PBR is extra-official on the grid now, with Firestorm having released a PBR viewer. My feelings on PBR are...complicated. Sometimes I love it. Sometimes I hate it. On the exact same thing. Textures are more dynamic now so everything is WAY more complicated. I'm still going to be doing non PBR versions most of the time too, as those at least you might have some idea of what they will look like? And often I like that better, sooooo. But anyway. One thing they do that is fancy and new is MIRRORS. That reflect like...actual stuff, and even sometimes people. Mirrors are complicated and you will have to do some things to make them work right BUT you can now! And from my Wandering Soul at this round of Collabor88, a trio of mirrors. Two are pretty much always mirrors (unless you remove it and put pictures in, which you can!), a third that has a mirror option and a metal option.
The Mirror of the Moon includes the crescent moon facing either direction.
And the Starburst Wall Art can be metal stars, or mirrored stars, and includes individual stars and rows of stars as well as the entire starburst piece, so you can arrange it as you desire. All include the same 7 metals (silver, gold, rose gold, bronze, copper, a blackened with silver edges, and rusted cast iron) with PBR and Blinn-Phong (the textures we were using) options- non PBR viewers will see the Blinn-Phong version but you can also pick it in PBR viewers if you prefer it (as I often do); and include versions that have mirror probes already attached to make setup easier, but you can also add your own probes (and adjust the ones included as well).
You must enable your viewer to see mirrors! There is also Dynamic Reflections, which are almost but not quite mirrors, which you may want to set probes to instead (choose the mode for the probe in the Features tab in Build), depending on how your computer handles mirrors- they aren't quite as rough on your system as true mirrors are, but they don't update the reflections as smoothly.
To enable Mirrors:
Go to Avatar>Preferences in the top menu.
Go to Graphics tab
If it exists, open Advanced Settings (some viewers have the settings without having to go into that, but you need to get to the below settings or similar)
Enable the checkbox for Mirrors
Set Reflection Detail to Static & Dynamic or Realtime
Set Reflection Coverage to Full scene
Set Mirror Resolution and Mirror Update Rate to your choice, for quality and performance
For the versions w/ probe, that's all you need to do- but you can also set up your own probes! Second Life is now intended for YOU to set up your own (non mirror) probes everywhere on your land for PBR textures to look right. Not my rules, their rules: they set up a kind of bad default and then want you to set up spaces with probes yourself to fix it.
To add a probe: open up the Build menu (Build > Build in the top menu)
Create a box
In Features tab, enable checkbox for Reflection Probe. You will not be able to reselect this box now unless you enable the ability to Select Reflection Probe Volumes in Build>Options! If you don't let it go, you're good, but once you do it disappears and is hard to select!
Scale the box up to fix your space, anything inside the box will show more realistic reflections.
Choose Box or Sphere for shape- Box is better for indoors, you can scale it to fit your room. Spheres will be the same size on every side even if you try to scale them otherwise. If you're making a probe for mirrors, Spheres aren't even an option, it's only Boxes!
Choose how much the Probe updates within it. This is where you enable Mirrors! Static won't show avatars, but also won't be as much of a performance hit.
The location of the center of the box DOES matter when it comes to how things reflect (especially of note with mirrors!), so you may want to move your box around. It is not recommended to overlap too many boxes, the idea is no overlapping if possible. It is not recommended to have more than one probe with Mirrors enabled in an area.
Once you let go of your probe, you can find it again with Build > Options > Highlight Transparent, it will take on a transparent red color. To select it, grab a box selection box around it and deselect everything else (a total pain) or Build > Options > Select Reflection Probe. By default it will try not to get in the way, and be Phantom BUT if you link it to other prims it will NOT be Phantom anymore, set the entire object to Phantom or set the linked Probe object in the Build popup in Features tab to Physics Shape Type: None. Not this only works if the Probe is NOT the root prim, but you can select it easier by selecting the object it is linked to, then enabling Edit linked in the Build popup, then navigating through each object in the link set with Build > Select Elements>Select Next Part or Face (if you use this a lot, you'll want to learn that hotkey!)
There is also a basic mirror Material included that will let you turn faces of anything you want into a mirror. It's easy to make your own too- create a new Material in your inventory, set the Base Color and the Metal-Roughness to Blank white textures, set Metal to 1.0 and Rough to 0.0, and use that to texture your mirror. You can also make an old school mirror that will also reflect now! by setting the Environment in your Specular to 255. It'll look a touch different than the PBR mirror (it's a little more silvery) but it also works, as long as you also put out the probe for it!
p.s. If you are a vampire with vampire guests, you can set your mirrors to not reflect people, but to reflect everything else! Check out Static Reflections Probes.
Mirrors at Collabor88, July 8 - August 6.
