One thing I’ve noticed is that PBR doesn’t work with Voxel lighting such as point and spot lights, whilst it works with the sun (shadowmap). Are we going to be getting a build in the (near?) future that has shadowmapping enabled for point lights?
Also will we be getting a specular map feature?
So I’ve been tinkering around with some other developers regarding the character controllers and saw a small improvement in applying velocity to the characters. however I personally don’t like how unrealistic the physics applies and i am aware that the new character controller is still in beta.
the changes are significantly improved.
It’s a slight improvement but it still seems fairly unrealistic to me (unless i am missing something), and for me as a person that works a lot with physics this is annoying, I would’ve expected it give it a more realistic curve like so:
this curve was made possible due to platform stand which disables all physics related to the character’s input. but you don’t always want to have the player unable to move around while in the air after being launched for example.
Honestly the character controller could be better regarding velocity, but that’s my opinion and feedback on it for the future.
Tested the mesh deformation with a scientist model from Half-Life lol.
SurfaceAppearances works amazingly, I’m happy to see Roblox take on the physics-based approach to lighting as environment diffuse & specular properties also play a new part in rendering. Having played with it a little, I’ve got a few questions for the future of the new object (I apologize if any of these have been explained already, I’m still trying to catch up with all the news):
Is someone able to explain the TexturePack property, whether or not it’s important? I’ve tried to find out myself but SurfaceAppearance isn’t documented as a new API.
Will SurfaceAppearances eventually have tile properties or stud scaling?
Will the Color (or BrickColor) of a base part affect the color of the albedo? I sort of expected custom PBR’s to behave like existing Materials, especially with the ability to modify their color in realtime.
EDIT: to clarify, it is possible to have a base part colored SurfaceAppearance by NOT setting an albedo, I hope it’s possible for it to affect the values of an existing albedo in the future.
Lastly, does this mean anything for the possibility of reflection probes? They were demoed as a hack week project not too long ago, but as with all those demos they can never be expected as features. Seeing as Roblox is continuously improving its lighting, I’m a little more hopeful for its potential addition.
I’m a little confused with how these SurfaceAppearances work:
I barely notice a difference with or without normal / roughness maps…
I’m also wondering: will there be Displacement Map & Ambient Occlusion support?
Edit: This is a strong change!! I’m really excited! Also interested to know what the …
… means. 
The effectiveness of a PBR material depends on how detailed the maps are, if you’re using something rather flat (normals) and either fully matte or fully metal (metalness) it probably won’t seem much more than a regular texture. Try modifying the MetalnessScale and RoughnesScale, too. But if you’re having technical problems, I could maybe help if you’d be able to describe any issues.
I’m also hoping for height maps and possibly AO maps, but I’m not too concerned if the former isn’t possible on the engine yet, though I imagine the latter ought to be.
Be sure to read this to get metal to work:
It appears this build doesn’t even have the properties mentioned in that reply 
Even using the command bar to run these commands doesn’t do anything:
Lighting.EnvironmentDiffuseScale = 1
Lighting.EnvironmentSpecularScale = 1
Edit: It throws an error though…
10:21:14.572 - Lighting.EnvironmentDiffuseScale = 1:1: attempt to index nil with 'EnvironmentDiffuseScale'
10:21:14.572 - Stack Begin
10:21:14.573 - Script 'Lighting.EnvironmentDiffuseScale = 1', Line 1
10:21:14.574 - Stack End
Edit2: Whoops I’m stupid… Forgot it needs game. haha!
Ah, be sure to type game. Lighting.EnvironmentDiffuseScale = 1, etc.
They are existing properties of game.Lighting, but hidden for some reason.
Still no luck… The lighting changed a little, but it did not affect the Normal Map anyhow.
The Normal Map is quite detailed so I’m confused.
Are you open to sharing the image / asset ID? This is a map I’m testing with, normal maps should generally appear like this:
I’m able to see it if the SurfaceAppearance is applied to a regular Part:
What I believe is going wrong is the way the SurfaceAppearances is being mapped to the Mesh, it is supported but I’ve seen a few other people having issues with Mesh mapping. I don’t fully understand the mapping of SA’s to meshes, but at the very least it doesn’t work with all of them.
I take it the texture on that tree is already part of the mesh and not the albedo of a SurfaceAppearance?
I have very very high hopes for new the character controllers - Humanoids are one of the most limiting aspects of development 
No, I did put it in the Albedo of the SurfaceAppearance.
Edit: Yea appears it does only work on parts… 
Okay, so having tested more UV mapped meshes it seems several maps including normals just don’t work on meshes at the moment, even when albedo works fine.
Probably should’ve tried to find this first, this issue report on the GitHub seems to confirm the problem: https://github.com/Roblox/avatar-evolution/issues/8
I have this problem when i open Roblox Beta Studio can someone help me understand why?
Uptade: its because you cant use roblox studio beta with ancient place. Create a new place for test Beta.
Drew some quick normals/specular on one of my models and 
its so GOOD
Absolutely insane, these updates are going to change Roblox a lot.
Finally a change to Humanoids… well overdue.
That is a sight I never thought possible in Roblox. How far behind Meshs were in Roblox had left me using Unreal with Roblox as a hobby, but with this moving into production next year, I expect to pull my focus right onto Roblox. Thank you Roblox staff. Very exciting update, I much prefer RStudio over any other Development Suite so the idea that roblox is really catching up in terms of rendering, animation and more with the big indie players is an exciting prospect.
Does that mean that the roblox avatars will now use a single mesh instead of multiple body parts?
