New Terrain and Parts Materials Preview Build! Oh YES!

MyHeadisMelting · March 2, 2021, 4:31pm

I will start with the good than the bad

The Good

The materials are very good for realistic and cartoony alike.
Many of the bad materials in the old pack look great now.
The designs are very clean.

The Bad

The material colors aren’t that controllable and need to be fixed.
The tiling needs to be fixed it’s horrible.
Many used materials such as slate, sand, and the grass looks horrible and needs to be fixed to fit their names
All the materials look way too rough and dark.
The terrain materials don’t match their part counterparts.

Overall This update is a good paper however it’s not that good in practice. one thing I would recommend them adding is a property that would say if you want a legacy, realistic, or stylized.

anirudh851 · March 2, 2021, 4:33pm

Cool update!
I am a bit confused, so you mean that right now if we publish a game, we will see the new textures or old textures?

ittrgrey · March 2, 2021, 4:33pm

The key problem at hand here is, not only is colour changing required, it is impossible to match previous colours especially when you used light colours initially - the Color value does not go above 255.

ittrgrey · March 2, 2021, 4:36pm

If you publish a game right now you will see the old materials. This is an exclusive Studio-only beta release which uses a separate build hosted on GitHub.

anirudh851 · March 2, 2021, 4:40pm

So will it be implemented for roblox player in the future?

ScriptifiedOverkill · March 2, 2021, 4:51pm

FEEDBACK:

I used this on my game, and it looks a bit strange for some locations

On the Damaged Safe Shelter site & and campsites, the campsites have turned from a gray to pure white.
On the safe shelter, the house’s rust textured have been scaled a lot and have turned more white.
The Power Substation looks white too. It reminds me of chocolate pudding! The inside of the shelter looks good, though!

The Hunter Tower now looks better, but the chocolate pudding rust looks more brighter than darker.

The Observation Tower now looks terrible, the rust now looks like a dog had some terrible diarrhea.

The inside of it though, looks perfect.

The Secret Laboratory gives me mixed feelings, but most positive!

The inside of it though, the walkway looks terrible. I’ve noticed that the rust does not care about the BrickColor of the part it’s being used on.

Park fountain looks nice, except this now looks like a 2010 texture.

Cemetery looks good, except for the rust texture on the fences, and the inside looks better except the doors now look like a 2010 texture again.

Shop Dealer and Black Market Dealers shops now look low quality because of the rust, and SD and BMD have lost their textures on hats and clothing.

The sign now looks a bit better but out of place.

The inside of this campsite now looks better, except the table rust has scaled in size and the beds look like jello/glass.

All 3 specimens look more “alien-humanlike” which is good, except what happened to their limbs

The limbs that are gone are limbs that were either MeshParts or Unions… They look like they’re smiling too much at the player now.

SMALL ISSUES:
The Map Borders, which was previously textured to look like mountain rock, now look like a polished stone that you’d see in malls from far away, and then look close to normal rock upclose.

Terrain looks better in general, though!
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Give us an option to use old textures & new textures at the same time, this will allow for more diversity and will prevent older outdated games from looking weird.

Edit rust to change color with BrickColors and to prevent it from losing resolution the more it scales.

AirWward · March 2, 2021, 5:00pm

Oh, yes! I’d like something like that, too. Because embedded materials are very limited… wouldn’t it be easier to just let people add themselves?..

AirWward · March 2, 2021, 5:04pm

I don’t know… most of the materials have deteriorated… I hope this grass will be corrected

7pwned7 · March 2, 2021, 5:07pm

I think this update looks nice
The Grass is one thing I don’t really think fits with the new materials because it looks more cartoony compared to Ground or Wood Planks

And here is something I made with the new materials

robloxoldterrainlogo

gui110 · March 2, 2021, 5:08pm

I’m all for the change, though I hope you guys can make the transition as smooth as possible for us developers. I’m reading a lot of comments from others and it is clear to me that you still have some way to go before that becomes a good alternative to the current terrain and textures.

The new materials looks really cool on a baseplate, though once you open an existing map, that changes the look quite drastically.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

What I’m also worried about perhaps is that the new textures haven’t been designed with low graphics folks in mind. The textures are now getting theirs details from the PBR instead of details in the texture itself, which is really good when you are on high graphics but doesn’t look so great on low graphics, in some cases.

New material High graphics:

New material Low Graphics:

Varonex_0 · March 2, 2021, 5:14pm

Well, I noticed that grass and leafy grass textures are good on terrain, but to me it is weird on parts.

The transition is quite brutal with parts, and both parts have the same color so yea, it doesn’t really correspond…

Good luck

TaBigMemesGuy · March 2, 2021, 5:40pm

This is actually a very good idea

JokeTheFool · March 2, 2021, 5:45pm

This is quite a bit to read but well worth the time!

As expressed in the “Future of Avatar | RDC 2019” video on Roblox’s youtube channel (at 17:00), it was mentioned that terrain would take on many appearances which would in itself create the “Roblox Multi-Verse”. The plan was to allow developers to have diversity amongst their game’s visual appeal. Many games rely on the classic textures for various reasons, forcing the materials to be changed is not an option in the slightest needless to say.

