Lighting practices in the PBR age?

[Grey Mars]

By now the dust has settled a bit on the PBR roll outs and updates, and it's all feeling very smooth and nice. I decided to make a small store update, and three weeks later I have an entirely new sprawling store build. Gotta love that SL project creep... Anyway, what are the current tips on using lights inside a build? How many are still to many? (based on a look at the firestorm preferences, the number is higher than I thought, but still...) Do lights not currently rendered on screen still cause frame drag? Are combined light/reflection probes a good idea? For that matter, is there even a need for explicitly setting reflection probes outside of something that has a lot of actual mirror-like surface?

In a somewhat related question, FOR THE LOVE OF WHATEVER THEY HOLD HOLY, WHEN IS PLANAR ALIGNMENT ON PBR TEXTURES GOING TO WORK??????

 

[Grey Mars]

In the absence of advice from those who are far more up to date than I am, I'll share what I've turned up on my own. Computer is a fairly beefy laptop, running the current version of Firestorm.

Point lighting is still the way to go, though that's a rather 'duh' moment. I've tried to keep it under 6 lights visible at any one time. I could have potentially gone with less, but I'm playing with a lot of shadows for effect. Were I not a lazy bum, I could have rendered all the shadow effects and made mesh out of absolutely everything, buuuuuuuuuuuut... Seems like they have some kind of imposter like situations for lighting that's a ways off. This is good. In some of the pics below you can see the actual shadowing, some with distance lighting effects that are just quick done.

PBR materials continue to be awesome when done well. They also continue to not be able to be aligned on a series of planar faces with the built-in tools. While it's irritating me to the nth degree, I'm still not going to manually pick at it over a very large build like this. Why is this still not fixed on any browser? It's a huge deal for large scale building. I am obviously missing some issue that makes it's harder to fix that it seems.

Letting the browser just to it's own automated reflect probe stuff seems fine, though nothing currently present requires mirror like reflections. Maybe when I get around to a PBR rework of "Carnal Mirror"...

Overall, I love the change from windlight to EEP, but the learning curve for getting just exactly what I wanted was a bit painful. The wiki continues to be incomplete for what a chunk of the settings actually do. If anything. Moisture level? Droplet Radius? Ice Level? I'm just not seeing it do anything.

Flickr link to some photos. (caution, might be some bare skin!) https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBQjm2

Anyway, still hoping for those with more experience to share!

 

[Free]

PBR materials continue to be awesome when done well.

Yeah. Though personally, I'm already tired of shiny jeans.

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

It looks very good!

I think reflection probes are a must, personally -- they just make PBR look better, and the difference between the lighting in interior and exterior spaces is much more interesting and dramatic when they're used well. They also, I think, give you a bit more control over what people actually see if they are using some godawful old EEP like Calw . . . whatever it's called. The ones that remove shadows and are hideously overbright. They are very popular, and can completely wash out an interior if there's no reflection probe.

Point lights are undoubtedly the most "friendly" way to go, although I've been experimenting with using multiple projectors in a gallery setting I'm playing with. It looks good -- but almost certainly is more straining.

Are you using back-up Blinn-Phong materials too? Or just counting on people updating? (I suspect in your shoes I'd be doing the latter.)

The Wiki page on EEP is indeed utterly useless, but Jenna Huntsman's page has a few useful tips for PBR, and I think Firestorm did a page on modifying EEP for PBR too, although it was somewhat controversial. You can also check out these, although I'd reject any advice that involves reducing exposure.



I'm a photographer rather than a builder, so I have much more limited experience than you undoubtedly do on applying PBR materials (although I do build my own backdrops, and use PBR for those) -- scaling using PBR is a major pain in the ass because you can't tile by stretching, but I haven't experience the issue you describe with planar mesh surfaces. I'll have to experiment.

 

[Grey Mars]

It looks very good!

I think reflection probes are a must, personally -- they just make PBR look better, and the difference between the lighting in interior and exterior spaces is much more interesting and dramatic when they're used well. They also, I think, give you a bit more control over what people actually see if they are using some godawful old EEP like Calw . . . whatever it's called. The ones that remove shadows and are hideously overbright. They are very popular, and can completely wash out an interior if there's no reflection probe.

I'll have to take another look at the reflection probes now that there are not 5 other irons in the fire, plus being settled on the skylights and such. As I get more PBR metals on display, it will likely be something I should get comfortable with anyway!

Point lights are undoubtedly the most "friendly" way to go, although I've been experimenting with using multiple projectors in a gallery setting I'm playing with. It looks good -- but almost certainly is more straining.

D'oh! I meant to say that I'm using projectors. It SHOULD be less intensive on resources I think, due to less area being lit per light? I could easily be wrong there. It is at least easier to get a very nice result with a projector.

Are you using back-up Blinn-Phong materials too? Or just counting on people updating? (I suspect in your shoes I'd be doing the latter.)

Yes....ish. Till I can find a toggle on/off for pbr I can't guaranty I haven't missed large swaths of plywood, but I have tried to leave the textures and such of the old store under the shiny new pbr paint job. While pbr IS the future, there are always going to be hold outs, folks with barely usable rigs, etc. It's also worth mentioning the current SL mobile client LL is putting out does not do pbr the last I checked.

The Wiki page on EEP is indeed utterly useless, but Jenna Huntsman's page has a few useful tips for PBR, and I think Firestorm did a page on modifying EEP for PBR too, although it was somewhat controversial. You can also check out these, although I'd reject any advice that involves reducing exposure.

I'll have to check these. For me what worked was carefully adjusting ambient color and sun color, with a slight ambient boost in the projectors as well. Very tiny adjustments seem to go a long way currently. #4d4c4b ambient with a #53524d sun ends up being the sweet spot for the build style I'm using. (Assuming it looks the same on other people's screens, I STILL can't get my wife to check the build out on her machine. Sigh.)

I'm a photographer rather than a builder, so I have much more limited experience than you undoubtedly do on applying PBR materials (although I do build my own backdrops, and use PBR for those) -- scaling using PBR is a major pain in the ass because you can't tile by stretching, but I haven't experience the issue you describe with planar mesh surfaces. I'll have to experiment.

Hum, I've had great luck just leaving "Stretch Textures" off once I have a scale set. With the large planar mapping and alignment, you can get a perfect visual join between prims in Blinn-Phong. That's what I miss in PBR. The controls are there, they just don't do anything still. I'm mostly using prims instead of mesh for the large non-nature build elements, so that could be our difference too.

Thank you for sharing!