Both Disney Feature Animation and Industrial Light and Magic rigidly follows PBR workflows. I think that tells you all you need to know about the notion of using PBR as an art direction.
PBR is basically the new Next Gen. 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.
If your AD thinks "pbr" is a stylistic choice, your AD doesn't know what they're saying. 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…
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…
It was JordanN and it was not really cartoony pbr, it was basically just verbal diarrhea. We lean heavily towards leniency, but this was a sustained burden. 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…
"Make it more PBR" just means it's not PBR. 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…
This is an interesting question, and I think its somewhat hard to answer because if you think about it, you could say both yes and no. But I think mainly no. Because any art style could be pbr. For example there is Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm. They both use the same very stylized direction. Stylized shapes and…
In addition to what @"Eric Chadwick" mentions, I think it's important to point out that there is a pretty big range of style that one can pull off within a PBR system. PBR doesn't have to mean photo-realistic military sims. Style comes from very many things, not just the shaders your engine uses. Overall art direction…