Here is a screenshot from the youtube video :

Suggestions :
What if the terrain instance was given a new property, “Terrain.Style”? This would provide a drop down menu allowing developers to choose the specific material style-pack they would prefer using for their game. “Terrain.Materials” aka “Terrain.MaterialColors” could be called “Terrain.Colors” instead, of course this would function as it normally would; though it would generate a list of materials to color based on “Terrain.Style”. Not only would this separate the styles but it would also give developers the freedom to choose which materials they want to use. This would also be prep work for terrain customization. Since terrain will be customizable in the future (which would allow for more freedom/control) I believe this would be a great way to go about it. Not only would the drop down menu show the Premade Style “Archetypes”, but it could also display user generated / subscribed style-packs! Developers could manage their own premade style-packs as they would any other assets from the creator dashboard. Groups would also require the ability to create styles-packs of course.

Decal configuration should get a few updates to allow developers access with managing PBR settings instead of relying on SurfaceAppearance. Not only for more control as a developer since not everyone knows how to script or use the command bar, but also to reduce the instances being made due to SurfaceAppearance. The properties can only be changed by script/command-bar anyways so this should be a bonus! Texture objects / Parts / MeshParts can be given a new property as well, “PBR-Enabled” a boolean, to toggle if an object will display at high or low quality, since users wont be able to manage Roblox’s PBR settings or other user-generated style packs any other way, this would be very useful!

Style-Packs / Material-Packs
How would this work? As far as I’m thinking, there would have to be a new tab on the creator dashboard named “Style-Packs” or “Material-Packs”. Developers would upload the textures as decals, then the developer would simply insert the ID of the decal into the style-pack and set a name for that material, similar to Attributes but you can only generate a TextureId. Of course there would / should be a limit to how many textures will be squeezed into a pack, I would say 50 is a fair amount if not more. For some users having only 1 style of a certain material can be a pain and restrictive! So allowing for many materials to be inserted would make things a lot better such as having multiple grass, stone, wood materials! Having it this way would also allow developers to share(optional) their style-packs, users could “subscribe” to a style-pack and have access to using the style-pack made by other developers much like plugins. Subscribers do not edit or maintain the materials / textures; it would be up to the developer(s) who created the style-pack to edit any material within the pack!
This would be great for beginners to the platform too, after all sharing is caring!
Also, when a developer interacts with the “Terrain.Style” property they will be shown a list of Roblox’s style-packs + their own custom style-packs + subscribed style-packs! This could be shown as a grid similar to the new Asset Manager in studio!

Opinion :
On another note, I personally don’t think the materials should differ too much in a single style. Currently the new materials give off a cartoon-ish and realistic look at the same time instead of aiming to showcase a specific style. This may pose a problem to many developers when they find themselves at a stand off from disliking a specific material. Along with that, the new materials don’t mix that well; especially on simple parts. Instead of trying to please everyone under a single set of materials why not get started on different material presets/archetypes? It would be a lot less messy that way I would assume. Not to mention how satisfying and refreshing it would be to see true diversity over forced terrain materials! There are many great reference images out there and I’m sure this could be a lot better!

As for the coloring, maybe the materials should be black & white? To allow for a wider range of coloring, “color freedom” that many developers rely on and love! Though some materials may require coloring in certain areas, such as lava’s lava, the stones may be colorable from a black and white overlay but the lava wouldnt have the same luxury.

One last thing, it was also mentioned in the same video that the other goal was to combine the roblox terrain and roblox avatars to coordinate? Is this still going to be a thing?

That’s all I have to say & thank you for your time!

bluddbrain · March 2, 2021, 5:53pm

The baked colours are kinda an eyesore when they don’t line up

Enk514 · March 2, 2021, 5:55pm

Where did I say or even imply that? I just mentioned he zoomed it in, I never said thay had an effect on the size of the bricks, I literally said they were big

firechaos70 · March 2, 2021, 6:02pm

This is so exiting. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. This is going to be fun.

bluddbrain · March 2, 2021, 6:12pm

Also I really do hope this won’t end up being forced because it’s going to be a pain to go back and refurbish every single map

Rodj1 · March 2, 2021, 6:23pm

The new concrete looks way much better than the old concrete. In my opinion, the old concrete looked very “low quality” and way too rough to use as exterior walls, that the new concrete is making me want to switch many of the walls of mine to Concrete from Plastic.
I like the new texture of metal, but there is also a negative that came with the new metal. Metal lost ANY light reflections from it besides the light source and makes it look way too dark now inside buildings at night.
I did experience a visual bug with Plastic on one of my meshes:

synical4 · March 2, 2021, 6:26pm

This update is horrible imo. It is TERRIBLE. All old games that were creative with their materials (like using grass for leaves or sand for stuff like cloth) now are left with terrible, low quality and discolored builds. I don’t like this change, and it needs to have a toggle feature in the future. Something like this in workspace would be nice:

New property in workspace: TerrainTexturesOnParts: true or false.

This could toggle the new textures that look like terrain, or leave the old ones which people use for building. I can’t imagine anyone who wants their parts to look like this. All in all, this is the worst update I think I’ve ever seen.

Mad_Scientist99 · March 2, 2021, 6:28pm

Hey, I like the new materials, but for the love of god,
DONT REPLACE THE CURRENT MATERIALS NOR AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE THEM!

They are bound to make certain games look ugly/unnatural/weird so they should be OPTIONAL.

So if you are going to release this, DONT FORCE IT DOWN EVERY GAME. MAKE IT OPTIONAL TO USE THE NEW MATERIALS AND KEEP THE OLD ONES AS WELL.