Vaughan Vendetta Big fan of your work! I hope more veteran heavyweight content creators give their two cents here, there's definitely demand for what this would open up.

Ceri Quixote Out of curiosity Ceri, why do you feel that using this existing framework is a poor way to achieve this result? You can already accomplish it with this technique to a limited extent, and the results are good enough that a simple checkbox would open up a world of creation possibilities without having to develop a whole new system for texture layering? It would be better than the onion approach, no?

We already have fullbright and since it ignores lighting (and thus materials), it doesn't matter if that implementation is PBR or bling-phong If we were to deprecate the bling-phong material system and needed an implementation of fullbright, the correct procedure would be to utilize the KHR_materials_unlit extension. On that level it's a completely unneeded feature.

As for using it as an overlay layer - I would very much like to see texture layering; however, that is an important and needed feature and very much needs to be as a robust solution as our current system side baking solution. This workaround is very much not a robust solution. I don't want to see the emissive functionality that I'm very much happy with derailed for a workaround on a separate issue that doesn't do enough. Nor do I want to see us in a position where we can do emissive effects or texture layering but not both. Emissive effects were shoe-horned into alpha channels in the bling-phong material system and that all but killed the utilization. This implementation risks the same problem.

Ceri Quixote Have to disagree - if I had to choose between something as simple as disabling Emissive Full Bright or waiting another 2-3 years for full color masks / texture layering I would 100% pick a simple Emissive Full Bright. It opens up a ton of functionality with very little additional work and delivers at least 1 layer of texture overlay that creators are asking for. That's worth it, and yes in the future perhaps LL can integrate a proper color mask system like other virtual platforms already do.

animats Resident If you upvote this feature, it will result in fewer full bright objects. Emissive is already full bright by default.

The purpose of this feature request is to allow users to untick fullbright when using emissive masks so they can leverage the emissive channel for separate-tint texture overlays without those having to show up full bright in darkness.

Quinn Elara The need for this is to allow more granularity in the emissive procedure, but also, critically, to allow for non-emissive overlays using that layer (so onion layers and such don't have to be created)

Alkaia Exonar The existing emissive implementation already allows for more granularity than a checkbox - black (0,0,0) parts of the emissive texture do not ignore lighting, nor do they glow. A blanket checkbox does not allow for any more flexibility.

Quinn Elara It allows white parts of the emissive texture to be visible while not being emissive, which is the broad point of the feature request - to leverage the current implementation in novel ways allowing for new applications.

Alkaia Exonar Exactly this!

Alkaia Exonar Agreed

The thing to achieve would be the ability to layer non-full bright decals onto mesh objects without having to model on an extra layer above the mesh surface, the practice of onion skinning a mesh objects not only doubles the polycount for the affected area, but can also be problematic on rigged items in areas of bending, this would also eliminate issues of alpha fighting caused by onion skinning

Rinn Grumpypants I am not sure what do you think emissive exactly does but it has absolutely no relation with adding decals on top of existing textures. If you want to be able to add extra texture layers on top of each other then you should request a new feature that adds decals support. The emissive channel does not adds extra layers on top of existing ones, it simply controls the amount and color of the brightness through an RGB map.

Kuuko Shan I am aware fully of how emissive works and what it does, I was merely answering your question in relation to what was trying to be achieved, because as you stated, you didn't understand what was being suggested.

Rinn Grumpypants Still, something that can't and shouldn't be achived with emissive. It will never happen because it would be extremely absurd.

For people expecting new materials features, they should look into GLTF specs and what's to come in newer versions since that's how SL materials system will work from now on.

Kuuko Shan Respectfully, you are wrong about this. The capacity to make decals using the emissive channel in the way Rinn describes is already viable, just limited. Allowing users to untick the full bright option on Emissive would allow them to take it just a little further. Happy to demonstrate inworld if you're curious

Kuuko Shan It has the benefit that areas highlighted in the emissive channel are able to be tinted independently of the rest of the material, allowing users to create dynamic modifications to their textures in a much more modular fashion.

It's not in conflict with PBR or GLTF, and using the existing Emissive framework is a great suggestion because in order to function in this way it just needs the addition of a single button rather than a whole new system added on top (lots more work, very unlikely to come any time soon.)

Legacy content would remain unaffected, but you'd have this added option as a creator. It's very versatile, and I've been using it to keep buttons on a jacket a specific colour (set in the emissive mask) different to the base fabric, which the user can tint freely without accidentally colouring the button. This works perfectly until the item is in darkness, at which point it only functions well at a limited colour range because full bright stands out from a distance at lighter values.

Mirror Mondegreenn it would still break how emisssive works. Emisssive is emisssive, this isn't a made up thing by LL but a standard and it works as intended. If you want decals or a way to layer textures then open a request with such suggestion and you will get my vote and even the possibility of it happening. But requesting to change something that shouldn't be changed it's an extremely wrong idea. We can't start again getting pseudo features that nobody understands and uses outside of SL. Let's just keep the things the way they are meant to be. What you request isn't impossible, there is just no need to use the emisssive for that regardless of how easy it seems for you.

Kuuko Shan And yet, we could make objects "glow" without being full bright in the old Blinn Phong system. What was wrong with that? There were many practical and interesting applications of that functionality. One additional toggle for the PBR emissive mask causes no harm.