Theater Setup PBR
Why use PBR in your theater?
Hello SL Performers and Venue Owners!
Since the latest crop of viewers have been released, we have both the creative opportunity and challenge of using more powerful lighting and color effects in performances. More realistic reflection effects, mirrors, and high dynamic range(HDR) all offer potential to enhance the visual look of a show if used well and if you have prepared your venue ahead of time. Likewise if you do not prepare your performance area, new SL content (clothes, objects, etc) that uses the new PBR materials may harm the look of your show. Luckily for us, the setup is not too difficult, read on!
What needs to be done in advance?
To take advantage of the new lighting and colors three things must be done:
- Adjust our viewer settings to enable to interesting options, while also avoiding buggy options.
- Adjust land EEPs to allow greater color/lighting range, possibly also adjusting darkness/lightness levels.
- Enclose our stages and performance spaces in a new type of invisible object called a "reflection probe".
This notecard attempts to help with the above three steps. This notecard provides simple viewer setup info, parcel environment (EEP)s suitable for theater use, and basic instructions on how to use the new reflections probes. There's also some minor examples at the end. To accomplish these steps you will need some familiarity with SL's build window and also be able to use the "About Land" window to set environments.
I do not pretend to have the best answers to all of the above points and this notecard is not a comprehensive tutorial. It is specifically to help theaters get up and running quickly. I'll keep this notecard updated as new information comes in, so please do check the date and ensure it is recent. I'll post updated notecards in the MetaHarpers Cabal community group, and also leave them in a box in the MetaHarpers Studio / Store.
Viewer Graphics Preference Suggestions
The following information is suggested for Firestorm 7.1.9 and newer. The Linden Labs official Second life Viewer, Alchemy Viewer, and other recent viewers that support the new PBR lighting features should also work similarly but you may have to click an "Advanced Settings..." button in the graphics preferences, in order to see all the PBR options.
It is not advisable at this time to turn on all the graphic options yet, even if you have the most premium PC. Some of the new options are still not complete and are known to cause crashes, visual glitches, and other kinds of instability. However many of the middle-options are safe and fast, even for most 10-year-old computers. Recommendations are to go into your viewer's Preferences / Graphics section and make some adjustments. I've included two options -- one for best speed and one for nicer graphics. These options both will allow use of the new PBR Materials objects with interesting lighting and color effects for performances.
BETTER SPEED, but still allow good stage effects:
UNCHECK [ ] "Transparent Water"
UNCHECK [ ] "Ambient Occlusion"
UNCHECK [ ] "Screen Space Reflections"
UNCHECK [ ] "Mirrors"
Set Shadows: "Sun/Moon + Projectors"
Set Reflection Detail: "Static & Dynamic"
Reflection Coverage: "Manual Only"
Point Lighting: "Full"
Draw Distance: 64-96m
Max Particle Count: 1024-4096
Max Number of Non-Imposter Avatars: 16-24
Maximum Complexity: No Limit
Post Process Quality: Low
Exposure: 1.0 **** See note below *****
Object & Sculpts LOD: 3.0
BETTER VISUALS, but still avoiding known visual glitches, crashes, and severe slowdowns
CHECK [X] "Transparent Water"
CHECK [X] "Ambient Occlusion"
UNCHECK [ ] "Screen Space Reflections"
UNCHECK [ ] "Mirrors" * See note below *
Set Shadows: "Sun/Moon + Projectors"
Set Reflection Detail: "Static & Dynamic"
Reflection Coverage: "Manual & Terrain"
Point Lighting: "Full"
Draw Distance: 64-256m
Max Particle Count: 2048-8192
Max Number of Non-Imposter Avatars: 24-nolimit
Maximum Complexity: No Limit
Post Process Quality: High
Exposure: 1.0 ** See note below ***
Object & Sculpts LOD: 3.0 - 4.0
** Special Note on "Exposure Value". It appears that this value defaults differently on different viewers, and many people adjust it to meet their personal tastes. Larger numbers will make your scene brighter, lower values will make it appear darker. Because there does not seem to be a default at this time, you will need to communicate with your partners, staff, friends, and guests what value they should all agree to use together.
