TL:DR Variations of materials, have new and old materials simulatenously.
Genuinely curious if anyone has suggested material variations, rather than simply replacing materials over and over throughout the years? I’m too lazy to dive into the comments before this and see if it was suggested, but if it was can someone just reply to this and reroute me to it? Is it wrong to have several variations of one material, as in for example wooden planks. To have the old version of the wooden planks and the new ones simultaneously. Just expanding the material inventory rather than redoing it.
I understand that the new PBR system in place would allow users to simply just create their own versions of textures, rather than deal with Roblox’s. At the same time although there’s a large chunk of developers that don’t have the ability to do so. Not only that but doing a change this large will just simply deconstruct and ruin the environmental design people have created using the previous materials, for example Liam Hutch (@LMH_Hutch) above stated how much it affects his games design. It’s as simple as that, variations.
I personally like this solution the best, but with this and the new textures, and the textures not included in the beta, it might be difficult to find what you’re looking for in the material select thing. Obviously everyone would get used to it, but it might be too confusing for new users.
Edits: I accidentally posted the reply before I was done making it.
Why dont they use that material pack setting idea they had back in I think RDC19 or RDC18 where they would have different styles of the same material for different game styles. Then you just select your style and boom everything is converted.
It would be nice if the fabric material had a higher resolution. It’s too blurry. Also the slate looks too smooth and can make buildings look more cartoony then realistic.
It’s because the new materials rely on normal, roughness and metalness maps to be visualized. When the quality is lowered, Roblox stops rendering any PBR maps to save on resources. The reason why the old materials look better at low quality is because of 2 possible reasons:
The color map would be swapped out with a texture that has baked lighting
The texture already had baked lighting and the PBR textures were simply removed with no further changes
I feel like the first one is the best answer, but you can’t see and PBR maps when a texture is in a shadow, and materials like slate seem to have a little but of baked ambient occlusion, so the second one is a possibility.
That makes sense but having sand not look like sand in the light on lower quality is simply unacceptable. And diamond plate looking like theres no texture is also simply unacceptable.
Not only would it preserve legacy games but I don’t like the new materials and don’t want to have to convert everything I’ve ever made to them just to continue to enjoy my creations… It’s not hard to do and there’s undoubtedly advantages to it, and a clean UI could be made for it.
Not everyone has the ability to make custom materials, or the skill or funds required. It’d just be way easier toward hobbyists such as myself to do it like this.
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Nothing that hasn’t already been said many times over, but I do like the look of the new materials. However, I think they need to be able to co-exist with old materials for compatibility with existing maps or for those who prefer the old materials.
Because all of these textures would have to be downloaded with the client if they are to co-exist at all, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to make all of the replacement materials their own material. I couldn’t think of a good naming convention, but one example would be to add the material WoodPlanks2 or NewWoodPlanks or something like that instead of replacing the existing WoodPlanks material.
I’m assuming they’d probably be named PBR WoodenPlanks or something like that? I do agree with the idea of them coexisting.but maybe with a PBR toggle or something?
Loving these materials as I spend more and more time playing with them! Can’t wait until it’s out!
Can you warn us, at least 48 hours, when this change is going to be live? I want to prep Jailbreak so it’s ready as soon as this lands.
I need to repaint some of Jailbreak and it’s a rather large map but I can’t do it now because players will be playing in an oddly colored map until it is out.
Personally don’t think this will happen and for some games, I’ll personally be holding local copies where I’d be working with the new materials to redo the map. Feel like others might need to do it as well.
Quite a few look exactly the same but recolored and slightly more randomly generated.
Slate no longer looks slate-y, It looks like blackstone, which happens to also look like cobblestone. (Starting to get my point?)
The new materials also destroy currently existing layered textures. I have yet to find a way to re-achieve my old cobble/slate mixed sidewalks for destroyed sidewalks.
edit: I realize that my comparisons are a mix of both terrain materials and brick materials, but yeah.
Just give us the current materials, but with PBR elements applied.
The current state of the new textures are ugly and remove the ability for different art styles.
I’m sure everyone would be happy with an option under Workspace or Game Settings where you can choose from a drop down menu which set of Roblox Materials you want- this could even open up the door for the default materials to be interchanged per game.
