“What’s the issue? It looks more real!”
Not only is graphical realism a problem with modern games, but you simply cannot have the best of both worlds, between realism and a creative aesthetic.
This material update completely undermines many people’s visions for the aesthetic of their games. There are people who use the foil material for things such as water, ice, wet rocks, and even melting glass. Flattening it and making it “more real” is a very big issue, because most people make games that simply are NOT meant to look real.
Bottom line: Please allow a toggle for this update when it releases.
As a developer who embraced the classic textures, I feel as if it’s important for me to make aware of my opinion. Please allow the new experiences be the way they are, and allow developers to explicitly update pre-existing textures. Perhaps keeping both types of textures, just so that we may use them in harmony with the new ones.
Here is a specific example as to how the new update affects my projects:
Reading through the replies and looking at images people have posted, it might be a good idea to have this as an option and not an absolute. These new materials look awesome, but maybe
change how they reflect light so color is consistent
make grid-like materials (ex: bricks) keep the same general grid shape. If not, maybe make them a new materials?
This update is VERY 50/50. Have it so users can choose which version they want through a toggle. (Having the old ones with the new ones at the same time would just be a bit much.)
Positives: Pebble now actually looks good, whereas it used to look like trash. Part grass looks WAY better thanks to this, thanks to proper PBR support. Wooden planks look SO MUCH BETTER now that they look so mush less rotten! Bricks are finally bigger, which was a fairly common complaint with og bricks.
Negatives: What made you bully slate like you did? It looks terrible now, especially for that realism you wanted. Why do so many materials have baked in colors now, it doesn’t look good! And don’t get me started on the forced darkness of some of them! Why do purposefully tiled textures have breaks on parts, whereas they are layered weirdly on terrain.
Make it optional, it screws some, and advances others.
It’s… underwhelming. Although some of the materials had a huge upgrade in my opinion (metal, diamond plate, concrete, ground, and mud) the rest are looking… not too hot.
Here is a scene I threw together with some free models and terrain. I think it looks quite nice with the new metal and ground/mud.
But then… sand? I did as much as I could with lighting to flatter this material, but it just looks awful. It is way too bumpy at a small scale and in no clear direction.
Overall I’m a bit disappointed, but I am glad this was put as a beta instead of one of the recent surprise releases. Hopefully, there will be some improvements before release!
I really hope these new materials are not replacing the current materials and only being added because it could ruin the aesthetic of a lot of games and force developers to spend time making changes. Maybe keep old materials as “Legacy” materials to separate them from the new ones.
The new metal material is too glossy and doesn’t look like metal, it almost looks like a mix between plastic and glass.
The new fabric material is definitely an improvement from the current material but it need a smaller tile size.
I have no problem with the sand material but a lot of people including myself use the sand material as a replacement for a leather material and the new sand material ruins that with the large grains, so maybe add an actual leather material to make up for this?
Would it be possible to make grass color aware again? Currently grass looks quite weird in the beta build (we have purple grass which does not work on the beta)
