fragment shaders and GL rendering.

bfvietnam · Post by **bfvietnam** » Tue May 24, 2005 11:41 am

jesterKing · Post by **jesterKing** » Tue May 24, 2005 11:54 am

HL2 is not a bad game.

/Nathan

Money_YaY! · Post by **Money_YaY!** » Tue May 24, 2005 3:34 pm

Dude do you even have all of the settings turned on ?

Those screenshots dont do it justice. But yeah get in line with everyone else n blenders verrrry slow acceptance to use current opengl standards...

z3r0_d · Post by **z3r0_d** » Wed May 25, 2005 2:20 am

Money_YaY! wrote:But yeah get in line with everyone else n blenders verrrry slow acceptance to use current opengl standards...

perhaps because there are enough issues with opengl support of features which have been around for years

... blender doesn't work properly on some current hardware, adding new features would just make it worse... we'd have people with intel cards in their new $1500 pc wondering why they can't do stencil shadows quickly, and why they can't do normal mapping or more fancy things...
[actually, newer intel chipsets can do stencil shadows and normal maps and shaders [not quickly mind you]... but you get the idea]

Pierre-Luc_Auclair · Post by **Pierre-Luc_Auclair** » Wed May 25, 2005 9:37 am

I gotta agree too that blender is lacking in the realtime preview and shader department. I'm not a user of XSI, but it has some really awesome viewport preview features. Also the render tree is really something we should base the new node based shader system on.

If it could also be used to export openGL shaders (with python bindings to customize your own) it would be really cool too.

I realize it won't be before a while, but I can still hope ! After the animation rewrite I guess !

About compatibility, there is a limit to support "non-supporting" video-cards and chipsets. If Ton really wants to give credibility to Blender like he wants to do with Orange with a software that is not ready yet in my opinion, he should focus on making things really work for the power-user and stop caring too much about supporting everyone. To my knowledge all "professionnal" (because at some point there is to doubt) software have a list of chipsets and video cards that they do not support. Doesn't mean that the software shouldn't work at all, but some functions could be disabled on some hardware.

Money_YaY! · Post by **Money_YaY!** » Wed May 25, 2005 8:53 pm

z3r0_d wrote:
Money_YaY! wrote:But yeah get in line with everyone else n blenders verrrry slow acceptance to use current opengl standards...
perhaps because there are enough issues with opengl support of features which have been around for years

... blender doesn't work properly on some current hardware, adding new features would just make it worse... we'd have people with intel cards in their new $1500 pc wondering why they can't do stencil shadows quickly, and why they can't do normal mapping or more fancy things...
[actually, newer intel chipsets can do stencil shadows and normal maps and shaders [not quickly mind you]... but you get the idea]

BA, stop care taking for older computers... What is 3d ? It is new tech, it is a powerfull media that demands simi powerful machines. Stalling back in the days of early 90 computers is just hurting the evolution of this program and the users that actually use the darn program for real professional use. But then again pros should just leave if they want something better,

LetterRip · Post by **LetterRip** » Thu May 26, 2005 8:17 pm

We have users in China, India, and a large number of less developed countries.

These are potentially huge growth areas, especially with China and India having substantial growth in their animation industrys.

Given the average incomes in these countries, the ability to support older/inexpensive hardware is very desireable.

Also I'm fairly sure Ton has stated that he would accept patches that would allow usage of more advanced GL stuff. So, your issue is more likely going to be finding a coder willing to do what you want.

I'd suggest that your approach of frequently dissing Blender and of frequent complaints is probably not the best approach to finding a sympathetic coder though...

LetterRip

Money_YaY! · Post by **Money_YaY!** » Fri May 27, 2005 3:50 pm

LetterRip wrote:Also I'm fairly sure Ton has stated that he would accept patches that would allow usage of more advanced GL stuff. So, your issue is more likely going to be finding a coder willing to do what you want.

I'd suggest that your approach of frequently dissing Blender and of frequent complaints is probably not the best approach to finding a sympathetic coder though...

LetterRip

Heh, you think my comments are bad you should go read other forums, they just basicly puke at the sight of blender. .... Aw but that brings us back to the other topic, give blender a CLEAN interface even if it is just a user enabled skin JUST to apease some outside coders and then maybe a flux in developement will happen

z3r0_d · Post by **z3r0_d** » Fri May 27, 2005 4:13 pm

Money_YaY! wrote:Aw but that brings us back to the other topic, give blender a CLEAN interface even if it is just a user enabled skin JUST to apease some outside coders and then maybe a flux in developement will happen

you don't state what you actually see as wrong with blender, and skinning it wouldn't fix any design issues blender might have. [besides, most people would puke at any 3d program until they understand it]

and how does this relate the pixel/fragment/vertex shaders?

theeth · Post by **theeth** » Fri May 27, 2005 4:42 pm

Money_YaY! wrote:Heh, you think my comments are bad you should go read other forums, they just basicly puke at the sight of blender.

Ok, so you're just basicly taking that puke in and spitting in back in here?

Just trying to get an idea of why you keep doing those really unproductive posts...

