SurfaceAppearance Studio Beta

[RawEggTheGreatIX]

Quick Question: Will there ever be an option to make Surface Appearances “override” graphics settings? Or give them the same rendering treatment as regular materials.

Example of what I mean:
Some games use the foil material for water. The material’s Normal map, from what the player sees is rendered “infinitely” I am 95% sure that normal maps don’t make a huge difference, if any on performance.

Will/Can there be an option to do this the same for SurfaceAppearances?
In the waves I showed off earlier, the waves in the mid (and/or foreground depending on graphics settings) Have the appearance of smooth-plastic (since the surface appearances aren’t loaded). Im on my phone right now, but when I get the chance I will send a screenshot of what I mean

[ICanlsmar]

The same happened to me, except, for some reason, I didn’t have to re-enable the feature after disabling it. It would appear to work even when it’s disabled. Interesting…

[usacat]

Waiting for this to come out of beta hurts me.

[Noble_Draconian]

Whenever I try applying a normal map to my avatar, the normal map does not render properly and instead I get these weird black artifacts. I’ve noticed that problems occur if you try using already existing roblox-made meshes. If you try using PBR with imported meshes, it works fine.

[RawEggTheGreatIX]

I had an issue similar to this. Is the original normal map a resolution higher than 1024? because I think something happens in compression where any small crack/detail that makes a shadow gets “corrupted” or something like that (I think its because it gets super small it doesn’t know if it should be a shadow).

I fixed mine by turning the original resolution to 1024 then uploading it as an image. I have no idea if that will work for you, but it worked for me.

[Homeomorph]

Hey everyone. SurfaceAppearance visuals are now enabled in all games. You still need to opt-in to the Studio beta to modify SurfaceAppearances. The feature should be fully out of beta in a few weeks once some final bugs are fixed and UX improves.

[Noble_Draconian]

So after testing, that is not the problem. The normal map I’m using is below 1024x1024. Still getting the same problem, for some reason.

I’ve attached a repro file. Notice how the upper torsos of both avatars don’t have any visible normal map, even though one is applied. Notice the black artifacts that show when moving the camera around them.
NormalMapRepro.rbxl (55.8 KB)

[FrancklinDay]

is future planned to be released with it ? cause it seems that future is the most efficent/supported render engine for pbr’s appearance comparing to shadow map and voxel

[Avallachi]

When are you adding SurfaceAppearance support for .fbx meshes and parts?

[ICanlsmar]

This is really great to hear, it makes me far more excited for the future of visuals in games!

Although I was wondering, what are some of the goals, besides bug fixes, that are aimed to be reached when this feature is considered to be fully out of beta? Does it include modifiable properties or faster load times for all maps to load? (Currently, when I parent a model inside of workspace in-game, it takes around half a second for all the maps to load except for ColorMap which loads instantly. At least, on my end.)

[sp1980]

They removed the ability to enter in a value for roughness, metalness etc because of performance losses as a result. Just keep a library of grayscale images to use when you need a certain roughness, for example (a 1x1 pixels image works fine).

[tyridge77]

When are we going to be able to tile SurfaceAppearance? Without having to scale UVs

[ROWNIE]

Woa. I tried it out and results are amazing!

[ThatPreston]

I love this update! It lets me add so much detail to meshes. But a problem I’ve encountered is that when I add a SurfaceAppearance to my mesh, it creates weird lines at the seams (see picture.) You can see it even if no assets are loaded onto the SurfaceAppearance, but the problem is exaggerated when I add assets. At first I thought it was a problem with my color/normal maps, but I have remade them several times and the problem won’t go away. I know this seems insignificant but it’s really bothering me.

[ABHI1290]

This puts Roblox back into the modern graphics competition.

[Geozix]

I have the exact same issue

[Akkurat]

Is there any way to access/download the color/normal maps for the basic Roblox materials? For example, I have a sculpture that uses SurfaceAppearance for its normal map, but I want the color texture to match the concrete material. It would be nice if I could download the base concrete material texture so I could create a matching texture for the SurfaceAppearance sculpture.

[Akkurat]

It appears that specular highlights/shadows from Normal maps don’t appear when the part is affected by ShadowMap shadows. If a spot light is used to generate light in the shadowed area, there are still no specular highlights/shadows. Is this something that’s fixable? It seems like a huge issue if normal maps have no effect when in shadow of ShadowMap lighting (for example, anywhere indoors!)

In this example, I have a door with spherical rivets in a Normal map. You can see that at the top of the window (where there should be rivets), it appears completely flat because it is in shadow.

In this example, I added a light to brighten the area in shadow; there are still no highlights/shadows visible in the shadowed area.

[VicePlaysRB]

Change the technology to “Future”

[TheOnIy0ne]

I’m a bit late but are you including the heightmap of your mesh in the normal map?