Indoor Dynamic Environment Maps Beta

[A_SquaredAnimations]

Continuation of these posts: (you know this update is bad when a person has to do 3 rant posts about it.)

Indoor Dynamic Environment Maps Beta

This is a continuation of a previous reply: Update on Roblox screwing over reflections: They’ve made it so reflections are no longer anchored to a single part of a room, but rather relative to your camera. Goodness gracious… Let me explain the reason why Roblox did this, and why no one likes it. By default the Roblox engine has your character moving pretty slow so walking from room to room should take a while, right? Then that means that the reflections should have time to update and correct…

and

Indoor Dynamic Environment Maps Beta

This update is 1 step in the right direction… and about 4 steps backwards. I understand that this is a beta and things are bound to change, but this has me upset about a few things. Indoor Environment Maps, which is just a fancy word for CubeMap reflections, only work under certain conditions. The calculations of weather or not a part will reflect its surroundings is based on AI, rather than giving full control to the developer, which is one of the many flaws of Roblox: not allowing the user f…

With that out of the way, the future of this update is looking very bad.

• Reflections = Global Illumination apparently. smh

@ConvexRumbler

What is it then?
This could be viewed as a first step of FIB4 - global illumination. We are improving the specular indoor reflection for metallic objects. (all of the objects actually! But metallic really benefits from it)

Global Illumination is great and can really improve graphical fidelity on many games, but EnvMaps are an awful way to do it. (I’m done sugar coating my replies because of how many flaws I’ve seen.) These are relative to the orientation of your camera (not position) and can cause distortion and discoloring when you walk from room to room. Global Illumination and reflections are similar, but still have differences, and trying to use reflections as pseudo GI is a horrible idea. The system used to decide to create a new EnvMap just makes it look even worse.

Example:

Indoor Dynamic Environment Maps Beta

Yeah hey Roblox, a way to disable this would be appreciated. It seems a lot of people aren’t feeling it, and unless you do real-time reflections(which for understandable reasons can’t happen, at least not for now) it seems it wont be good enough for a lot of people either. This should 100% be something we can disable should we see fit because I don’t want it either. I have a hallway of different kinds of metals (sci-fi hallway) that can be bright or dark(intended) depending where i walk and how …

This could be a bit better if Roblox allowed for parallax correction on these EnvMaps, but it still would look a bit jarring.

• This is a very, very, bad idea.

@ConvexRumbler

In future we want to have a very robust system in which you won’t even need to think about probes. Lighting will just work. It will take a while to get there. In the meantime we want to start with this system: one probe and automatic placement.

“automatic placement.” I’m worried because since Roblox prioritizes performance over quality, this could mean that we’re going to only have probes with similar features to what we have now (no parallax correction, slow updating time, poor quality, etc) that affects every single object. This also could mean that it’s still applied on every surface, which I’ve explained in detail why this is will make indoors look absolutely horrendous in my 2 previous replies.

• Why do we need to turn up EnvironmentDiffuse/SpecularScale?

@ConvexRumbler

Since Roblox started supporting PBR materials, we have been using the skybox for information on how reflections should look and the sliders in Lighting ( EnvironmentDiffuseScale and EnvironmentSpecularScale ) control the amount of indirect lighting received by objects in the scene.

Why can we have some sort of reflective property that doesn’t need the Environmental Specular and Diffuse scale cranked all the way up? There is literally no reason for this to be tied to either scale, and it’s especially annoying when thin walls.
Default skybox with EnvironmentalDiffuse/SpecularScale set to 1, with 1 stud thick walls. Awful.

• We only get 1 EnvMap
  If you’re only going to give us 1 EnvMap, we might as well use the skybox for reflections in interior showcases seeing as we have much more control over them than we do with this update. Literally, CloneTrooper1019’s skybox reflections are better than this update because they are subtle and update based on triggers and not some system that has trouble finding where the center of a room is.

@Maximum_ADHD 's game:

Dr. Kleiner's Lab

• Skybox color and reflections affect Indoor EnvMaps
  This further emphasizes the fact that this does not need reflections to be tied to EnvironmentalDiffuse/SpecularScale. Notice how the object is well underground and away from the ceiling.
  Pic from @amer_thel
  

• Stop keeping customization and flexibility out of our reach

@ConvexRumbler

In future, we would like to create a system that would place “just the right amount” of probes in the world automatically for the creator.

Giving us an cool update with tons of potential to enhance the graphics, experience, and immersion of games but only giving us the option to enable it, is like taking a kid to a theme park and not letting him go on any rides. I said it before to give more control to developers and ease up on restrictions. If you’re so worried about performance, just create a system that will disable probes after a certain amount of probes are visible and if it’s far enough away. If you want to go further, just use CubeMaps of nearby reflective surfaces.

