PBR (material) skins

The 'Skin' body part inventory type should support PBR materials. In other words, add PBR to the skin baker.

Many of my characters have non-human skins such a fur, scales, metal (robots), stone (statues), wood, or other interesting and fantastical materials. Opening up avatars to PBR materials would allow these to be used directly without relying on appliers.

As an initial release, PBR could be added to just the "skin" rather than clothes, tattoos, and the 'universal' clothing type. Any "legacy" clothing worn layers worn over top would be treated as "Base Color" and set the normal, roughness, metalness, occlusion, and emissive maps to "default" values (where not transparent) so the skin material doesn't shine through. Alternately, PBR skins could disable all legacy clothing. Whatever gets us PBR skins fastest.

Later on, PBR clothing could be added with different blend modes. A "robotic" or "doll" tattoo, for example, could blend a normal map onto the skin to create different looks for the base skin.

https://secondlife.canny.io/admin/board/feature-requests/p/pbr-material-skins

Start by locating the skin baker and the code handling legacy clothing layers. Determine how PBR skins should interact with legacy clothing, including default normal, roughness, metalness, occlusion, emissive, and base-color behavior. Done means skin inventory items support PBR materials without requiring appliers, with a defined legacy-clothing outcome.