sl-service-account
commented
2 years ago larisakhvostovsky commented at 2022-09-05T11:32:03Z
PBR material support for BOM is an absolute must, while having appliers for certain applications is great, being able to combine diffuse or apparently soon to be albedo with the other slew of material channels will be critical for SL's development, and having that readily accessible in a BOM format is going to be critical as well, we only just got BOM a few years ago, there's no reason to deprecate it again when everyone's seen just how useful it is.
How would you like the feature to work?
I would like the upcoming PBR materials to be compatible with the Bakes on Mesh system. Ideally, instead of slotting in a diffuse texture, one would slot in a PBR material item.
Why is this feature important to you? How would it benefit the community?
I firmly believe that for anything avatar based - humanoid or anthro - this combination is absolutely essential for multiple reasons. a) Not doing so would render both BOM and PBR quite pointless for avatars and keep them stuck on legacy materials. The applier situation is already chaotic. The omega developer is MIA, and unlikely to ever update the standard to PBR. Meanwhile many bodies run their own appliers. As an avatar maker, I already create an applier for my parts, then omega, maitreya, legacy, ebody materials, and THEN two BOM skins on top of it. So appliers are only slowly going to change, and since BOM won't support materials, people will either revert to drawcall-heavy alpha section avatars with updated PBR appliers OR will continue to use BOM with default non-pbr materials until mesh body makers update their default materials. As an anthro creator, I'd be stuck making half a dozen different appliers. Furthermore, since diffuse will be replaced by albedo, BOM will have even less use, since it will lack the shading currently used on diffuse maps. b) It would standardize material application across the grid. As mentioned above, right now I make about half a dozen appliers, AND BOM skins on top. PBR/BOM would resolve the applier chaos grid wide, by providing a single, standardized way of applying materials to avatars. Creators could focus on creating single types of wearables, which also would benefit from the bake stack, which leads to point c. c) Utilizing the bake stack for powerful effects. Being utilize PBR materials via the bake stack would allow for things such as metal limbs, glowing tattoos and markings, creating PBR oil/sweat/wet effect body overlays etc, even more realistic texture clothing, and possibly revitalize system clothing items for tight fitting items.
To sum it up: A combination of PBR and BOM in my eyes would make both infinitely more useful for avatar texturing, and have the potential to finally rid us of the jungle of avatar specific appliers, as well as greatly help the adoption of the PBR materials standard across the grid. It would also open up big possibilities for creators, as well as make the life of us anthro creators a heck of a lot more comfortable.
Lastly, an argument against "future work". Bringing PBR to the grid first and considering BOM compatibility later on would basically mean letting the creator community tinker with two separate systems and figure out their own implementations and messy workarounds. This will no doubt create issues that may break existing content on later development, and basically just make people first develop for PBR only and likely pivot away from BOM, then later on pivot again to develop PBR/BOM once more. I don't view this as feature creep, I view it as absolutely essential to get right out of the gate, and as something that just plain makes sense. Also if this is already planned, I apologize for the noise, I however didn't find information about it yet.
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Original Jira Fields
| Field | Value | | ------------- | ------------- | | Issue | BUG-232592 | | Summary | PBR - Combine with BOM | | Type | New Feature Request | | Priority | Unset | | Status | Closed | | Resolution | Unactionable | | Labels | pbr | | Created at | 2022-09-05T10:49:39Z | | Updated at | 2023-11-30T00:36:17Z | ``` { 'Build Id': 'unset', 'Business Unit': ['Platform'], 'Date of First Response': '2022-09-05T06:32:03.434-0500', 'How would you like the feature to work?': 'I would like the upcoming PBR materials to be compatible with the Bakes on Mesh system. Ideally, instead of slotting in a diffuse texture, one would slot in a PBR material item.', 'ReOpened Count': 0.0, 'Severity': 'Unset', 'Target Viewer Version': 'viewer-development', 'Why is this feature important to you? How would it benefit the community?': "I firmly believe that for anything avatar based - humanoid or anthro - this combination is absolutely essential for multiple reasons.\r\na) Not doing so would render both BOM and PBR quite pointless for avatars and keep them stuck on legacy materials. The applier situation is already chaotic. The omega developer is MIA, and unlikely to ever update the standard to PBR. Meanwhile many bodies run their own appliers. As an avatar maker, I already create an applier for my parts, then omega, maitreya, legacy, ebody materials, and THEN two BOM skins on top of it.\r\nSo appliers are only slowly going to change, and since BOM won't support materials, people will either revert to drawcall-heavy alpha section avatars with updated PBR appliers OR will continue to use BOM with default non-pbr materials until mesh body makers update their default materials. As an anthro creator, I'd be stuck making half a dozen different appliers.\r\nFurthermore, since diffuse will be replaced by albedo, BOM will have even less use, since it will lack the shading currently used on diffuse maps.\r\nb) It would standardize material application across the grid. As mentioned above, right now I make about half a dozen appliers, AND BOM skins on top. PBR/BOM would resolve the applier chaos grid wide, by providing a single, standardized way of applying materials to avatars. Creators could focus on creating single types of wearables, which also would benefit from the bake stack, which leads to point c.\r\nc) Utilizing the bake stack for powerful effects. Being utilize PBR materials via the bake stack would allow for things such as metal limbs, glowing tattoos and markings, creating PBR oil/sweat/wet effect body overlays etc, even more realistic texture clothing, and possibly revitalize system clothing items for tight fitting items.\r\n\r\nTo sum it up: A combination of PBR and BOM in my eyes would make both infinitely more useful for avatar texturing, and have the potential to finally rid us of the jungle of avatar specific appliers, as well as greatly help the adoption of the PBR materials standard across the grid. It would also open up big possibilities for creators, as well as make the life of us anthro creators a heck of a lot more comfortable.", } ```