PBR is officially part of Second Life. For creators interested in leveraging physically-based rendering in virtual worlds, here are some getting started tips:

By Crypto Gloom On Nov 30, 2023

View PBR in the Rumpus Room sandbox area

Finally, physically-based rendering (e.g. PBR, reflective surfaces, etc.) has officially become part of Second Life and has been incorporated in the latest update to the official viewer. To see the PBR effect in all its glory for yourself, click here to be teleported to the Rumpus sandbox area.

"I think we will look back on this as another milestone in SL history. It’s just as impactful as the introduction of sculpting, mesh, and material texturing." Max Graf, a long-time 3D content creator, tells us. Graf, who is often blunt or downright annoyed about Second Life as a platform, is quite optimistic about this update, with some stipulations: "This is a really good start. But I’m most excited to see future revisions and updates to this process, especially how they affect the environment and terrain. PBR is a huge step forward for SL."

As you can see, there are some reported issues with PBR for Mac users (see below). But for now, Max has some getting started tips/links for creators looking to use PBR.

"It doesn’t work on terrain yet, and a lot of things will look strange at first. It’s like the water is a mess right now. Eventually the terrain will include smart materials, but not yet. This is likely to be another texturing method in the world (as opposed to the current high and low corner limits) as well as GLTF. Reflection probes are very important for the PRB to function properly.

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"Blender has a Smart Materials/PBR feature, if you don’t have one yet. material maker, a free, open source app that does what Substance does, but very well, without the need for a sub. Because Adobe sucks. Adobe has one tool I’d like to suggest. and it’s free." (Okay, don’t completely fuck Adobe.)

Here’s Max’s before and after tutorial on how to adjust the water for a full PBR effect.

"The shape of the water can be changed within the Reflection Probe. Another way to make it not too blue is to copy the water from the library to a new folder (I call it ‘My Environment’) and adjust it to create a new water. That’s the setting there." (Learn more about probes here.) "The results are as follows (picture below): As you adjust the Fresnel slider, you will see that the sky reflection is reduced."

"Dekronfeld"who has a good Mac to run Second Life, warns other Mac users that they may have issues with the current PBR build and should reduce their viewing distance.

"At least on Mac, performance suffers. The draw distance needs to be reduced from 256 to 128 to make it usable. I’m trying this on an M3 Max based MacBook Pro and the problem I’m having is that if I move around a lot (especially turning) the movement gets very, very choppy. PBR viewers. The frame rate is still high though. If I lower the draw distance from 256 to 128, things are somewhat okay."

Much faster. If you have any PBR tips and tutorials, please post them in the comments below!