Martin

ysvry · Post by **ysvry** » Sat May 28, 2005 4:52 am

blender is a very good app as it is and the preview suffice for editing.
halflife2 is a load of hype give me unreal 2004 any time even for inspiration. and dont forget all the free downloadsit has.

Money_YaY! · Post by **Money_YaY!** » Sun May 29, 2005 3:32 am

theeth wrote:
Money_YaY! wrote:Heh, you think my comments are bad you should go read other forums, they just basicly puke at the sight of blender.
Ok, so you're just basicly taking that puke in and spitting in back in here?

Just trying to get an idea of why you keep doing those really unproductive posts...

Martin

Sigh, you take things to seriously theeth. Any post that does not lead to development is useless mostly. As anything goes more developers are needed still, but then again whatever,

Back to OpenGL. Shaders are from what I hear and have tested the top notch thing to use in 3rd gen Game design. That aside are there ANY developers around that really want to tinker with getting some sort of OpelGL render preview started ? Or does it just look to bleak to add it to blender ????

justizin · Post by **justizin** » Sun May 29, 2005 6:26 pm

It seems to me that some advanced real-time viewport rendering options can be available without killing people on low-end pcs - just disable these features by default. In fact, some are already around, and some more are suggested at the end of my comment..

Searching in this same vein, I found a few ways to do interesting things with a mesh in the viewport, in edit mode at least. there are some buttons in 'mesh tools 1' or something that say stuff like:

* show faces
* show edges
* show creases

depending on what you are doing, any one or all of these could be useful..

On a subsurf model, you can make the mesh hug the surface by depressing the 'optimal' button. Exit shaded mode with ZKEY.

I would prefer to leave the mesh cage separate from the surface and simply display a translucent material, or have a translucent view, but this is not a bad compromise. In fact, my prefer may be changing.

I think it would be really nice to use some of these advanced GPU features for visualizing more advanced materials, particle effects, etc.. in preview mode. Also, some interactive features which are generally considered to be weak (i.e. boolean) could probably really benefit from GPU acceleration for a clear view of how intersecting and other geometry are affecting each other as objects are transformed...

btw, I would love to implement this stuff, an am experienced developer, but am new to cg. Actually, I'm pursuing a degree in Visual / Game Programming, so hopefully I'll pick up quickly.

Any help is mucho appreciado. Perhaps I can recruit some kids from my school to help as well.

z3r0_d · Post by **z3r0_d** » Mon May 30, 2005 12:46 am

Money_YaY! wrote:
theeth wrote:
Money_YaY! wrote:Heh, you think my comments are bad you should go read other forums, they just basicly puke at the sight of blender.
Ok, so you're just basicly taking that puke in and spitting in back in here?

Just trying to get an idea of why you keep doing those really unproductive posts...

Martin
Sigh, you take things to seriously theeth. Any post that does not lead to development is useless mostly. As anything goes more developers are needed still, but then again whatever,

okay, asking the same question differently, what is wrong with blender that needs changing? how do we change it?

you mentioned the ui makes people puke, you neglected to mention how

you mentioned that "shaders" [do we count stencil shadows as a shader?] are/will be important in the now/future... how shall they be implemented? how do we motivate people to get started on development, and how do we describe what this feature really means [do we just integrate glsl shaders? how do we define their inputs? can/how would we combine them with our current renderer? do we include a refrence design in the renderer for machines without capable hardware? how do we document incompatibilities and incompatible hardware [not all shaders work on similiar but different hardware, IE there are shaders that will run on the latest ATI, but not the latest NVIDIA, and vice versa]]

... so, how do your posts in this thread lead to development [improvement] to blender?

justizin wrote:I think it would be really nice to use some of these advanced GPU features for visualizing more advanced materials, particle effects, etc.. in preview mode. Also, some interactive features which are generally considered to be weak (i.e. boolean) could probably really benefit from GPU acceleration for a clear view of how intersecting and other geometry are affecting each other as objects are transformed...

I agree, but these don't really have to use all that advanced in the way of GPU features

particles are rendered essentially as camera-oriented quads, this is somewhat trivial to render on current hardware [though the overdraw can cause slowdown]

... can you create booleans with fancy changes of the depth test?
[the boolean tool needs work regardless, and a boolean which can change [IE a moving object subtracted out of another] would be cool]

Money_YaY! · Post by **Money_YaY!** » Mon May 30, 2005 12:52 am

z3r0_d wrote: okay, asking the same question differently, what is wrong with blender that needs changing? how do we change it?

you mentioned the ui makes people puke, you neglected to mention how

you mentioned that "shaders" [do we count stencil shadows as a shader?] are/will be important in the now/future... how shall they be implemented? how do we motivate people to get started on development, and how do we describe what this feature really means [do we just integrate glsl shaders? how do we define their inputs? can/how would we combine them with our current renderer? do we include a refrence design in the renderer for machines without capable hardware? how do we document incompatibilities and incompatible hardware [not all shaders work on similiar but different hardware, IE there are shaders that will run on the latest ATI, but not the latest NVIDIA, and vice versa]]

... so, how do your posts in this thread lead to development [improvement] to blender?

Ok give me a second to gather up a 'visual' doc to explain better

Blender.org

fragment shaders and GL rendering.

fragment shaders and GL rendering.

real-time rendering