Thanks

Thank you very much, perfectly explained and with screenshots too, you rock! I’ve used the projection modifier to bake high poly to low poly numerous times so this all makes perfect sense. I’ve just never considered using the projection modifier to bake low poly to nearly-no poly, it’s a great idea. Thanks for the time and effort you spent explaining it.