I know but even though various shader iterations may be "standards," you always read about shaders not working on cards that support the given shader number. I'm always wary of standards and relying on them to work flawlessly across the board. Both card A and card B may support Shader 2.0 but certain 2.0 shaders may or may not work 100% correctly on both cards (or others). I think it mainly comes down to Nvidia vs. ATI implementation issues. A shader might work fine on an Nvidia card but crap out on an ATI card that should support it.

that's where the high level shader compilers come in handy.

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you always read about shaders not working on cards that support the given shader number

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Its a bit more complicated than this, but since shader model 2.0 such compatibility problems have vanished.

The problem was that the early pixel shader versions were not really programmable..they relied more on certain hardware routines Also drivers made a big difference.

GeForce FX cards, while they supported ps 2.0, were designed so poorly that standard 2.0 code couldnt run at a reasonable speed, so a new version, 2.0b had to be introduced...

Since radeon 9700 and GeForce 6 series and better, all these issues have been addresed. Now there are still some differences in card implementations, but are far more subtle...mostly they will not affect the user..

would the Environment Bump Mapping from shader pack 2 work with pros render to texture?

Phew, sorry, this thread took on a bit of a life of it's own while I was finetuning things and starting on docs.

Ok, so let me address everything I've missed.

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<Ello>hey phil, looking at your example , are you already using material skills for passing other things than colors? for example the strength of a normalmapping or whatever aspect of a shader that is adjustable?

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That's correct. A small number of extra settings ( such as the UV offset with offset bumpmapping ) are set with material skills. To me, this seemed the most convenient manner to allow the settings to be used-defined.

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<Vlau>By adding the shader effect as your code above : effect = "TwoLights.fx";
then the .fx file will be a standalone text file, how can I encrypt the
file in this way? as I read the FAQ from your website that you mentioned
licensee need to encrypt the shader codes while publishing their games.

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I'm open to suggestions here. I don't have enough experience of 3DGS to know the best way to do this. If it's not practical, then I will simply provide a difference license for the 3DGS pack.

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<Orange Brat>@Phil: Thanks for the effort. When this is all said and done, a list of cards these shaders are confirmed to work with and those they are confirmed not to work with would be appreciated.

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JCL and others already replied to this, but just to confirm, these shaders are Shader Model 2.0 or better. The issues you refer to with cards not really being standards compliant and claiming otherwise are with old shader models ( one of the reasons we don't support anything before SM2.0, another reason being that SM2.0 and above are DX10 compatible, and previous versions are not. ) Assuming DirectX9 is installed and decent videocard drivers are installed, and it's a SM2.0 card, it will work.

Beyond that, there are two downloadable demos available on the SFG site. They weren't made with 3DGS, but they will allow you to confirm compatibility.

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<Matt Coles>would the Environment Bump Mapping from shader pack 2 work with pros render to texture?

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The environment bump mapping shader ( which I'm hoping will be included in the 3DGS pack, just have to write up a demo to test it now. ) uses a cubemap. Can you use render to texture with a cubemap? After talking to JCL, I was planning to link this shader with the scene's skycube environment, as that's the most likely use for it. It would be trivial to change it, of course, but I don't know offhand if you can render-to-texture to a cubemap target in 3DGS.


I think I got everyone, but please forgive me ( and repost ) if I missed anything or anyone.

When will these shaders be available for sale.

Hi MaxF,

I still have some documentation left to do and a bit more testing, but I'd estimate that they should be available in about a week from now.

Hi SFGPhil

Any more news on when I can buy

I think the week has not fully passed yet, but when the shaders are ready you can certainly buy them at http://www.shadersforgames.com/ .

Hi,

The pack is complete. I'm just working on updating the site, getting the ecommerce stuff setup and tested, and all that sort of thing. Documentation is complete too.

I have decided to leave environment bumpmapping shaders out of the pack, as I have been unable ( so far ) to get 3DGS to read any of my cube maps correctly. If and when I manage to get them done, they'll be added to the pack ( for free, existing customers will get them too, of course ) but I would ask people not to buy unless they're happy without them as I cannot make any guarantees on that.

So Pack 4, 3D GameStudio Shaders, will contain all the normal mapping shaders, all the parallax mapping shaders and all the detail normalmapping shaders from Pack 2. It will also contain the static lightmapping, static shadowmapping, thermal and terrain splatting textures from Pack 1. The price will be $49.95, the same as the previous packs, so 3DGS users will be getting a slightly better deal, getting some shaders from Pack 1 and almost all the shaders from Pack 2 as well.

There were some requests for shaders not currently in any of our packs, including shaders which could combine static light/shadowmapping with normal/parallax mapping, and some other ideas, but these were beyond the scope of this pack, and would have meant long delays and a higher price. Accordingly, I've started putting together a list of ideas for a future pack of shaders, which will be Packs 5 and 6 ( 5 being the general one and 6 being a version for 3D GameStudio users. ) As well as the aforementioned normal/parallax with light/shadowmapping, some of the planned shaders include glow, animated foliage ( swaying grass, trees, etc. ) and probably some kind of water shader. Someone suggest a snow material too, but that might be a bit tricky. Thoughts and suggestions are welcome, and we'll see how we go.

I hope to have the site stuff finished by tonight, and I'll post back when it's done.