Void Pbr Is Weird

[Llyssa]

So, the new PBR stuff is showing up in places. One of note is the void towers.

 

The thing is, the materials are weird--they look matte, but have high-gloss reflections placed on to the matte texture. So they look less like reflections on a reflective surface, and more like some sort of projection produced by your camera.

 

I'm not sure if this is intentional(the whole "Orokin Void Magic" thing), but it's really weird.

[Nira]

PBR? What's a hipster's alcoholic beverage doing in the Void?

[Llyssa]

PBR? What's a hipster's alcoholic beverage doing in the Void?

Physics Based Rendering. It allows them to have better, more-realistic textures on surfaces by changing the way the game draws them. They also render faster. The downside is that you have to do every single texture one at a time, so it's rather labor intensive.

 

They're busy converting all textures in the game from the old blinn-phong dynamic to the new PBR. The void was one of the ones done so far, and the new texture they gave it reflects bright images like a mirror, but it does not reflect unlit images. So it's simultaneously REALLY SHINY and "not shiny at all", depending upon a given break point in the lighting.

 

As the generic void isn't "bright enough", but our frames and such are, you get strange reflections when you look at them directly.