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Today is the official release of the literal new shiny in Second Life, PBR Materials! With our weekly grid update, all of Second Life will now be capable of using PBR Materials in the Second Life viewer.
The goals behind the PBR Materials project are increased visual realism, keeping with industry standards, and bringing GLTF content into Second Life with expected results. One method of enhancing realism is to create scenes with real reflections which mimic how our eyes have learned to identify that a surface is metal, plastic, or some other material. Whether you create objects in Second Life or simply enjoy seeing and wearing them, PBR Materials will provide a big step up in the appearance of the Second Life world.
In the remainder of this post, we have included some more technical points for creators. We can’t wait to see what you all create!
PBR Material Features
- Move from sRGB color space to Linear for all lighting and blending
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HDR Environments
- Auto exposure and tonemapping - If you look at a dark space it will brighten, and a bright space will darken.
- The default environment of Second Life has always been a sunny day with blue skies and this will be more apparent now.
- A new default Midday setting
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Continued support for existing materials (Diffuse, Normal, and Specular)
- Yes, you may use old materials and PBR materials on the same object
- Reflection probes - Automatic and Manual (content creators see additional links below for more information)
- LSL may only use llSetPrimitiveParams and llSetRenderMaterial to change PBR material values
- Materials system folder (empty by default so try creating a new PBR material to fill it.)
PBR viewer at Midday
Image and scene created by Zanibar Darkstone (located on Rumpus Room 3)Prior release viewers at Midday
Scene created by Zanibar Darkstone (located on Rumpus Room 3)The New Normal
- Transparency is done in linear space, so some objects will be slightly more transparent and others will be slightly more opaque
- Fullbright will now be affected by atmospheric lighting
- Auto exposure and tonemapping will be based on the contrast of the scene in front of your camera
- Content creators and builders - Interior spaces that utilize manual reflection probes will require light sources
- Transparent water is actually transparent water rather than blue texture
- Reflections of projections have imperfections
- On Windows, graphics quality set to ‘High’ or greater now receives shadows from Sun and Moon. It required higher settings previously.
- Mac HiDPI now defaults to off
Additional Resources
- If this is the first you have heard of PBR materials, check out What are PBR Materials?
- Second Life Wiki
- HDRI equivalent of new default midday (for use in third party tools): https://polyhaven.com/a/cloud_layers
- Second Life University video How to Create PBR Materials
Future Features
- Now that Second Life needs lights to illuminate rooms and interior spaces that use manual reflection probes, we’re going to reduce the download cost of objects by 15%, across the board, without any additional charges, which will create more available Land Impact for everyone.
- Point lights will soon be affected by dense fog and haze
- Mirrors!
- PBR Materials on Terrain!
Scene created by Sere Vene (serevenaen) (located on Rumpus Room 3)- Read more...
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"Second Life is about to undergo something of a revolution in terms of the viewer’s rendering capabilities and – in the future – other capabilities as well as, after around than two year’s worth of development and testing, Linden Lab has deployed physically based rendering (PBR) into Second Life as part of an on-going project to overhaul rendering and other capabilities within the platform, with a focus on adopting as much of the Khronos® glTF™ ¹ 2.0(+) specification as can reasonably be achieved." Read more on the blog
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Today's Second Life Pic of the Day by Dacio Holgado reminds us that no matter where we are in the world, we can find joy in the simple pleasures of companionship and a shared virtual table. Wishing you a day filled with love and laughter. Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate, and warm wishes to everyone! 🦃 ❤️
For a chance to have your image featured as the Second Life pic of the day, submit your work to the Official Second Life Flickr Group.
For a chance to be featured in our #SLFeature Instagram stories, follow and tag us on Instagram.Connect with Second Life on Social Media.
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Greetings Residents!
Over the next several weeks PBR Materials will be rolling out across the grid. For those who do not know what PBR Materials are already, this post will explain what they are, how to use them and the benefits they bring. This announcement is particularly of interest to residents who create inworld objects and avatar attachments.
PBR stands for Physically Based Rendering. PBR is a richer way of specifying the surface of an object that better simulates how objects appear in real life. PBR allows for realistic lighting for metals, plastics, leather, fabric, and more, including realistic reflections and bounce lighting. The Second Life Viewer will now be able to display these more realistic-appearing objects in world, as well as allow creators to include this more advanced information in the object texturing.
GLTF stands for Graphics Library Transmission Format. This is a standard file format, common in computer graphics, that allows storage of PBR information. GLTF files can be used by many 3D content authoring tools. Second Life will now support the import and export of GLTF files that contain PBR information. Note that at this time only PBR Materials will be imported. Full GLTF support will be available at a later date.
Important note: Until PBR server support is released across the entire Second Life grid, there is a risk of damaging content to which PBR Materials are applied, if rezzed or worn in a region that is not PBR-capable.
At present, you will need to use the latest Second Life release candidate viewer with PBR support 7.0.1.6658224456 and be on PBR capable regions running on BlueSteel and Le Tigre channels with build (2023-10-11.6488746491). To confirm you are using the correct viewer and server, while running Second Life open Help > About Second Life.
What are PBR Materials? Why would I use them in my creations?
The goal behind PBR Materials is Increased visual realism. One method of enhancing realism is to create scenes with real reflections which mimic how our eyes have learned to identify that a surface is metal versus plastic. The Viewer has always been open source and so we sought an open source solution, GLTF, to achieve this realism. GLTF was created by the Khronos Group https://www.khronos.org/, a standards body responsible for open standards such as OpenGL, OpenXR, Vulkan, and others.
