Just to reiterate, there are issues with the graphics quality causing some textures to appear blank. The cobblestone is too large, the slate isn’t ‘slate’ looking, and the marble has strange squares. Also some textures having baked in colors really makes it difficult to use in lots of situations.
This update is giving me OLD mario vibes… Everything is so low quality and mushy, I don’t know how anyone could use these. I like the new materials, and we need an update, but I dont want my games looking like beef stew.
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It’s probably low quality just for testing. When it fully rolls out, the textures may be of better quality.
I did that and it still doesn’t work. Is there something you forgot?
I don’t think so. I just unzipped and opened it, then it worked.
Alright, I’ll give my take on this update.
When this was first announced I was highly interested as it looked stunning overall. I was excited at the prospect of new materials. However, after seeing how the materials look in-game, my impressions are a little more mixed.
To start off, I’m really happy with the ‘Wood Planks’ and ‘Bricks’ materials. I use those quite frequently when developing, and I think that the new versions are massive improvements from the current. Really don’t have any complaints with those.
Now, on to the other stuff:
I think I can confidently assume that others agree with me when I say that developers should absolutely have the choice of what they want to change and what should stay the same. The entire design of the game should not be changed by force. Personally speaking, I have some models using materials that would not be compatible with the new versions.
Now, on to the Grass. You know when Car Windshields are covered with a strange frost-pattern? That’s what I think the Grass looks like. If I’m being completely honest I think the older grass-texture still looks better, reinforcing the statement that these new materials should not be forced on all parts. Instead, the developer should be able to choose if they want to change them. Also, some games might be aiming for a more classic or cartoony feel. Highly-realistic materials might not go too well with that.
One last thing: I think it might be a good idea if it were possible to include an option in Studio Settings to use the old materials. If someone was halfway through a build using the older ones, chances are they might want to make the rest of it with the same ones. I really can’t speak for everyone, but I do think that the old ones should still be accessible, especially if you were only making certain edits to a build or model.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with this update. The materials overall look pretty good, and some are a clear improvement over their predecessor. However, I do believe that materials should not change retroactively, only by the developer’s choice. I look forward to seeing how this update turns out. 
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Did anything special happen when you downloaded it? Do you need to download the source code thing?
to start first the brick has a strange texturing problem also the grass looks very cartoon and besides that the materials of the land I do not like the only ones I like are sand and snow
No, nothing special happened. It doesn’t seem like you have to download the source code thing either.
I have a question are the current materials getting replaced or staying and new ones are just being added?
In the betas current state, they’re getting replaced.
Weird, this is making no sense. I did everything correctly, and it just doesn’t work. I don’t understand why they couldn’t put this in Beta Features.
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Some of these are super ugly, while others are much more usable now (Such as bricks, fabric, and pebble materials) Overall, I think this will be a great addition to roblox, however, as others are saying, these should be put alongside some of the older materials for a better selection of terrain materials, and a better selection of part materials in the end. Things like slate will have a huge effect on games, and should be treated more delicately when changing the texture. I’ll provide a before and after of some builds I made with slate.
A lot of the texturing in the older materials is gone, and it causes a bunch of builds to take a strange appearance. The slate is too cartoony, the cobblestone terrain material doesn’t really have the same appearance as the old one, and it’s really taken down the textural appeal of my game. A lot of these are super hit and miss. In some parts of my game, the materials fit well, whereas other parts don’t fit as well, and it really kills the flow.
The noise of the old slate texture really helps with some builds. The noise of the old concrete texture really helps with some builds. But in other places, where the noise covers up a lack of parts and detail, it’s a pain in the rear to have to put more parts and meshes in to cover up for a lack of detailing, and cause more performance issues for the playerbase.I really like the new slate in some instances to act more as an accent material and such, but again, the old slate works really well for larger areas.
Edit: #3
In places like these, where the faces are more complex, these textures can look great, it’s a really hit and miss situation right now, which is, again, why I’m heavily suggesting that we allow for the use of both the old and new textures.
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How do I download these and import it to studio? Only thing I get is some .md file.