There’s so many things that is bad about this update that I think I can safely say I hate it. I don’t hate the addition of reflections to Roblox, but I despise the restrictions, the unnecessary things we need to enable to actually have them, the quality, the system used to judge reflections, the lack of control, and the reason why it’s being added: to fake global illumination. Reflections are relative, if you move from one spot to another, reflections move and warp accordingly. Global Illumination on the other hand is mostly static, if not completely static. For a multi-billion company who had the resources to implement real-time reflections 2 years ago, and this is what they had to show for it now? I’ve gotta say, I’m pretty disappointed.

EDIT: I am sorry to any Roblox Staff I have offended who are working on this current update or any additions/features/etc., that I have mentioned in my replies. I originally thought that Roblox had been working on this for quite some time, but it never occurred to me that this update might have been because Roblox needed to implement more features because it just opened to investors. I am sorry for being insensitive and ignorant to the fact that these updates take time, resources, and patience. I also apologize for expecting so much of a Phase 1 Beta and from a few developers. It never occurred to me that there could be a small team working on this within very strict parameters of the Roblox Engine. Big thanks to CloneTrooper1019 for providing insight and and letting me know that what I did was very over the top and unnecessary. I may not be pleased with the current state of this update, but that doesn’t mean I should be a complete pessimist and lash out to anyone working on this. Huge respect to the staff members working on IndoorEnvMaps and to CloneTrooper1019.

[Maximum_ADHD]

You seem kind of upset… are you okay? Who hurt you?

I agree with the sentiment that we should have more manual control over this feature rather than having Roblox automate it. Would be nice if we could provide manual hints for where we would like the cubemap to be centered at, in case room detection isn’t adequate enough.

But regarding the quality of the effect, do understand this is a small quality of life enhancement in the grand scheme of things, being worked on by… at most a couple rendering engineers, within the confines of the current rendering pipeline, and it’s likely in it’s early stages. It is not set in stone final that it will forever look like this.

The hysterical tone you’re using here makes me think you believe they poured several months of time and ALL of their available engineering resources into the problem. Throwing around the value of the company has been, and always will be counter-productive. It’s a balance of time, demand, resources, and the scalability of the engine. You have to be patient with these things.

Just because they had a hackweek demo of reflection probes does not mean it was a feature that they could ship. Future is bright was in the works for years after we saw the initial hackweek demo for it, and the prototype builds that were released showed how experimental and quirky the settings were at that point.

Just learn to have some respect, you aren’t the one on the backend working on these shaders and you can’t attest to the complexity of what they’re doing.

[NEWeggscitement (typeable)]

I actually have to agree with you here. Roblox’s Envmaps aren’t really effective for something like global illumination. What’s worse is that if you move a part in studio and look at it through the Envmap, it just fades out to the position it was placed afterwards. The fading is a bad sign of this. I feel that having more options for these Envmaps similar to the reflection probes in the Unity engine would be better. Unity even has DirectX12 support (unraytraced if you’d like), so it’s a better engine for graphics and all that. Added bonus: You won’t have to deal with any moderators deleting your PBR assets because they are “inappropriate” to the bots and you don’t have to follow these rules on the Unity engine. I feel Unity is giving more freedom than Roblox is at this point. Sure, Roblox is adding these things now and is getting to be showcased properly half of the time if we’re not talking about front page games like “Adopt Me!” or “Brookhaven RP”, but they aren’t adding customization nor are they adding good default options for them. Unity even allows you to make things only cast the shadow without rendering the actual thing itself. This is very useful, especially for first person games, I don’t understand why Roblox hasn’t added this yet.

[NEWeggscitement (typeable)]

@A_SquaredAnimations

Why can we have some sort of reflective property that doesn’t need the Environmental Specular and Diffuse scale cranked all the way up? There is literally no reason for this to be tied to either scale, and it’s especially annoying when thin walls.
Default skybox with EnvironmentalDiffuse/SpecularScale set to 1, with 1 stud thick walls. Awful.

I had the same problem in my horror game that I’m currently working on, had to make some big parts to prevent that and made a black skybox for it too.

[BuilderityDev (builderity)]

from: me
to: whoever updated this thing

thank you my stuff looks so much better now

[PeZsmistic]

With this in mind, please consider this feature request. These would be a much more powerful alternative to the old reflectance property.

