New Terrain, and Parts, and Built-In Materials, Oh my!

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ID 1, FDSF Testing Place: 6122154567
ID 2, rabbithawk256 Workspace: 5978454841

Maybe FPS games get more realistic

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Place ID: 6124239547

Definitely excited to see how these look on some of my models.

I would like to opt-in to my testing place and see how it looks.
Place ID: 3114507102

Really excited for when this comes out to the public.

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I’d like to see more options for different kinds of water. Currently, the one-size-fits-all water doesn’t really look good in a majority of cases. It should be expanded to multiple materials such as ocean water, flowing water, still water, etc. This would give much more flexibility wrt the types of environments where water looks good.

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I love this update. I will be trying to do, some sort of GI project in the future, and this update will definitely come In handy. Thanks Roblox :slight_smile:

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Such a needed update that will widely improve the realism in our games! Though, how do we turn on the beta in Studio? Is it something only application passers have the option to do?

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Would love to opt-in with my other game place

PlaceId: 4712432173

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If Roblox’s next ambition is for open world environments why not add in the specified settings for this optimization? I mean, for example, if we had the simple ability to highlight what mesh’s and parts are our nature assets (trees, rocks, etc.) we could go sooo far by having the ability to only have them appear within a player’s set radius. This is very commonly how most open world games save on lag. If I’m 500 studs away from a tree that one wouldn’t matter near as much to me as one that was 10 studs away from me would. I’m not totally sure what this feature is referred to as, but if anyone in the forum is aware by all means let me know.

As for what has been put into practice already for terrain (which is only detailing terrain close to the player), this works fine and it’s exactly what I would suggest- it just still looks very chunky from afar. If you’re looking at a mountain or a valley from a few studs away you can see lines of how the voxels connect to each other, as shown below.
example1.PNG
It’s a minor thing that’s always kind of bugged me here and there. Of course, this could be getting fixed in this next update, so we’ll see what happens, I just still wanted to comment on it here.

One other thing I wanted to mention is tree leaves. I got the idea recently, wouldn’t it be possible to integrate a functionality for leaves to sway? The only reason I think this is doable and would be compatible for all devices is because terrain grass was able to accomplish this. If we could have a setting to set a mesh as “treeleaf” or something like that, maybe we could optimize it to function as a swaying animation for trees. It might sound unfeasible for performance, but just maybe it could connect with terrain somehow to function similarly as grass decoration does. That’s just an idea for a simplistic feature that would bring so many games to life.

Thanks for reading!

6 Likes

Interested in beta. 5929246177 place id

not sure if this has been mentioned before but i’d like to see a part material for hardwood/laminate flooring. right now we have wood planks but it’s too rough, it fits more in outdoorsy-type older-looking builds rather than modern buildings and such.

i’m imagining something like this:

as of now to get a decent-looking hardwood floor i have to individually place each plank, and it takes ages to do (not to mention it multiplies the part count by 100 if not more). having a material to simplify this process would be golden

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This is already a thing,

See: Content Streaming | Documentation - Roblox Creator Hub

and also setting Model / Mesh / Part RenderFidelity to Automatic.

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See, I thought someone would comment this, which is why I highlighted “nature assets.” As in I would there to be a system in place to differ between what assets are being used for properties other than nature. If I have a building that’s a tower that sprawls over a valley, for example, I’d rather it not unload but the trees instead. Does that make sense?

The beta is taking a while for me to enable it so I’ll opt in with my development testing place.

ID 5966328296

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This looks incredible! I’m super excited to incorporate some of these features into my game.

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Place ID: 6163761839

I tried the alternate way that you said, and it doesn’t even look that good.


I fully agree with you.

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There is one method you can use that may help you out. You have to take 2 or 3 materials and put them inside each other. Change the transparency of all the materials but one. By using this, it will make some textures more faint, while others will be easier to see.

On the far left, I added wood planks with a transparency of 0.8, glass with a transparency of 0.8, and plastic at a transparency of 0.

The middle one is a mix of sand and concrete, and the one on the right is grass and slate.

You can mess around with this method and see what you get.

(This is a temporary method obviously, due to the fact that we will have many more materials soon, but you could also use this method for the new materials.)

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How may I get this enabled in my game?

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You can’t yet, early 2021 is the release time.

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What about beta, and “opting”?

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