With this new Viewer feature, PBR Materials will automatically generate real reflections when applied to new or existing content. While we cannot go back and add PBR Materials to no-mod content -- only the original content creator can -- every effort has been made to preserve or improve all object appearances in world. The team has been working with content creators for many months, and we thank them all for their dedication to making Second Life the benchmark for beautiful inworld content.
What if you do not create content?
If you do not create inworld content or avatar attachments, you do not need to do anything as a result of these changes. You will begin to see more realistic reflections and lighting on objects inworld and for sale as creators adopt this new feature.
New Features
The key additions and changes for PBR Materials are:
- GLTF support for PBR Materials
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HDR Environments
- Auto exposure and tonemapping
- The default environment of Second Life has always been a sunny day with blue skies and this will be more apparent now.
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Reflection Probes (automatic and manual)
- Automatically generated by the PBR Viewer
- Manually generated by content creators for interior spaces (requires lighting)
- Materials system folder
Benefits
- GLTF standards are widely accepted and utilized for content creation across many applications
- PBR Materials objectively and subjectively look better
- Real reflections automatically generated by the Viewer
- Increased compatibility with content creation tools e.g. Substance Painter, Blender
There is a wonderful video from Second Life University on our Youtube channel. We encourage anyone wishing to learn more to take a look: How to Create PBR Materials
The Second Life Wiki has more technical information about GLTF PBR Materials and how to use them in the content you create.
Known Issues
While our GLTF PBR Materials project is closer than ever to full release, there are some known issues and we know with broader release, more issues will be uncovered. If you see something, please say something, by filing a BUG report in Jira.
- PBR material information may be lost from content on non-PBR aware regions
- Underwater reflections are weird. We hope to fix this in a future release
- Materials set to alpha mode Blend cannot be changed back to Opaque
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MacOS performance issues
- Poor performance on Apple Silicon when “Reflection Coverage” not set to “None”
- Poor performance on Intel Macbooks when shadows are enabled
- PBR Material limited permissions issues
- Transition lines between overlapping manual probes
- Semi-transparent fullbright objects slightly more opaque
- Non-PBR enabled Viewers will show high packet loss on PBR aware regions due to the introduction of a new message.
There are inworld Content User Group Meetings we encourage you to attend to discuss your questions and give feedback. For more information see Content User Group
IMPORTANT: If content looks good in the Khronos GLTF Sample Viewer or Adobe Substance Painter but looks wrong when you import it into Second Life, please stop and file a bug immediately. Our goal is to adhere to the GLTF specification. Please do not modify content in Second Life to work around situations where the Viewer does not adhere completely to the GLTF spec.
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The Concierge and Land User Group meeting is a monthly, public meeting for discussion and education on Second Life, useful to both Mainland Residents and Estate owners.
Topics include any issues relating to Customer Relations/Support or concerning Land in general (mainland, islands, Linden Homes, estates, auctions, etc.).
Join Wendi, Vix, and members of the Land team, on Wednesday at 12pm PT at Linden Estate Services. All are welcome.
Keep up to date with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.
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Happy Wednesday!
We’re writing to remind everyone that we’ll be holding our monthly Web User Group meeting today at 14:00 SLT in our usual meeting place, where we’ll be discussing our status with ongoing projects and our near future plans for our web properties. As always, we’ll leave plenty of time for Q&A from the community. This meeting is conducted using voice. We're happy for you to contribute in voice or in text, but you'll need to have your voice settings activated. We look forward to seeing you there.
Keep up to date with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.
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Hi Everybody!
I would like to introduce a new member of the Linden Support team, Boxy 5000.
Boxy 5000 is a virtual assistant/support bot trainee.
But wait, wasn’t there already a chatbot who answered questions for premium users? Indeed there was! Boxy 3000 was the earlier model of the trainee chatbot.
We are learning from some design flaws and moving forward with a more advanced bot. Boxy 3000 has been re-invented and given an extra 2000!
But wait a second time! Won’t this bring about the machine apocalypse? Not just yet–Boxy 5000 is more advanced and learns as they go but Skynet is still a few upgrades away.
The upgraded bot will be a 24/7 support option for both premium and non-premium residents! (Previously only available for premium customers.)
Boxy will have the ability to answer commonly asked questions, keep you up to date on current issues, help with ticket submission and in some cases handle a support request.
Boxy has uses for all residents, from early adopters to fresh new faces.
For new and more casual residents Boxy is available to help them find the support they need.
For our seasoned veterans Boxy can offer support options for some specific requests. Specifically, Boxy will be able to submit an abuse report on your behalf and in some cases help with the restart of a region!
Boxy will continue to learn as we go. Boxy might not have all the answers currently, but we will continue to review questions posed and help the bot to better answer your support queries.
We realize that a chat bot is not a substitute for a customer support representative, and this bot is not meant to be. It is however meant to help when we are unavailable or may be experiencing higher call volumes.For premium residents Boxy will only be the first point of contact before being passed to a support representative during office hours. Utilize Boxy to help better explain your issue once you are transferred to a support representative. Outside of office hours Boxy can help or create a ticket for when we are back in the office.
The ability to get an answer to your question or to get your issue resolved without having to wait until our Support Lindens are available is Boxy’s primary directive.
Anyone interested in saying hello to Boxy can access it by logging into our support portal. The Boxy 5000 chat widget should appear in the bottom right hand corner of your screen.
Boxy 5000, it’s advanced…
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