Changes in gloss 2.16.2 vs 1.64.4

Help & Support
1

Hi everyone, I’ve just updated project to 2.16.2, can clearly see there were changes how gloss and metalness act, can’t really find the issue

function changeReflectivity() {
    const reflectivitySlider = document.getElementById('reflectivitySlider');
    entity = pc.app.root.findByName('Camera').script.pickerFramebuffer.lastSelectedEntity;
    if (entity && entity.render) {


    if (reflectivitySlider.value == 0) {
       entity.render.material.gloss = 0;
       entity.render.material.metalness = 0;
       entity.render.material.useMetalness = false;
    } else {
       entity.render.material.gloss = reflectivitySlider.value;
       entity.render.material.metalness = 0;
       entity.render.material.useMetalness = true;
    }

    entity.render.material.gloss = reflectivitySlider.value;
    entity.render.material.update();

    }   
}

In old version, “reflectivity” changed visibly from 0 to 0.1 to 1, now in the new version I can only see “minor” change from 0 to 0.1, anything more ~> identical outcome as 0.1

2

Hi, there have been several changes to specular/reflection handling in recent engine versions that could be affecting what you’re seeing, including:

  • #8287 — Changed Fresnel F90 calculation

  • #8299 — New isotropic GGX specular implementation

  • #8293 — Fix to KHR_materials_specular for metals and diffuse

  • #6755 — Removal of deprecated Phong specular model

Some workarounds you can try to get a more visible gloss range:

  1. Enable GGX specular on the material:

entity.render.material.enableGGXSpecular = true;

  1. Increase the IOR to boost the base reflectivity:

entity.render.material.refractiveIndex = 2.5; // default is 1.5

  1. Use a small metalness value instead of 0 to get stronger specular response:

entity.render.material.metalness = 0.15;

Also a small bug in your code — you’re setting gloss after the if/else block, which overwrites whatever was set inside it:

entity.render.material.gloss = reflectivitySlider.value;

And if the material was loaded from a glTF file, glossInvert may be true, meaning 0 = shiny and 1 = rough (opposite of what you might expect).