Roblox should never force such a drastic change to be applied to all games without any option to access the previous behavior. This would be unacceptable from any other engine, and it should not be done by Roblox.
So many games, models, and other pieces of content were created with the current materials in mind - their intended visual style will be completely tarnished if they are all forced to use the new materials.
The wording of that point is very concerning - it makes it seem like once we create a new file, we will never be given the option to access the old materials in that file, or that the option will be taken away at some point in the future. What if we need to add new places to an existing game or create new files locally? The option to use old materials should remain available in all place files and should not be taken away.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the new materials look stunning, and I would be excited to utilize these in future projects. But our current games were specifically built around the look of the original materials, so they absolutely should not be forced to change.
Before:
After! 
Absolutely love this new update! However, there are a few things that could be changed.
- Carpet material looks less like a carpet
- I use Slate for rock walls… This looks like a brick wall with grass on top now…
Suggestions
- If possible, Decorations on basepart grass
a. There could be a property inside of the basepart called “DecorationsEnabled” and if that is true, the decorations will show - Materials named LegacyGrass or LegacyBrick for example, so we can have the classic feel, and some older games that don’t update anymore could still look good. This would be the default one, and developers would go change the material themselves.
- Water as a material, this would make adding water in games a whole lot easier.
Anyways, other than that, I found no other issues! Can’t wait to see future versions of this!
Also sad day, Studs don’t exist anymore 
Here’s all of my complaints. This is gonna be a long one.
Bit of a big issue but on lower graphics I tested it at the lowest setting. Some materials dont even look anywhere near how it looks on higher settings (tested on highest) and looks like there isn’t a material at all.
Sand on highest setting
Sand on lowest setting
Barley even looks like sand at all.
Heres more
Diamond plate on highest setting
Diamond plate on lowest
Doesnt even look like there is a material
From what I know this also effects the plastic, and foil materials. A bit with slate, you can notice it but it’s a bit harder on lowest setting.
Also studs dont appear on the baseplate on highest setting but does on lowest.
Also the fabric texture is super low res so it would be nice if it was higher. Same with the corroded metal.
Sometimes the cobblestone on parts can look really flat but with terrain it looks VERY flat. Also why is the textures on terrain a lot more low res then on parts?
Also the concrete looks way too wet.
The wooden planks has weird lines as shown here.
Same exact thing with the brink material
Also the pavement and brick textures have the same texture overlapping each other but the top one being more transparent which looks strange. This only happens on terrain though.
There isn’t enough pebbles in the pebble material. The empty spaces are too big and it’ll be nice to see pebbles overlapping each other.
The plastic materials looks strange on balls and cylinders or anything rounded. and is hard to notice as shown here
The materials have forced colouring which is nice to see be fixed as said but some materials are too dark like metal and wood.
The plastic material in general is just really streched out and has a harsh seam as shown here
And the slate material is bad. It looks nothing like how it should look and ruins games look, and isn’t rough enough. It makes games look more cartoony then realistic.
Here’s how it looks like on someone else build that I found on twitter.
Looks more cartoony then realistic.
The leafy grass looks too flat
The grass can look a bit rough sometimes, and sometimes resemble the old slate material a bit.
A lot of the materials noticeably tiles making this terrain thing I made look a bit bad. This obviously also affects parts.
Not sure if this happens with other materials but on geometry like this the sand material wont line up on terrain
Also PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE I beg you separate the secondary materials when the terrain is elevated when colouring materials this also applies with old materials. In a game I made the grass look more vibrant but it makes the dirt green which I do not want. It’ll be nice if it was separate colours.
Also a big issue that it makes builds look a LOT darker. Heres a before and after on the western template
Before
After
Not good.
Also please make this optional. This really ruins art styles and can make some games look funky. Here’s the western template tree before and after
Before
Doesn’t look bad
After
Looks kind of bad now.
Also it would LOVE to see the cracked lava in the lava cracks to have a small neon glow depending on how its the builder coloured it.
Also why aren’t the new materials released and just the updated ones? Would love to test them out!
Also please make stylized materials as well to chose from. This is gonna make it harder for people to make more stylized games and not everyone wants to make a realistic game. Beautiful stylized textures would be great to chose from and can make stylized games still look graphicly impressive if used and done right.
Heres an example of some stylized materials which look great
If we had quality better or like this, it would be spectacular to have!
Because the material is called Fabric and it was too carpety for any other use case. Now at least people would be able to use it for something else than only carpets and rugs.
reposted from from: New Terrain, and Parts, and Built-In Materials, Oh my! - #1467 by LMH_Hutch but missing some of that posts context so pardon some of the dramatic tone.
