7.0.0.577610 - Second Life Project GLTF PBR Materials


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Release Notes

GLTF Materials Project

Please note that this feature is currently an early Alpha Project stage and only available for use on our Beta grid (Aditi) and then only on specific regions:

Refer to the “Known Issues” section for more information.

Second Life is excited to expand material support with the ability to import and edit GLTF Physically Based Rendering (PBR) Materials. This format is a widely supported open standard for 3D content creation and transmission. By adopting the GLTF PBR material standard, Second Life can provide interoperability with industry standard content creation tools such as Blender and Adobe Substance Painter, and can guarantee consistent visual results between third party tools and in-world Second Life experiences. For a list of tools and libraries that support GLTF, see https://github.khronos.org/glTF-Project-Explorer/

Note that for this release Second Life will support GLTF PBR materials only. This is the first step into what will eventually become a robust GLTF enabled toolchain.

The GLTF was created by the Khronos Group https://www.khronos.org/, a standards body responsible for many open standards such as OpenGL, OpenXR, Vulkan, and many others. They are a great resource for learning more about how to create assets and offer recurring webinars and classes. Notably, they have a Nov. 3rd GLTF asset creation webinar https://www.khronos.org/events/how-do-we-solve-the-challenges-of-gltf-asset-creation

Reflection Probes

One of the requirements for high quality PBR materials is Image Based Lighting (IBL). IBL, as the name implies, uses images of the environment to produce realistic reflections and lighting. These images are automatically generated on demand through the use of Reflection Probes. While Reflection Probes are automatically placed in-world near objects and terrain, probes must be manually placed to achieve the best visual results.

How do they work? Watch this space in future GLTF release notes for informational links!

Reflection Probes will also replace the legacy reflection map that’s applied to shiny/glossy objects with reflections from the environment. While this allows legacy content to exist seamlessly alongside PBR enabled content, this will change the appearance of legacy content. Users can opt-out of this new look by disabling reflections in advanced preferences.

Linear Color Space

In order to be compliant with the GLTF specification and conform to industry norms, alpha blending and atmospherics have been moved from sRGB Color Space to Linear Color Space. Expect some generally subtle but sometimes not so subtle differences in rendering of transparent objects and application of atmospheric effects.

Improved VRAM Utilization

In order to better facilitate the increased number of textures associated with GLTF PBR materials, improvements have been made to the viewer texture streaming and VRAM utilization. Textures should load more quickly and should downres less often, and Second Life should make full use of available VRAM.

We Need Your Help

We want to be able to get GLTF materials out the door faster and we need your help to make sure we don’t break Second Life in the process!

Please file any bug reports in our official Jira and first, review the currently open issues to avoid any duplicate reports. https://jira.secondlife.com

Known Issues:
The following are known issues that will be addressed before a full release:

Resolved Issues