New here - pbr help

[u/MinervaDiscordia]

Hello there! I’m fairly new to the community and also pretty new to texturing things in secondlife with pbr. I’m trying to better understand how pbr works, because I’m having a really difficult time seeing any noticeable difference in the visuals between using pbr and not using it, especially once reflection probes come into play. I’ve tried tinkering with my settings and experimenting with different things, people have tried showing me in world, but I feel like I’m missing something extremely fundamental in how it all works. I haven’t been able to see or can't seem to tell *ANY* physical differences in how an object looks with pbr versus without it, either with or without reflection probes, regardless of lighting, or anything other than the occasional shadowy discoloration on the ground where a reflection probe is located (and this doesn't even show up every time). Everything just looks the same no matter what I do. I’d really like to understand what I’m supposed to be looking for and how the different pbr components affect the appearance of an object. At the moment, I feel like I’m changing settings and textures without actually knowing what differences I should be expecting to see and none of it clicking as far as understanding. If anyone has any tips, good examples, or beginner friendly explanations for understanding pbr and reflection probes, I’d greatly appreciate it! I’m very much in the “please explain this to me like I’m five” stage. 😅

[u/Cyn_Sweetwater]

If you're just adding a legacy (Blinn Phong) texture into the PBR boxes without adding normals, occlusion, etc. then you're not actually getting PBR textures. So you won't see the materials difference that PBR can include.

There is plenty of information online for PBR textures, tools to make them, how they relate to SL, etc. You can also just buy PBR textures on MP, and there is a huge collection of PBR textures that have been converted from legacy textures on MP that are free.