Kitely and OpenSim mentioned on Fast Company

[Koshari Mahana]

Yay! I was waiting for the link to the video so I could tweet it from the new account. Thank you so much!

Virtual World Coaching Academy interviewed me about the emerging metaverse and its effects on society, viable business models for the metaverse, the problems with relying on NFTs to solve IP ownership issues, and more.

f you have a LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook account then please Like, reshare and/or comment on these:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ilantoch ... 43360-dgzB

https://twitter.com/Kitely/status/1497016276996304898

https://www.facebook.com/ilan.tochner/p ... 5493640270

[Christine Nyn]

The norm is that what happens in SL happens at opensims, in terms of features.... /snip/ one of the features is PBR, that alone will improve visuals greatly.. then once that happens they port it to opensim...

In case anyone is wondering what PBR is you might like to visit this website:

https://thegraphicassembly.com/best-web ... -textures/

[Koshari Mahana]

Thank you!

In case anyone is wondering what PBR is you might like to visit this website:

https://thegraphicassembly.com/best-web ... -textures/

[Dante d'Este]

Great responses and insight Ilan ..thankyou !

[Ada Radius]

PBR is a little different in OSSL viewers than it is in Blender or other VR platforms. A lot is possible, but might need some re-configuring of the texture elements. For example, inworld we can use the alpha channel of a diffuse texture map, set to Emissive, to manipulate glow. Which is a bizarre way of storing the information, but makes for some very cool effects. There is information here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Material_Data

Kayaker and I started teaching this, this morning at his classes on his ranch at Discovery grid.

my evolving notes, somewhat based on the SL WIki:

DIFFUSE MAP
Also sometimes called color map. Albedo maps are similar. Ambient occlusion (shadowing) can be baked in, not necessary for systems that can handle advanced lighting.
If the Diffuse map has an alpha channel:
ALPHA MODE
None: Alpha channel data is not used
Blended or transparency: 255 = opaque, 0 = fully transparent)
Alpha Mask (cutoff): The pixel value (0...255) in the alpha channel is compared to the Alpha Cutoff parameter. If the pixel is greater than the cutoff, it is fully opaque; if not, it is fully transparent.
Emissive: the alpha channel value affects how bright the color pixel appears in ambiant light. 0 = no additional ambiance (default); 255 = full brightness. Use with the Glow setting in the texture panel.


NORMAL MAP
OpenGL style normal maps, X+, Y+, Z+: green is up and red is right, for each pixel on the surface.
The normal map in OSSL can have an alpha channel which affects specular value - multiplied by the Glossiness paramater in the Specular Map slot. Higher values will make specular highlights that are brighter and tighter.
If you use another kind of map in this slot, the black and white values will be picked up by the viewer to make some shadowing, kind of an ambient occlusion effect.

SPECULAR MAP
The specular slot uses black (non reflective) and white (reflective) grayscale values to affect shininess, plus any color in the map will affect the reflected color. And/or add color in the color channel in that slot. If you have a roughness map from a pack you downloaded from the many texture websites, you can invert it to make a specular map.

In OSSL the specular map can have an alpha channel to affect environment intensity. A darker value in the alpha channel will reduce the impact of the environment map reflections on the surface of the object.

Environment Intensity modulates the intensity of the environment on the surface as a whole.

Glossiness controls the “glossiness”, or the roughness, of the reflected light on a surface. The lower this value is, the “rougher” the light reflectance is, while the higher the value the “sharper” the light reflectance is. When the normal map’s alpha channel is present, the specular exponent map contained in it is modulated by this parameter. The alpha channel in the diffuse map, if set to Emissive, can control the areas where we want glow.

ALL MAPS
Positioning & Scaling Properties
Each image (diffuse/texture, normal map, specular map) has its own values for these parameters.
Mapping
Default or Planar
Horizontal Repeats
number of repeats of the image over the surface (used only in default mapping)
Vertical Repeats
number of repeats of the image over the surface (used only in default mapping)
Rotation
clockwise degrees the image is rotated
Repeats Per Meter
number of repeats of the image per in-world meter of the surface (used only in planar mapping)
Horizontal Offset
distance in meters the image is shifted right on the surface
Vertical Offset
distance in meters the image is shifted up on