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Shader Whining...
#39776
01/20/05 00:21
01/20/05 00:21
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Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 815 NY USA
Red Ocktober
OP
Developer
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OP
Developer
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 815
NY USA
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ok, here it goes... let the whining begin... so far, via the generousity of some of the talented coders here who have made their work available, i've been able to get shaders working in 3dgs... and some of my attempts at emulating the next DOOM3 looking scenery didn't look too bad... that's the good part... i've found though... that making a game with extensive use of shader effects in 3dgs is still not practical... at least not for me... i'm talking bumpmapping / normal mapping shaders here... just the simple act of mixing a water shader, a level shader on a few non complex blocks, and adding a shaded moving model to the scene, causes a noticable slowdown of the animated water, and jerkiness in the camera movement... to the point of being totally unusable for gameplay... also... with the exception of interior scenes, making any environment that needs fog and lighting and shadows look like anything, is a task set forth by the gods... shadows act up... shaders aren't affected by fog... more than a few lights slow the scene down to a crawl... so far, 3dgs and shaders looks like it's limited to limited demos right now... at least from where i'm standing... err, sitting... as my ability to mod the shader code is minimal at best... my only small bit of success has been with the older, static lit shaders that took the shadow/lightmapping that the engine does when compiling a level... the newer stuff appears to be a lil too taxing for the system... hey... i warned ya... it was a whing session you were netering... has anyone gotten anything on the order of a game utilizing shaders working, or past the point where it looks like it's gonna work out... (if so, a link to the site, screenies, demos, anything would be appreciated) ... i could use a lil motivation to get me out of this whining phase i'm going through. to be honest... none of the other comparable game dev tools has shaders working that good yet either... all seem problematic at this stage... what about future engine forecasts... anything on the horizon along these lines... thx for listening --Mike
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Re: Shader Whining...
[Re: Blattsalat]
#39780
01/20/05 01:30
01/20/05 01:30
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Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 815 NY USA
Red Ocktober
OP
Developer
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OP
Developer
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 815
NY USA
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Quote:
we should let the mods decide if it should be moved or not It aint our job
first off... noone said anything about it being our job to determine what posts stays where... it is quite obvious that the moderators will make those determinations... but, on the same hand, there is nothing to stop someone from posting their view as to why the post is relevant... and why it should stay where it is... in order to possibly assist the moderators arrive at their decision... which is what was done...
Quote:
So i dont see any reason for whining. it could be easier but its not impossible at all. And due to the fact shaders are quite new its a bit early about complaining to much.
noone is ripping anything apart... or trying to. unlike you, who's eyes seem closed to anything that even faintly appears to be critical of 3DGS, so it is no wonder why you 'cant see any reason'... all i am doing is trying to open a rational, fact based, discussion with the coders here who have actually coded the shaders... and the developers who are using them, either with problems or successfully...
such an exchange can only be beneficial...
... as opposed to what appears to be your flag waving statemements, that make it seem like someone is threatening the 3DGS homefront... under which no information is exchanged... and noone benefits...
why do you feel like you always have to defend Conitec... Quote:
At least give conitec some time to start working on something before ripping it appart
when noone in fact is attacking Conitec at all...
this is simply a thread to garner information and input from developers experienced with shaders... and maybe to come up with some solutions, workarounds, and possibly goals for future implementations in the engine...
besides... Conitec is well able to defend their own interests and position here... far better than you can, i would think.
if you have nothing to contribute on those lines, i might suggest you ignore this thread, and not try and start another of your flag waving flame fests.
not trying to shut you up or anything... but i'd really be more interested in listening to what Matt, Rhuarc, Steempipe, Ventilator, Drew, Oliver, has to say on the current state of shaders and what the immediate future holds...
... after all, they've done some of the grunt work and been generous enough to share it with the rest of us as far as shader effects here are concerned... so i would assume (safely) that they have the most experience, and would be in a better position to offer some more insightful input...
... real input, not blind following the blind, a6 patriotic, flag waving input
i'm sure these people would be generous enough to explain whatever shortcomings and erroneous positions i may be operating from in a factual and level headed manner... which may wind up helping more than just me...
so... if you don't mind... can we ignore your distraction and return to the topic at hand... please...
--Mike
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Re: Shader Whining...
[Re: Red Ocktober]
#39784
01/20/05 02:07
01/20/05 02:07
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Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 4,131
Matt_Aufderheide
Expert
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Expert
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 4,131
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All the shaders work fine, but you must use them judiciously. If fogging doesnt work it's because we didn't put it in the shader for some reason. Fog can be easily added.. in any HLSL pass just add this your vertex shader output struct:
float Fog: FOG;
and then in your vertex shader:
// Add fog
float3 PositionWorld = mul(inPos, matWorld);
float ofog = 1 - (distance(PositionWorld, vecViewPos) - vecFog.x) * (vecFog.z*1.5);
Out.Fog = ofog;
In some shaders I don't add fog because they are meant to be used indoors. For instance my Ultimate lighting Shaders were designed to be indoor only, hence no fogging and no sunlight. This can be easily be changed however.
In any case, There are indeed problems with tangent lighting shaders on World geometry. To make it work better, make sure you set all the blocks to "flat" and have "tesselate flat" set to "auto". Here there can be a problem though which I have informed JCL about, but i dont know if he has taken a look at it yet.. sometimes if vertices are welded you can get odd lighting problems. So what i do is either use models for everything, or use blocks where the egdes dont touch.
Of course using shaders will slow you down a bit depending on the complexity and what kind of card you have. There are some specifc optimizations that could be done with the shader system that haven't been done...however, i have good performance in my game- which isn't a "test" level, but huge outdoors areas. My terrain has the max number of faces allowed on a terrain (32,000 or something).
My terrain shader mixes 4 color textures, 2 detail textures, a main normal map,vertex lighting, and an environmental bump map. The framerate is hardly effected by all this. On top of that all my regular models like guns, monsters all have 2 pass, 8 light per-pixel lighting shaders. My water does cubic environment bump mapping. Even so i get good framerates, even with a render backbuffer Dll doing fullscreen Bloom effect.
In general using terrains and models is faster than world geometry. I tend to avoid world geometry whenever possible.
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