07 Jan I Finally Understand PBR!

So as the title suggests I finally got my head around PBR, (Physically Based Rendering).

I would agree with the old saying that the best things come to those who wait. The things that are for you will return to you. And I don’t know what it is about this uncanny knack I have of managing to upgrade my skillset on the least amount of sleep possible, but PBR had alluded me for the last year. I was sidestepping it like dating sites. Yet yesterday I woke up at naturally at 4am, unable to continue sleeping and decided that once and for all I was going to understand PBR.

For background context the buildings that I create exist within a virtual environment run by a physics / collision engine that simulates Newtonian physics. It’s a bit like building doll houses except that you can experience them in the way that you would a real house. Meaning that you can re-create any real life building or design your own, without limits and use those to create larger environments and experiences for people who rely on virtual world environments, ( we make them for the elderly, the disabled, the geographically spread and so on – so many people use these environments for different reasons). I am used to texturing these houses using the Blinn-Phong Reflection Model which has allowed me to create reproduction buildings like The Ambleside Bridge House and Summerhill House in Spark Bridge. It’s all been groovy. It’s all been working. And for further context no, I do not have a mathematical, science or physics savvy brain. I have a creative brain that runs on imagination, intuition and feeling – this stuff takes me AGES to understand.

But as with most technology eventually to keep up in terms of photorealism you need to upgrade in terms of skill. And when PBR was introduced as the next level of texturing I realised I was either going to have to re-learn or pack up. Every single seller seemed to be converting. I felt like packing up for a long time. In fact I had tinkered with my storefront for so long procrastinating and doubting that I could actually fit this new thing into my brain. I thought my time building with mesh was over. And then yesterday at 4am crouched over my laptop and cradling my coffee – I did it! I finally understood how to create my own PBR textures. The missing piece!

I will add some photos / video when I can to illustrate what I mean but for now I have a whole catalog of builds to bring into the PBR environment and a whole lot of sleep to catch up on.