For a lot of developers on Roblox this isn’t just a hobby, it’s a job. Time spent working on something quite literally costs money and having to cover the costs of what might be hundreds of hours fixing mistakes they didn’t make is a huge loss. Hundreds of hours is by no means an exaggeration too:
- Can a color change fix it? Quick and easy.
- Can I even get the same color as before? Make a new texture per color I can’t get, not quick
- Did the texture sizing change / direction change? Edits to the build, not quick, potentially needs new textures to be made which is again, not quick
- Does the new material even look the same? Remake the texture, deal with color variation, not quick
This process for every part, every mesh, every model, and every bit of terrain in my game. Cherry picking my example but in my current project that’s north of half a million parts, an attire color palate that’ll need updating, our day night lighting cycles will need to be adjusted, and we’ll probably need to hire texturing artists to create and iterate on new materials to replace the old ones. On top of this we’ll have to pray that all these new textures even load in for people in the first place and that there won’t be performance implications from all these changes.
The complaints are warranted. There is real consequence to making changes like this and I for one am not looking forwards to the direct cost that’ll come from fixing it, the delays to our timeline because we’ll need to fix a directly visible player facing issue we didn’t create, and the waves of complaints we’ll get from our community until it’s fixed.
I really hope this preview build was super super early along and further iterations will have better parity with the current materials. This is far from an upgrade for me, my team, and our game. While some of these look great, others really really ruin things.
- Our white brick light house is now red
- All of our grass is green. Dead grass? Green. All the color variants of green grass no longer look as varied
- Our old slate rocks that looked pretty rocky now look like low poly blobs textured with dry lake bed chunks.
- All the metal in our game has been scratched up
- All of our light colored wood is now dark wood
- All out fabric is the wrong direction
- All our wood plank parts no longer line up with the material textures
- All our brick material parts have the same problem as our wood plank parts
- And almost all of our colors are darker and wrong
After going through and looking at some of my old builds using the new textures, I have to say that it is unacceptable to force these changing onto every existing game on the platform. While the new materials look nice, current builds were not created with them in mind. The solution to this requires hours of labor fixing materials and colors until it looks good. A lot of materials lost what they were good for. On top of this, all the colors automatically look darker with these new textures. Slate used to be good for a wide variety of textures, it was used to create something that looks rough. Instead, it now looks really smooth with cracks.
Before:
After:
In my opinion, the changes between textures when lowering your graphics is too extreme to the point that everything looks like smooth plastic. The worst material i’ve seen that this is an issue for is diamond plate, which just looks like normal metal. I know it is better for performance, but it wasn’t a problem with the old materials.
Example:
I haven’t created anything new with the materials, so I can’t be for certain, but it seems there is less options using the new materials. This is because of the realism and details of the textures. If I had to pick two that I would think have a high range of use, it would be granite and concrete. A lot of the textures have had their versatility removed such as slate, grass, and sand. In a game I build for, sand is often used for its soft texture in desserts. The course texture with bigger waves just doesn’t look good for them anymore. Grass is often used as both grass and also leaves, but the new textures leave nothing to the imagination. The material that used to have the most variety was slate, it was often used as a rough texture. One common use of slate was to represent dirt. It just doesn’t look right anymore.
Before:
After:
Overall, I think that these textures look great and can allow developers to create realistic worlds. That being said, that is all that developers can create. These textures are very limiting for anything but their intended use. This forces developers to stick to a realistic style, or to just use smooth plastic. I think the most important thing when it comes to materials is options. I think that developers should be able to pick between a set of materials that look the best for their game. A choice between the new and old textures would go a long way.
I really have mixed opinions about these textures, some look like they are going for a cartoon style look and others are made to look realistic. Personally, i think roblox needs to re-do these so they all match the same style.
I can really only offer my feedback for:
My opinion is that you should not force the material change. It is a very strong opinion too, so please hear me out. Roblox, in the past, has been known for it’s faulty/unconventional quirks, and I would throw the current ‘part material system’ into that package of unique and unconventional quirks. This means that a copious amount of games have, and are, using the quirky material system for unintended purposes - it is what makes Roblox, well Roblox. Your “powering imagination” slogan and weird looking sand material allowed a myriad of robloxians to create unique waters for their world, same story with the granite material; I for one have seen many oceans comprised out of sand and granite. Forcing that material update would ruin that creative workaround that some robloxians used to create their own cool, unique ocean. There are countless workarounds for the imperfect material system currently in place, and I love that you are improving it but forcing the update could ruin many nostalgic places, and force some people to trash that creative solution that they would have kept for an eternity otherwise. That is why I think forcing the update would be a bad idea, thanks for hearing me out 
!
The new materials aren’t bad, they’re just way too different from the current ones. Some of them are much better, like sand, cracked lava, and basalt, but some of them are ugly like salt, cobblestone, and slate.
