| Submitted by , posted on 21 January 2002 |

Image Description, by Greeting fellow flipcoders. Over the years I have seen many posts on Games, Landscapes, Effects, and Engines of all sorts. Well this time I decided to post something that would bring them all together and is hopefully usefull for future posts.
I am presented a set of pictures from my program called Shader Studio. It is a utility for Direct3D 8.1 developers to design and develop Vertex and Pixel Shaders. Currently I have just opened up beta testing and welcome any who dable in advanced graphics to participate. Of course you will need the best video cards to get the real features. A GF3 for Version 1.0 Pixel Shaders or a Radeon 8500 for everything.
Well to continue on with the posting, let me explain the pictures. In the upper left is a picture of the standard cornell box with my technique of bump mapping. I use an alignment of the textures to determine the mapping from light to texture space, this way I can completely do the math in the vertex shader and allow for any geometry so long as it has the proper texture coordinates. Then the Pixel Shader processes the bump mapping using a simple dot3 combine of the base texture with the bump map.
The next picture in the upper right is the same bump mapping Vertex Shader put onto one of the DirectX spaceship models. The only difference is the subtle attenuation of the light, done in the pixel shader.
The lower right picture shows the shader development interface, this is only one of many controls to manage shader development, but it is the most important.
And last, but not least, is the best one. You will see what looks like an ordinary landscape, but be fooled for this is actually the first implementation of Real-Time Per Pixel Displacement mapping I know of. Yes, 1 polygon, 2 triangles, many FPS. Though it's in a higly experimental state, I just had to post a pic. It currently has many limitations, one is that it will only run on a Radeon 8500, next is it breaks down at sleep angles, but the effect is very real.
For further information and to participate in the beta please see http://www.shaderstudio.com

[prev] | Image of the Day Gallery www.flipcode.com | [next]

Copyright 1999-2008 (C) FLIPCODE.COM and/or the original content author(s). All rights reserved.
Please read our Terms, Conditions, and Privacy information.