Properties to control intensity of material diffuse, normal, and reflectance

As a Roblox developer, it is currently impossible to adjust the strength of individual maps of materials on parts. If I could adjust the strength of material maps (diffuse, normal, reflection / metalness, roughness, normal), I would be able to simulate wetness and achieve other creative effects, hugely boosting the range of creative possibilities for me as a developer. Users have also been asking for a way to control material intensity, but suggestions have been lackluster, insufficient, or ne…

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As an aside, I’ve thought about this for a little while and I do think that most of the comments about this feature being automated are coming from doomthink, perhaps partially with respect to the same automation-first principle applying for other aspects of the platform. Roblox is trying to automate too much which I definitely agree with (this is probably why Humanoids incessantly try to climb absolutely everything and we cannot control it…), but with respect to this feature in particular, automating this is a great timesaver for developers. The reality is that after sufficient polish, the majority of players will simply not notice any hiccups this system generates, and it will very much improve the appearance of games.

That said, there are of course issues with it currently that people have also brought up, e.g. transitions being too slow, reflectors being visible in themselves, ugly low resolution reflections on flat surfaces, etc.

I personally do not like how transitions between probe positions in two different rooms seem to be very slow; in this video you can see a strong green underglow on most metal parts in the second room and it takes a few seconds and some dancing to see it change.

anonymous

Also, you can see something especially weird here: the tunnel spontaneously gets brighter when you stand in a bright room, which is the opposite effect you’d get in real life e.g. standing in the sun and looking into a cave, and also ruins the atmosphere I’m going for.

anonymous

Dreams

[KristinaMoment (Kristina)]

I also noticed yesterday that when I was flying around in a new showcase of mine, the Envmaps were constantly changing. There’s almost no reflective surfaces (mostly concrete), yet it’s changing to white, it really shouldn’t do.

[TheUniversalUnionCMB (Allessio)]

It’s because this is supposed to just make metal objects indoors look better, not add actual reflections.

[tryler2 (ARTBLOX)]

@ConvexRumbler I just notice there some changes of the Indoor Environment Maps, And I really don’t like it at all.

[vrs2210]

Woah Woah Woah, the before pictures don’t even look Roblox! But yeah I can clearly see the issue, it darkens and removes detail

[mastops12]

I have the same problem in some of my interiors

[NEWeggscitement (typeable)]

Had the same problem… I think Roblox should revert back to the original ones.

[kickedbyconsole]

It would be nice if we could tweak the Indoor- and Outdoor Specular & Diffuse. My game heavily relies on Environment- DiffuseScale and SpecularScale for outdoor areas, as a result the game will look bad if I lower those values.

Here is a good example:

With the current beta the Environment- DiffuseScale and SpecularScale also regulates those values for indoor areas, which results in unwanted results as can be seen here:

I hope this will be considered, or at least some system that allows for tweaking the indoor env. maps.

[mosyed7 (BigMo)]

This is the next level of realism into Roblox studio. This would give a cutting edge for roblox’s modern slogan “into the metaverse” to be really showing and more realism is pretty cool that is being added into Roblox!

[richdefentt (RichestBuilder)]

Does work In game? I don’t think it does

[Oseday]

@PeZsmistic

The reality is that after sufficient polish, the majority of players will simply not notice any hiccups this system generates, and it will very much improve the appearance of games.

That’s never going to happen. This was an awful decision.

[TooIGame (Michael)]

yeah it is a beta feature on studio only

[ISpy_DeveloperPie]

I heavily agree with this. They practically ruined the entire thing and when we wanted it to change the devs just brushed us off as if our opinions on something WE are using are meaningless.

[nakoyasha (Haruka)]

@NEWeggscitement

You won’t have to deal with any moderators deleting your PBR assets because they are “inappropriate” to the bots and you don’t have to follow these rules on the Unity engine. I feel Unity is giving more freedom than Roblox is at this point

Friendly reminder that Unity is a game engine. Not a game platform, you have to find another platform (eg. Steam, itch.io, etc) to publish your game on or have the download for it on your website.

[NEWeggscitement (typeable)]

I agree too. I actually switched to Unity after getting fed up from Roblox Studio crashes, moderation deleting things that were for stupid reasons, and Unity gives me more freedom in general. Unity has not only Baked cubemaps, but also REAL TIME! And you can CUSTOMIZE them? Not only that but it even has REAL VOLUMETRIC LIGHTING? A-WHAAAAA? All seriousness, I’ve quit Roblox game development. I am now working on the game I was working on that was in Roblox Studio, but now I’m recreating it in Unity and releasing it as a Unity game. The planned Roblox release will be cancelled. Sorry. Unity was just better in every way. It’s easier to play animations in the code when you want to, but without a bunch of errors showing up. Only cons? Well… If you’re switching, you’ll need to learn C#.