michiel | 3 months ago | 5 comments | 9 likes | 308 views

liuyongcai, shoji M, Decentralized 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...

Here's how it looks in Sketchfab using the "Pine Tree Arch" texture.

michiel, 3 months ago

You must be logged in before you can comment to this article. Login | Register