Ability to bundle Blinn-Phong textures as materials the same way PBR is
Jade Nova
Since PBR came out, I've essentially been almost PBR-exclusive with my store creations, mainly because PBR is just so much easier to work with for texture HUDs than Blinn-Phong (aka non-PBR textures, classic textures, legacy textures, traditional textures, etc). Part of this is because all of the textures involved are bundled into materials that are a single object with all of the settings saved rather than having to put everything in manually like non-PBR.
It would really help creators offer both options and cut down workload by a TON if we could also bundle blinn-phong textures as materials. I don't know about other stores but I like to really tweak the specular settings and often the specular colors as well for metallic and generally more realistic effects rather than leaving everything white for all colors, and coding that into the HUD is fankly, a gigantic pain in the ass. Even if they were called something different like texture bundle or something to avoid confusion for people who sell them and to differentiate in our inventories that would be fine. I know we would not be able to upload them together the same way as PBR because it involves separate files, but there's no reason we shouldn't be able to create the material in-world manually on a cube or something and save it the same way.
Bonus if double-sided can be an option for blinn-phong too! It would cut down on geometry needed on a mesh if we don't want it to be one-sided since we could simply check that on like on PBR materials, rather than needing to solidify a mesh (and essentially double its geometry) in order to get the same look.
PLEASE let us manually create blinn-phong material bundles that include diffuse, normal, specular, alpha, glow, shininess, environment, shine color, full bright, and blending mode settings. It would make the jobs of creators working with blinn-phong in any capacity much easier, coding HUDs would be easier, and if double-sided can be an option it would also cut down on mesh complexity since people wouldn't need to solidify or fake edges on their meshes to hide that it's just a plane.
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Allegory Malaprop
Ha, and I'd love the opposite, for PBR textures to work more consistently and efficiently NOT bundled into an asset, because i can't automate making assets. (It's possible to not bundle them, yeah, but it's not good, so I have to spend hours bundling everything up and ugh, i can script up the set so much faster with Blinn-Phong).
But aside from personal preferences- and for me it's the ability to script for a HUD that makes my life SO much easier than having to manually package each asset (also why clothing layers make my life miserable)- LL appears to be trying to phase out Blinn-Phong textures entirely (for some good reasons- I still don't think PBR is entirely compatible with the way SL works, but it is a more modern and efficient system), so I wouldn't expect improvements. Of course, trying to discontinue them when you have a new official viewer that requires them is, uh, kind of a problem? but mobile cares not for anything beyond the basics, so you don't need to wrap in your materials.
p.s. You aren't saving any mesh complexity by ticking double sided in the material. You ARE doubling up the geometry in SL the same as if you did it in the model itself before upload- ALL of the geometry and not selecting out the parts that are necessary and skipping that which isn't- and it is just as bad for load so you'd better NEED all of that geometry in either case (and possibly worse, because you're also doubling it up at every LOD whether it needs it or not). Skipping back faces that can be skipped, in both ways, is always good policy, so you aren't lagging everyone around you out.
Rheia Silvercloud
Another answer to this would be to allow the inclusion of a specular map as an optional texture alongside the existing PBR workflow, thus allowing the diffuse tint to affect reflections, etc.
squidpaladin Resident
I am no expert on this, but I don't believe that's possible.
Anastacia Bloodrose
I want double sided always!
It's such a pain in the neck to buy something and then realize it's not totally double side textured. The worst is clothing, when inside is partly transparent instead of textured. I always thought that was laziness from sellers who go for the fast buck instead of customer satisfaction.
Cooter Coorara
There is a free tool named "GLTF Packer" that you can download. It will pack your diffuse, normal, and specular maps into a PBR material. I've been using it since PBR came to SL. It works great.
Cube Republic
Also how much easier it is to script in one UUID. But I think with the shift to gLTF the ability to use bliinn phong will be void but I might be wrong.