* Special note on mirrors: Mirrors are cool but not advised for general use right now. There are known crashes, known visual artifacts, and known performance issues associated with them. So experiment but be very cautious about requiring them for events with many avatars present. It is expected this situation will improve as viewers update in the future.
Set up your Parcel Environment (EEP)
In the past, many performance spaces were often set to use the "Midnight" parcel EEP. However, this setting is not particularly friendly to new PBR effects such as reflections and dynamic color range. I've included a potential Midnight replacement in the "Get your stage ready for PBR" box at the MetaHarper store studio. It assumes that you have set your graphics settings "exposure" value to 1.0. You can use any other EEP you like, but strongly consider setting the "HDR Scale" to something other than 0.
Additionally for daylight use many people used the "CalWL" EEP to avoid shadows and keep a neutral ambient light tone. I've attempted to include a PBR replacement. Look for this in the "Get your stage ready for PBR" box at the MetaHarper store studio. You can use any other EEP you like, but strongly consider setting the "HDR Scale" to something other than 0.
You can make these EEPs your land parcel default by opening up the About Land window, navigating to the Environment tab, and dragging your EEP from inventory into the slots in the About Land window.
Enclose your stage or performance spaces in a new type of invisible object called a "reflection probe"
The new lighting and reflection system requires us to specify particular zones where we want to see reflections. This is especially useful for indoor spaces, where the interior of a room or theater should not contain reflections of the outdoors or sky. It is also useful for speed reasons, to avoid computing reflections of irrelevant distant objects.
To set up a refection zone or "reflection probe" in tech lingo, you can use the SL build window. The following covers a simple setup for a typical rectangular stage:
- Create a new plywood box prim. Change it's name to something like "theater reflection probe"
- Check the "phantom" object property so that it will not push avatars around.
- Move and resize your new prim so that it covers your entire stage or performance area. Try to get it fit as closely to the walls, ceiling, and floors as possible without cutting into them. Make double-certain that your refection probe does not touch the floor, ceiling, or walls.
- In your viewer pull down menus, activate "Build / Options / Select Reflection Probes".
- Edit your plywood box prim. In the "features" tab check [X] Reflection Probe. Your box will now become 100% transparent and phantom if it wasn't already. It can be seen and selected by using "show transparency", just like a normal invisible transparent object.
- In the build window features tab where you enabled the reflection probe, set the reflection probe type to "Box" and check the box for [x] "Dynamic".
That's it! You can now see interesting materials light reflections inside the zone defined by your new reflection probe. You may wish to avoid nesting reflection probes inside one another or using more than one at a time until you are comfortable with them. Other special notes:
- Double-check that your reflection probe does not touch your floor, this can cause issues.
- If you have an outdoor venue, next to the "[X] Reflection Probe" checkbox in the build window, change the probe type from box to spherical. It will usually give better results.. You may need to resize it to fit better after this change.
- If your stage area is too dark, you may wish to increase the "ambient" value of the reflection probe in the build window, next to the Reflection Probe checkbox. Higher values will add more artificial light. Also see the lighting section in step 5.0.
OPTIONAL! Look at how new materials textures look inside your reflection zone (aka Reflection Probe)
You may rez any reflective PBR-materials object move it inside the reflection probe you created in step 3. I've included an example cube in the "Get your venyue ready for PBR" box at the MetahHarper in-world studio. If all is set up correctly you should see some interesting reflections on the surface if you stand near it with a facelight or other light source. Here is a scene of this cube surrounded by colored flowers and point lights against a full bright backdrop
To use effects like this, drag new "Materials" inventory items into the build window's Texture / PBR tab for the object and face you want to texture. The old textures and old style materials: (diffuse, normal, specular) are now in a "Blinn-Phong" tab. Only one texture type (PBR or Blinn Phong) will be used at a time. If you specify textures in both the PBR and Blinn-Phong windows, the Blinn-Phong textures will only be used for older viewers that cannot render PBR.
