SurfaceAppearance Studio Beta [Released]

the quality gets reduced? could you show screenshots?

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the one on the left is 1 texture, the one on the right was tiled 10 times (both plane size and texture)

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and the texture file used for both is exactly the same? only the UVs are different, right?

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Yes, its the same texture file

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huh, that is strange. i think that would warrant a bug report or its own thread or something.

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I’m not certain what’s going on with SurfaceAppearance when the AlphaMode is at Transparency but it seems to be faded after some time, like when I reopen studio the next day. It’s like the shaders aren’t compiling the same. If I copy over the surface appearance from the right one to the left one, it gets fixed even if they have literally the same data. From time to time when messing with the trees, they reload and appear normally.

I have no logical explanation as to what’s going on except it has maybe something to do with the metalness map. I left it blank and it seems to flip a coin and either render a certain way or not. And if I set the metalness map to something other than empty, it looks like the faded version on the left.

Here are some screenshots
Whenever I open studio:

How it should always be (or when I copy the right SurfaceAppearance over the left):

Bug report:

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How did you manage to do reflectivity? I’m very curious.

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The same happens to me, though, it is temporary.

Most of the time, it either stays(Referring to the first image, left tree) like that for a couple of minutes or even requires me to restart my computer, other times it just flashes like that and then goes back to normal.

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How did you make the ground? Was it model in blender?

Nevermind, I’m so dumb that I forgot to publish the game. It works well now.

Will height maps ever be added? Because this would be a great improvement for Roblox if so. Height maps give a lot more detail to textures, I am a material designer and height maps are the key points for any texture.

I think you mean, support for Tessellation and Parallax Occlusion. Hight maps only contain height data, and when added to a game/engine, it doesn’t really do much

the normal map dit it itself so yeah thats very cool, also the skybox is helping with the shading

How did you do the normal mapping if you don’t mind me asking, could you show me? I’ve tried to replicate the same effect but failed to do so, but I did manage to make Retro Reflective patterns stand out more with reflectivity

I just used materialize and it became reflective by itself, Im also trying to make retroreflective patterns. here is the assetid of the normalmapping
Shiny soft plastic thingymajig: rbxassetid://5081659169
and the leather: rbxassetid://5081431813

I’ve encountered a bug, when i insert an asset containing surfaceappearance some of the meshes dont seem to work.

inserted asset:


same exact model in studio:


as you can see it seems that SurfaceAppearance failed to load on some meshes, while it did load on the bumper it failed to load on the headlights chrome area, also on the hood and the rest of the body which appear to be matte.
The body and the bumper share the exact same SurfaceAppearance object, with the same textures for metalness and roughness, but while on the bumper it seems to have loaded, the same isnt happening for the rest.

edit: environment diffuse and specular are set to 1 in the lighting on studio and in the online test place, this also seems to happen in the same exact way on different games.

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also can you share the retroreflective parts if you want to cause would help me alot!

How does anyone using specular maps get past the moderation problem?
I’ve gotten like a 50% moderation rate and quickly end up with a warning uploading specular maps.
Images that look pretty blank get moderated very heavily and moderators aren’t even trained to understand that specular maps kind of look blank.

Aside from having a slew of alt developer accounts that you throw away when they get perma banned, how does someone who does not wish to have that incredible hassle disrupt my workflow get to a point where I can upload PBR textures without getting repeatedly moderated?

And more so that the moderators don’t even know or understand PBR so they don’t even approve them when you go through moderation appeal and instead give you this trash about risking your account further by changing one pixel and re-trying.

They have no understanding of this situation either.

no understanding

It’s as if there’s no one in Roblox that understands the nature of PBR textures conflicts with the old moderation system and has done nothing to compensate for it.

I’m sure the staff putting up these demos and telling us to do it are immune to moderation.
I say Roblox staff should subject their accounts to the same moderation we face so they can understand how absolutely absurd texturing itself already is, let alone PBR.

Something needs to change or this will never be really functional.

6 Likes

I made a simple retro-reflective shape as a pattern on Photoshop as a repetitive pattern,

Summary

image ColourMap
image Roughness Map
image Metallic Map

I had no Normal map,

End result:

Summary


Same, I’ve encountered it in the floors of one of my showcases as well