Original reply
(new on the right, current on the left)
Salt:
Rock:
Cobblestone:
Grass:
Some of the materials look a lot different on the lowest and highest graphics settings. Several of them look like their textures are “shrunk” on the lowest setting (no, I didn’t move the camera on any of these. The materials actually get smaller depending on what graphics setting you use):
Basalt:
Glacier:
Sand:
Cracked Lava:
You can see the edges of marble, no matter what graphics setting you use
The lines on diamond plate disappear on the lowest graphics setting:
This is just a few of them. I found that almost all of the new materials have some bugs like this, especially on parts.
Studs also disappears on higher graphics settings:
Personally, I’d rather the current materials just be updated than completely scrapping them and replacing them with something completely different.
EDIT:
I tried the new materials in my game, and it’s a mess. Some of them are better, some are worse.
This is with the exact same color, materials, lighting, and it looks completely different. Limestone is orange, and cobblestone dosn’t look natural anymore. I do like the sand much better though.
The pink space grass is now reddish-purple, and sandstone is a lighter color. Grass looks flat from a distance, where the old one still had texture. I actually like the new sandstone texture though, except that it should be a bit darker to match the old one.
The new cottage cheese salt texture is complete garbage.
I love the new ice, glacier, and snow textures though:
I would personally like to see it being made possible to simultaneously be able to have some things be the new texture and some the old in games instead of trying to force this update or saying you can only have the old or the new not both.
I can see where there would be benefits to using some of these new materials on our game such as asphalt to mimic scales on some creature models, but then it would mean giving up having the old slate and sand used as an ambiguous texture. I don’t work with coding so maybe there would be an issue with having both the new and old options at once, but I really think that it would be worth it if it’s a possible change.
I also have a major issue with forced coloration, we heavily rely on custom coloring with materials and the forced coloration causes a lot of issues with tints being off from what we want to achieve. I would personally prefer to have parts never exactly matching terrain in exchange for a broader range in ability to customize the colors.
Overall not really thrilled with this update, I was expecting it to be more in tune with what devs wanted, but at least i’m glad to see feedback is going to be taken before it rolls out.
Another update to Roblox’s visual style, with a good handful of fresh new materials! However, this is the sort of thing to take cautiously so that you don’t step all over the artistic vision of the thousands of creators who built with the platform. Time and time again Roblox has tried to apply a platform-wide blanket change across the resources we use to build our games. From previous material changes, to changing the texture of terrain, to having every part have an outline…
In the forced transition from classic terrain to smooth terrain, Roblox didn’t have a wide enough array of materials at the time, nor did they have the option to set their Color3, so now every game which hadn’t been updated since has been left with a smaller selection of substitutes and a desaturated palette. While disappointing in my opinion, this was somewhat excused by how little the classic terrain was still in use, but that isn’t the case here.
Roblox is more established now, it’s no longer in that spot where we’re all still young and expect that there’ll be bumps as Roblox finds its place. That place has been found, and at this point we’ve all settled in. If any changes are going to be made, they need to either go alongside the pre-existing resources, or fulfill the same uses those old resources used to provide. There’s already been a fair amount of feedback here about that, such as @PeZsmistic’s reply at the start, so I don’t think I need to repeat it.
The overall feeling I get from this post is that there’s this belief that realism is seen as superior, rather than aiming towards the fact that we’re a wide variety of creators with a wide variety of ideas, visions, and styles. The belief that these previous resources need to be “upgraded”, along with all of our games, with drastic changes which don’t follow the already established visions of our art. To me, it implies that this update knows how our games should look better than we do, and that feels disrespectful.
I very strongly agree with this note in particular. The first update about this revamp mentioned that Roblox was open to suggestions for additional materials to compliment the palette which gave the impression that they were open to considering alternative stylization alongside realism, but this first build gives the opposite impression.
Please do not forget that given Robox’s part-by-part style of building worlds, low poly and heavily stylized art styles are extremely common. Please don’t just cater towards ham-fisted early-console-style “realism”. Let stylized art styles thrive too.
Ice does not fit in in my opinion and sand looks like slate...? Brightness in this picture is at 0.5, with Ambient set to 0, 0, 0. In the new picture I changed sand to Snow (since white sand looked ugly) and Foil to Glacier (Ice shards used Foil and ground used Ice in previous picture).
TLDR I believe there’s always gonna be use-cases for both versions of the texture, and the only solution I see to this would be to offer more customization and control in regards for the material texture.
