michiel | a month ago | 5 comments | 9 likes | 262 views
Ulli, irina1208, bambamD and 6 others like this!
The GLB format is wonderful, but they've forgotten one thing: the possibility to store the environment map.
You can store the metalness of the materials (in BluffTitler, use the FX ROUGHNESS, METALNESS property of the AdvancedMaterials/PBR effect), but not how the reflections looks like. All players use their own techniques and textures and as a result the model can look very different in another player.
Why?
Probably the idea is that you build your world out of many models and they all use the same environment map so it's a waste of memory to store the same map in all models. Also when you use your model in another world, you need another environment map. The environment is not part of the model.
Environment map
An environment map is a general term for a texture describing the world. This texture can be used for rendering reflections.
One technique is cube mapping:
outerspace-software.com...
BluffTitler
When you load a GLB Model, BluffTitler places Textures/CubeMap.dds from the installer in the 3rd texture slot of the AdvancedMaterials/PBR effect. You can replace this texture by any other texture in the MEDIA > CHANGE TEXTURE... dialog: outerspace-software.com...
Sketchfab
Sketchfab offers 20 maps to choose from in the LIGHTING tab of their EDIT 3D SETTINGS page. In the screenshot you can see 4 of them.
More info
More about models, textures and the PBR effect:
outerspace-software.com...
More about cube mapping:
outerspace-software.com...
More about metalness:
outerspace-software.com...
Little by little we become more and more familiar with the GLB format.
For me, the most confusing thing is the difference between the raw model generated by BluffTitler, the model reprocessed by Sketchfab and the preview on the sketchfab site.
This sometimes requires us to quite a few adjustments with round trips in BT and re-uploads to the Sketchfap site
vincent, a month ago
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About michiel
Michiel den Outer is the founder and lead coder of Outerspace Software. He lives in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
If he isn't busy improving BluffTitler, he is playing the piano or rides the Dutch dikes on his bikes.
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Contact michiel by using the comment form on this page or at info@outerspace-software.com