Physically-based Assets

With physically based rendering becoming popular now, I thought I might be able to do well selling assets with PBR-ready textures. I don't know how many people are really using that with Unity though, since it requires other assets to get working. I also don't know if the appearance would be consistent among various PBR asset systems. My own asset may look good in whichever PBR-enabling system I personally use, but then it might look terrible for someone using a different system.
PBR is also only usable on PC, and it seems likely that the huge majority of people making Unity games and requiring assets would be using Mobile.
It wouldn't seem all that reasonable to do it in preparation of Unity 5 either, since that won't be out for almost a year.

Does it seem likely to be lucrative spending my time making my assets PBR-ready, or probably just a huge waste of time?

 

I would think there would be a market for physically based assets. Unity 5 and UE4 both support physically based rendering. When Unity 5 ships, a lot of people are going to buy the first cool looking physically based assets they can find, so they can play with physically based rendering in Unity 5.

 

I agree. Even if people don't use it for a game, they're at least going to want to play around with the new features - and PBR is a pretty major one

 

Both very good points. I have plenty of time before Unity 5 to get it right, too.

 

It looks like some people have managed to get Lux working on Android. ( http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/235027-Lux-an-open-source-physically-based-shading-framework )

So there might be a market for PBR mobile assets.

 

Doesn't Marmoset Skyshop work on mobile?

 

only on PC?, no Mac or the other things? (I understand about mobile devices), that limits a lot of the platforms you can build for doesn't it?.

 

A Mac is a Personal Computer.

 

What Tyler said. I'm pretty sure it works on console too, it just seemed unnecessary to specifically list out all the things it does work on, since my point was just that most low-end Indie devs requiring assets probably work on mobile.

About Skyshop though, I didn't think that actually added Physically-based Shaders. Alloy even recently added Skyshop compatibility, which seems strange to me that anyone would use them together if Skyshop has its own PBR.

 

The term "PC" is pretty specific in practice:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/12/Getamac.png

When you think about it, a smart phone is a "personal computer" too, but nobody calls an iPhone a PC.

 

Yeah, I had a question about that on the Alloy thread, and the developer said that Alloy is more like "real" PBR, rather than whatever Skyshop is (IBL I guess). It's confusing, since Marmoset has a non-Unity product that DOES implement PBR. Apparently Skyshop's focus is on supporting multiple devices, which limits what they can do. (?) And Alloy is more focused on high end devices. Alloy can use the maps Skyshop produces from skyboxes or whatever I think it how they interact.

But yeah, to the OP, between Alloy, Lux, and Unity 5, I do believe there will be significant demand for PBR content. Really, I'd buy stuff right now.

 

PBR and IBL are two completely different things; they are just both being used together a lot. PBR is "physically based rendering" and basically is a way of giving materials a wider range of specular effects, so that you have more realistic metals and shiny materials that don't look like plastic. IBL is "image based lighting", and it basically means using a cube map image of the surroundings (like the sky, sun and ground) and projecting light from it onto objects instead of (or in addition to) the old way of just having a single ambient light color and a bunch of individual lights.

 

I'm using SkyShop IBL in my current game, and the ambient light quality went up dramatically (kind of the point I guess). So are you saying that some PBR shaders use that same IBL technique for ambient lighting in addition to its fancy material calculations? I recently picked up Alloy, and the material examples are very interesting. Yeah, the metal stuff in particular is eye-catching, but I thought the orange skin and leather materials were impressive in their own ways too.

 

I mean you can have PBR without IBL, or IBL without PBR, or use both. PBR for instance could give you the orange skin or leather material, and you could use it with just a plain Unity directional light and plain single ambient light color, and you'd have somewhat boring color but still get the realistic looking highlights. Or you can use IBL on a regular Unity Bumped Specular shader, and get the full light color variation, but the highlights and material will look less realistic. Or you can use both together to get the best look.