Update (June 16th, 2023): This aged poorly. They made the new materials genuinely good compared to what they had here. I use them in this exact game now along with plenty of custom ones they also introduced. I like that they are also completely optional now
I agree with your statements you made. Roblox needs to keep the original feel of the materials while making them modern. The new textures aren’t bad… but they ruin some people’s visions and take away what they say in their catchphrase: “Powering Imagination”. I’m glad you made this post with such detail. Someone had to do it. Glad it was you.
Edit: This used to be so colourful and bright… It’s nowhere close to what it used to and I don’t like it.
Current:
Material Beta:
(Sorry for the sudden size change)
Just a repost of my reply from the last topic of this announcement
This is just 2 images taken and compares all the materials between the new and old.
Old Materals/Current
New Materials (I didn’t remove the studs)
In case you are wondering, the colors are all set to Medium Stone Grey aka the default part color. As of right now, the new materials don’t seem color variant yet like the old ones.
Also I like to request a feature that hopefully doesn’t destroy the look of some roblox games is add a new workspace property named Workspace.LegacyMaterials or a legacy materials section on the materials tab.
Overall I like the new textures but there is just something wrong with them that doesn’t give me the full liking on them. Perhaps if this change is by force. Mind adding custom materials (Not surface appearence)
I could not agree more.
Roblox seems to forget that going as realistic as literally possible is not the only direction to push the platform. There are many stylistic games (not on Roblox) which do not look realistic:
Realism is not the only way forward.
This can be seen everywhere on the platform. Roblox pushed out Future lighting, but where is simple flat shading? I know Roblox wants to look like every other platform and be hyper-realistic, evident with Rthro (which I’m glad is an option) and most drastically, forcing realistic textures on everything.
Not every game wants to be as realistic as possible. I cannot believe that Roblox even considered the option of forced realism. Just as you said- this feels incredibly disrespectful. Roblox really just wants to show off realism.
The new materials are extremely cool! However, it shouldn’t replace the current ones, instead be in its own category.
no please i beg
-BEFORE
-AFTER
PLEASE make them optional… The textures only work for some specific styles.
Also, make the textures keep the same colour. For example, brick is basically ALWAYS red. like, why.
and you can see the island in the pictures. The top is very bright, almost white. The bottom is this ugly grey.
Is this acceptable, or would you prefer that new experiences get the new materials and existing ones have to be explicitly upgraded?
Like many others, I share the concern about the style and color disparity between the materials. First and foremost, the mix between cartoony and realistic textures causes clashing styles across a single game. Not only that but the massive color disparities between the old materials and new materials (and even between the new materials themselves) means a large amount of effort has to be dedicated to remixing colors to return a game to an acceptable state style-wise. This may be manageable for games that are actively maintained, but games that are no longer actively supported by their developers will have their unique style sullied to the point of being unplayable eye-sores. As a result, it is absolutely essential that developers must explicitly upgrade their game’s materials rather than being forced into an automatic rollout.
Do you feel the new materials give you more or less options for using them in your games?
It would appear that many of the materials have a preset color baked into them such as grass having a green-ish tint and brick having a red-ish tent. This severely limits the ability to use materials creatively as we are essentially forced into a single usage for each material.
Looking at the materials for uses other than their specific type, do you feel the new materials give you more or less options for using them in your games?
As I mentioned, the preset colors baked into the materials make it impossible to use the materials for anything other than their labeled purpose. To further illustrate my point, here is a photo of four of the new materials on parts that are all RGB [255, 255, 255].
Do the new materials better blend with other models and assets in your game?
No, absolutely not. In my response to the first question, I stated that materials and colors in every game will have to be remixed. As someone who frequently works with smooth terrain, it takes an appreciable amount of time to mix smooth terrain materials with default materials. The massive color disparities means that every single one of my current projects will have to be reconfigured at a massive cost of time. It is also worth pointing out that a piece of smooth terrain and a part with the exact same color look wildly different, meaning each material will have to be manually recolored again to find the matching RGBs. Here is one of my projects that has simultaneously become more cartoon-ish and had its color palette completely ruined.
Do these materials increase or decrease the immersion you seek in your game?
All in all, the style and color disparities between the new and old materials decreases the immersion that I seek in my game. As someone who builds realistic projects almost exclusively, it has become immeasurably more difficult to replicate real life into Roblox using the default materials. I think this issue is epitomized by the new brick material, which has somehow managed to become even worse at mimicking real life brick.
Final Thoughts
I know I have spent my entire post ragging on the new materials, but I think it would be unfair if I did not point out the positives. First, I really love the emphasis on PBR in the new materials. The new wood material looks great, every crack and crevice is highlighted. Second, the new materials look great from the showcase photos and seem like they could solve many of the style-clashing issues I mentioned earlier. So, in my opinion, the new materials have the potential to greatly improve the platform but are a large step backwards in their current form.