To get the most out of reflections you will need some sources of light. The following can be used to see reflections:
Light from your chosen EEP: Typically these include light sources such as sun, moon, and ambiance.
- Point lights
- Projector lights
- Ambient light in reflection probes
- Fullbright objects
- Glow
- Other objects with the "emissive" light property.
OPTIONAL! Lighting your set
If you are using a dark EEP such as the midnight replacement in step 2.0, you may need to add lighting to your set.
- If you want to increase the overall amount of light, one simple way is to select your reflection probe you created in step 3 and use the build window to adjust the "Ambiance" value in the Features tab.
- For accent lighting you can use point and projector lights, just like in previous SL viewers. 'Point Lights' will illuminate in all directions like a light bulb, and 'projector lights' will shine a texture in a specific direction like a spotlight. You can find some basic lights in the "How to set up your venue for PBR" box at the MetaHarper Studio. If you use these example lights, you should set these to be transparent once they are moved into the desired position.
- Here's a picture that shows example point lights and projector spotlights shining down on the reflective floor:
- You may edit the light properties by using the build window / features tab.
- Lights can be stacked on top of each other to create brighter effects.
- For maximum compatibility and to avoid graphical glitches/flickering, try to avoid using more than 6 point lights in any given place. This includes avatar facelights, especially some particular facelights that might contain multiple point lights at once!
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: "Why am I seeing heavy glare from point light?"
Older, non-PBR materials now show more reflection glare. One long term solution is to replace the older blinn-phong (aka, old materials) textures with new materials textures, if you are able. Other quick fixes may be reducing point light strength, adjusting its glossiness and environment values, or giving the point light a lower luminosity color.
Q: "My stage is too light/too dark!"
First try using a lighter or darker EEP, or change the "ambiance" value in your stage's reflection probe. If these do not work, try adjusting your graphics preference "Exposure" setting but keep in mind you'll have to share your new value with all of your visitors and guests if you want them to see your land the same way you do.
Q: "I've tried using the "BETTER SPEED" viewer settings suggested in this notecard, but my viewer is running far slower than before and everything stutters."
First verify that your graphics settings really do match the "BETTER SPEED" suggestions, without anything else checked. Then, try asking your viewer support group for help, there are many common preventable reasons. Firestorm has a wiki of common issues here: https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/pbr_issues. If nothing else helps, the following may work for you (Firestorm only). In the Preferences / Graphics / Hardware Settings tag, check the [X] Override VRAM detection and set it to 3. Click [OK], and then restart the viewer. If this does not help you, undo these steps.
Q: "When I move my camera, I sometimes see brightness levels changing, especially if I am facing a bright light source such as the sun. Is this normal?"
Yes, this is the "high dynamic range" (HDR) feature at work. It generally improves the visual quality of a scene. If you wish to reduce the effect, one easy way is to use an EEP with a low "HDR Scale:" value such as 0.5 or lower.
Q: "The relections aren't updating smoothly, they seem to lag behind the motion of avatars and objects and it's making me ill. What can I do?"
By design, reflections are not computed as quickly as possible, because this could slow down your SL experience too much. However, if you do want to try it and see if it improves your results, go to your viewer's graphic preferences and change "Reflection Detail" to "Realtime".
More Resources
- Second Life Official: PBR Materials
- Firestorm Viewer Official: PBR
- https://sanctuarydfae.wordpress.com/pbr-101/
Credits
Special Thanks to: Lilith Lupindo, chrybld Scribe, Vicki Brandenburg, Tozh Taurog, Candace Kuhn, Fukuju Amaterasu, FifiBlackHeartOh, Virginia Stella, Beq Janus and the Firestorm Support Team.
- Arrehn Oberlander & MetaHarpers