Is "PBR" a useful art style direction term?
high dynamic range
I've heard my AD and other artists use 'Physically Based Rendering' as feedback term, or style term.
Is it just me or does it not at all denote a precise art style direction in the same way "impressionism" or "abstract" does?
For example, how useful does "Make it more PBR" sound like? Only thing I can really think of is when Dragon Age Inquisition went super shiny and 'metal-y" with a LOT of the metallic surfaces in the game. Steel, Aluminum, Mithril, doesn't matter, they all shiny bruv as away to flex early PBR.
Is it just me or does it not at all denote a precise art style direction in the same way "impressionism" or "abstract" does?
For example, how useful does "Make it more PBR" sound like? Only thing I can really think of is when Dragon Age Inquisition went super shiny and 'metal-y" with a LOT of the metallic surfaces in the game. Steel, Aluminum, Mithril, doesn't matter, they all shiny bruv as away to flex early PBR.
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But, my hunch is they have a certain aesthetic in mind -- like you said maybe certain games that came out around the time PBR was becoming the big thing -- and they have just assigned that with the term.
This is a chance to ask the boss every bosses favorite question : "Yo, Top, what the hell are you talking about?"
In my view, pbr is a tech that you can use to make your *whatever art style more life-like from some certain viewpoints.
Edit - We had this weird guy but I think he got banned. I cannot remember his name right now. He kept coming up with a thing that he called cartoony pbr and we were like booo. By going this way of thinking that I just wrote above, actually he could have been right. At least it certainly exists but its more like what Blizzard does nowadays and not something that you can draw with pencils.
https://polycount.com/discussion/154329/physically-based-3d-cartoon-art/p1
My feeling is PBR is merely a tool, not a style. Like, would you call diffuse-specular a style?
That probably just means that neither this AD or these artists have ever worked with a roughness map themselves.
In these cases I think the best course of action is simply to play dumb and ask them "what do you mean ?".
... and then, showing them a picture of a stylized action figure like this , to check if in their opinion it is "PBR".
Since it's used to make things more physically accurate, I assume what they mean is that it should be more realistic/accurate. I'd ask to be sure though. I'd also never proliferate its use as a reference to realistic styled art. Not only is it needlessly confusing, but non-realistic games make use of PBR as well.
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My two cents: if someone was asking for a "PBR Look", I feel they're thinking more about the nice lighting than the nitty gritty of maps and materials.
In that kind of context it is a buzzword, and people who liberally use buzzwords usually don't know what they're doing all that well. Disney's Moana was PBR. Call of Duty Black Ops 4 was PBR. You don't really have to look very hard to realise there isn't much stylistic commonality between them.
Not much!
It's like saying "add more polish", seriously.
But no, I don't think this is an indication of anything sucking in the industry. Frankly, I'm happy that studios seem to be embracing PBR for both stylistic and realistic art styles. If we never have to paint in abs or use awful hacky shaders again I'll be just grand.
That's kind of my point though - there are some really interesting stylistic areas that simply aren't possible using technology that's built to mimic the real world - and the fact that it's such a rarity for anyone to explore those areas is ... disappointing. I'm not saying using PBR is a stylistic choice, I'm saying it restricts the stylistic choices that are available to you.
Custom toolset, custom content pipe, training, difficult to find art director talented enough to see it all the way through, small potential audience, etc.
In short, extreme stylism is a risk.
Not something that should stop an artist necessarily (speaking as an artist here!) but artists don't usually fund the project, risk assessors do.
Even if you're going for extreme stylization, NPR style rendering, PBR concepts can provide a solid foundation to construct the rendering style. If you're doing cartoony, cell shaded, or painterly style, it still generally makes sense for metals and insulators to reflect light... as metals and insulators should. This is a big reason why Pixar / Disney use PBR for their stylized work. The logical behavior of material properties helps to ground an otherwise unrealistic visual language, which makes it more relatable to the viewer/player.
This is what I think of when I think 'that PBR look'
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8EeVS0UiuqE/maxresdefault.jpg
Definitely agree but the difference is that now the 'lazy work' looks fine enough and often gets a pass, while previously it was rather obvious to even non artists that it was sub-par and would less likely be approved. Is the tech to blame? No of course not, but it is a consequence of the instant flashiness of IBL, strong norming in the render pipeline so everything looks fine right away, and 1 click materials of generation PBR software.
I give this feedback a lot with artists that do everything "by eye" and give me flat black albedo maps, half grey metallics and other impossible materials. Of course I explain in detail what goes wrong in their textures, with examples and charts.
You are guaranteed that your assets will look off/wrong in certain lighting conditions. We shouldn't need to have two sets of assets for daytime and night-time, it's exactly why the whole industry went PBR in the first place.
You can still be physically based but be fairly stylized or have a non-realistic look as mentioned above. Textures don't even have to be photo-realistic either: Walking Dead Season 3 and later at Telltale were physically based but relied on hand painted assets.
But I don't think the feedback is being used to address a style, but more 'correctness' for the art pipeline. It's all a little vague but I'd like to assume that the artists using that term know better than to just say that.
it might use the unreal shaders with some tweaks, which are metalness roughness workflow. but it is definitely not very physical in terms of materialsetup
look at uncharted or something like anthem, they exaggerate their materials a bit more dramatically than in real life to help sell the overall image being made up of different surface types while in motion. metals tend to be really "metal-y" so reflections and highlights roll off them nicely during gameplay.
that would be my guess as to what the original posters art director wanted. but yea "make it more pbr" sounds like someone who stopped working in engine years ago and is more focused on high level aesthetics while trying to sound like they still know technical terms.
Anyone who has dealt with clients or coworkers that aren't particularly schooled in your area of expertise, will run into this, a lot. part of being a decent human being is not giving people shit when they reach outside of what they're familiar with, especially if you want them to do more of it. Don't be "that guy" that sneers and gets all judgmental when someone doesn't pick exactly the right words. Try to understand what they're saying and help them use the right terms.
It's often good to restate what they said like you're clarifying, but use correct terms so they at least start to become familiar with the vernacular, but even that can bruise an ego and derail a conversation. It really depends on your relationship with that person, if it's even worth it to bring it up.