I feel like this update is getting a lot more hate than it should be. Then never said they would allow both the old and the new materials to coexist, but they also never said they WOULDN’T allow both the old and the new materials to coexist. Plus, this is an early phase, so I think people should calm down and be happy that they got some sort of revamp instead of none at all. I for one think that this is a great start. Some improvements could possibly be made, but other than that, it’s almost perfect.
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This is an amazing update. The performance impact is negligible, which is amazing. I really appreciate how much more realistic and immersive these materials are. Although marble needs a quick fix with the tiling glitch, I would be perfectly happy for this update to go live instantly.
In order to give myself an idea of how much more immersive these materials are, I remade one of my old models. I really feel the wood planks floor blends in much better with the metal sign than ever before in the image below.
The link they used was slightly obscure, after a bit of searching around I found this link:
If you are on Windows OS, use the windows zip, if you are on mac use the mac zip.
With regard to the first question: places should not automatically update to the new textures/materials. This will obviously have a negative impact on some games that rely on the current textures for some specific visual effect, which will ruin some of the old experiences. I cannot think of any plausibly good reason why Roblox should force this update on old places, especially on games that no longer get updated by the creator. Additionally, it would be nice to have the option to toggle between the new and the current materials - at least for the first few months of this update. Generally speaking, the more options that developers have, the better.
As a side note, I remember when Roblox converted the original blocky terrain to smooth terrain automatically back in 2017, which messed up many old games. In my opinion, the old games should’ve been left alone even if the deprecated old terrain could impact them. This is a bit of a different situation (given that the smooth terrain update came out in 2015, I think, and then Roblox deprecated the legacy/old terrain), but felt like it was worth mentioning because of the amount of negative feedback that that automatic update got.
3 Likes
After longer experimentation with this beta, these textures are indeed well made (for the most part). These textures are upgraded from the old textures, but it’s a trade-off. For example, fabric and wood planks used to look terrible, fabric now makes an amazing carpet but we don’t have a texture for couches and curtains as sand now looks a lot more like sand, and wood planks look a lot better and can actually be used in builds. The problem with this is that though a lot of the textures look amazing, some of the textures with the widest use cases have been completely changed, which is why I feel this update has such negative reactions.
Heres an example, just as we cherrypicked the textures we used with the current generation of textures, we currently have to cherry-pick with the next generation of textures. But here’s the problem: When we cherry-picked with the old textures, we had things to replace them with, fabric to sand, wood to slate; making these textures use cases more obvious make them look better but causes them to have much less use cases. We need something similar to SmoothSlate, CrackedSlate, GrittySlate or WoodPlanks, PolishedWoodPlanks, WornWoodPlanks. Roblox certainly has the budget to do something like this, and its practically the only way this update could go well with the textures now being so defined.
Here’s an old game of mine with the current textures:
Here’s an unmodified version of the old game with the next generation textures:
Here’s that same game without any changes to textures and lighting (after switching to future lighting), looks terrible, right?
Heres the game with some textures switched around to fit the new “meta” with material replacements and built with future lighting in mind. ie I replaced the granite with marble as it looks better used spotlights and made sure shadows were used correctly.
I understand why people are mad, and why they may not want to switch to the next generation of textures. Its not that these textures look bad, and ill admit it, some do, and they have a lot of bugs; but this is a first generation. People are very adjusted to the old textures, none of these old textures and games were built with future lighting and these texture changes in mind. There’s still flukes too, ill admit it, for example theres nothing to replace sand with so we’re still stuck with using sand to replace it, and that is why I ask roblox to add more variation in all the textures, if they plan to add a carpet texture it needs to be carpet, and the fabric needs to look more like fabric than carpet.
If you take a step back, all of these textures look amazing if they’re used the right way.
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Ok, so I downloaded the new textures and had a few ideas as to how we could improve the textures in general: Give us an option to use both at the same time. By this, I mean that there should be an option to either select which materials you want to use the new version of, or just an option to use the old and new versions of each texture at the same time. For example: I like the new textures for wood, woodplanks, fabric, and ice (small example, as obviously these aren’t the only ones I like haha) but I definitely prefer the old cobblestone, as it fit better with my game and looked more realistic. What you could do is have an option to switch between the new and old for each material texture, or simply have both (oof i’m repeating myself here) but essentially, just provide us with options
1 Like