A Shader for My Balls

Does anyone have/ could make a shader for shiny steel balls? Prefer something from the kindness of your heart, but am prepared to pay a little.

EDIT> It should work on both ATI and Geforce cards & nothing too "heavy" performance wise.

The best option would be to use the enviroment mapping shader from ventilator's wiki

Yep, I am missing a good metal/gold/chrome/lack/plastic shader too. Shaders give the game a new level of quality.
So pleeeeaaase

Would these be for your pachinko machiene?

Of course

Ok, well I feel kinda stupid writing this... So you can shoot down my idea right away

If your using a model, wouldent the "Metal" property work in WED? (The Check Box)

(There's probably some totally obvious reason that it wont work)

Ello made a gold shader (and you can certainly use it for chrome), but it's using ps 1.3 or so I think.

Ello has sent me a very cool shader, so I'll use that .

You know, Aman, I never even thought about the metal property. Must have been too obvious. It won't look as good as Ello's shader, though.

Make sure to try it out on a few dozen (hundred?) balls really quick to see how your frame rate looks.

A lot of the shaders will really hammer the frame rate into the ground. Materials don't look quite as good - but they are easier on the GPU.

actually thast not strictly true that fixed function effects are always faster than a shader effect.. some shaders can be faster than fixed func .. it all depends.. modern cards have a lot shader units

I haven't noticed any significant effect from applying the shaders yet, though I will be increasing the number of balls.

The frame rate isn't the greatest anyway -howering around 30fps on my desktop- but I think that has more to do with the physics calculations than anything else.

Anyway, hopefully I'll have a beta finished today. Then I'll put it up in Showcase One and you can all download it and see for yourselves.

Hi, I was wondering, as a complete noob, how to do shaders (I know they're C-Script - I think) - but can they be done is A6.22 Commercial, even with reflectivity (like the metal)??

I'd really like to know -as it could add that little extra to my game - If anyone feels happy to send me (or post) the metal shader mentioned here, so I can experiment with it, I'd be most greatful.

you can download it at http://www.earthcontrol.de/sammlung2/shaderexperiments042004/materials.zip

Thanks for the link - I'll have an experiment tonight - see if I can get them to work.

I'm still left with a slight question though - both commercial and pro. support shaders - but is there a cap on commercial like with physics for example - or are they both identical?

well - I downloaded that link. I run the exe and I see the model. I can change the model. I can rotate the model. But I don't see any shaders. I press CTRL+SHIFT+1......0 to change the shader -there's no change on my screen.

I guess this means my graphics card doesn't support shaders??? I have an NVidia GeForce 4 MMX 440, anyone else had the same prob or have this card and get the shaders to work?

goto www.earthcontrol.de/sammlung1/checkshaders.zip , run the prog and you will know it;)

thanks ello.

All I see is black text rotating, so I guess it doesn't support pixel shaders.

However, what do you mean by deforming meshes? I can see them rotating, and they seem to bend arround the horizontal axis slightly, but nothing really obvious.

nono, the first should explode and the others should dissapear and appera in some way, also they should all be colored, ergo... you need to get a new graphics card if you want to use shaders yourself or want to see up to date features in current games

thanks. As soon as I have some money I'm off to the shop to get myself a new graphics card.

I prefer NVidia cards to ATI, but does anyone have any suggestions as to graphics cards that are arround the £50 to £100 that support pixel and vertex shaders, allong with the mesh deforming??

*tear - my card didnt show the text "exploding"

I guess that means I cant use any shaders. ARG!

EDIT: Would the my DirectX version I have effect the shaders?

You could try an off-brand card. Last year I found an off-brand ATI9800 for less than $200. THe same chipset, but maybe not the same quality and might not perform as well. Very cheap though.

Good sugestion. Would I find these on stores online? Like "Ebyuer"?? Also, which card do you prefer ATI or NVidia? Becuase I had an ATI and changed it for an NVidia, and I was far more impressed with the NVidia, but that was 2 years ago and apparently ATI have bucked up their act since the card I bought from then (which must have been 3 years prior to that, so 5 years ago).

Wars and flames have been burning on the topic Nvidia vs ATI.
I myself allways used Nvidia and was very pleased with the performance and whats more important stability...
So teh guys told me "ATI9200 is much much better that Nvidia FX5200 and the price is the same!" and i bought ATI9200.

All i can say is that later i also bought Fx5200, you figure out the rest.

I found some in at a computer shop that also sold computer parts. It was a cool brand with a guy in dark glasses on the otherwise non-descript brown cardboard box, and some shady kanji in the product name. The storekeeper told me they weren't greatly different from the real thing. And since this is Japan, I would believe him. In a Western country I'd be a little more careful. Myrlyn68 has tested a bunch of these cards, so it might pay to talk to him about the particular brand you are interested in.

Thanks guys. I'll do some research, and as soon as I have some more money (annyoing always being broke) - I will think about purchasing a new graphics card. Thanks for the advice.