a computer program that runs on graphics hardware and provides a high degree of control over how scenes are rendered
35
votes
1answer
2k views
How can I reduce aliasing in my outline glow effect?
I'm trying to replicate the glowing outline effect in the Left 4 Dead game. The effect causes an objects outline to glow, even when the object is occluded. Here is a screenshot of the effect:
I'm ...
31
votes
6answers
10k views
31
votes
2answers
2k views
How to render realistic ice?
I am trying to write an ice shader in Unity that looks good and at least semi-realistic.
If the following shot (found on Google) was CG, what would its shader include? (the foreground cave). I might ...
18
votes
3answers
4k views
For voxel rendering, what is more efficient: pre-made VBO or a geometry shader?
Given a fairly static voxel array, what is more efficient: using the CPU to pre-generate a VBO to render the voxel faces (ignoring more advanced forms of rendering like marching cubes for now) or ...
16
votes
4answers
9k views
Using multiple shaders
I'm currently studying opengl shaders but I can't figure out something: how to apply different shaders to the objects, for example, a teapot rendered using toon shader and another one in the same ...
16
votes
1answer
480 views
After a succesful glLinkProgram, should I delete / detach my shaders?
After I have a linked program, and thinking about defensive programming, should I delete and detach the shaders used to link this program?
If yes, is that going to free any resources? Or do these ...
16
votes
11answers
4k views
What are some good resources for learning HLSL?
The last time I tried learning HLSL, I made a few shaders and mostly understood what I was doing, but I still felt like I was stumbling in the dark. Most of what I learned I got from various blog ...
16
votes
1answer
764 views
What is the math behind the light effect in krakatoa?
I'd like to know the math behind the light effect in krakatoa (click here for an example).
Light source is traveling with particles, but how is shading done? Is it something simple, like Phong ...
14
votes
3answers
553 views
Difference between Material and Shader
In a game a material does only influence the visual appearance of the object. The visual appearance is effected by shaders. So regarding to terminology is there a difference between materials and ...
14
votes
1answer
5k views
Is there a successor to RenderMonkey?
I'm starting with GLSL shader programming and have been looking into RenderMonkey. Sadly, AMD no longer supports it. Why? Is there a successor to it?
14
votes
1answer
2k views
The practical cost of swapping effects
I use XNA for my projects and on those forums I sometimes see references to the fact that swapping an effect for a mesh has a relatively high cost, which surprises me as I thought to swap an effect ...
14
votes
2answers
355 views
OpenGL: Where shoud I place shaders?
I'm trying to learn OpenGL ES 2.0 and I'm wondering what is the most common practice to "manage" shaders.
I'm asking this question because in the examples I've found (like the one included in the API ...
13
votes
7answers
7k views
What are some cool examples of procedural pixel shader effects? [closed]
What are some good examples of procedural or screen-space pixel shader effects? No code is necessary; I'm just looking for inspiration.
In particular, I'm looking for effects that are not dependent ...
13
votes
1answer
1k views
Shadow map artifacts
I want to try adding shadows to a 3D XNA game. I've set up some testing environment with one light and one camera. However, I'm running into artifacts with my approach.
I'm using the shader code from ...
13
votes
6answers
2k views
Modern Shader Book?
I'm interested in learning about Shaders: What are they, when/for what would I use them, and how to use them. (Specifically I'm interested in Water and Bloom effects, but I know close to 0 about ...
12
votes
3answers
2k views
outline object effect
How can I achieve an outline effect similar to the ones found in League of Legends or Diablo III?
Is it done using a shader? How?
I would prefer answers that are not tied up to any particular ...
12
votes
2answers
12k views
OpenGL ES 2.0: Setting up 2D Projection
This article describes in general, how to draw sharp OpenGL 2D graphics, using fixed function pipeline.
http://basic4gl.wikispaces.com/2D+Drawing+in+OpenGL
Because OpenGL ES 2.0 has some ES 1.x ...
12
votes
1answer
788 views
Should I distribute shaders in a compiled form or in plain text?
Having an application that uses shaders that have been wrote in GLSL, what is the best strategy for the distribution in the real world and for the desktop and mobile?
I'm aiming to distribute this in ...
12
votes
3answers
885 views
HLSL Translucent Plastic Shader
I'm trying to produce a shader to replicate a white plastic object with a colored light inside. Either by having a shader that will be translucent and if I put a light inside the object the light will ...
12
votes
3answers
450 views
How can I replicate the color limitations of the NES with an HLSL pixel shader?
So since 256 color mode is depreciated and no longer supported under Direct3D mode, I got the idea to use a pixel shader instead to simulate the NES palette of all possible colors so that fading ...
11
votes
2answers
7k views
GLSL Shader Effects: How to do motion blur, etc?
I am not sure how right it is to ask this question, but still here it goes.
I have a full 2D environment, with sprites going around as landscape, characters, etc
And to make it more state-of-art ...
11
votes
3answers
474 views
Is there an alternative to decals that will let me put bullet holes on a complicated object?
I'm trying to figure out a way to do "bullet holes" but actually apply the texture at the shader level? If I'm dealing with a model which doesn't have a "flat" face I'd like to be able to wrap the ...
11
votes
2answers
384 views
Do I lose/gain performance for discarding pixels even if I don't use depth testing?
When I first searched for discard instruction, I've found experts saying using discard will result in performance drain. They said discarding pixels will break GPU's ability to use zBuffer properly ...
11
votes
4answers
719 views
Is there any Shaders Directory? [closed]
There are many tutorials to learn GLSL, Cg, HLSL... with classical samples as bump mapping, toon-shading...
But is there a shaders directory?
a website where i can share my shaders
search shader by ...
11
votes
2answers
2k views
How can I debug shader programs?
I'm in the process of debugging GLSL vertex shaders and I can't shake the feeling that I'm doing it wrong.
In general I have two strategies to make up for the lack of tracing
I stuff values into a ...
11
votes
1answer
571 views
Toon/cel shading with variable line width?
I see a few broad approaches out there to doing cel shading:
Duplication & enlargement of model with flipped normals (not an option for me)
Sobel filter / fragment shader approaches to edge ...
10
votes
3answers
2k views
Why do pixel shaders not let us read directly from the framebuffer or the depth buffer?
Letting me sample the framebuffer or the depthbuffer in the pixel shader would be an extremely useful feature. Even just being able to know the depth or the color of whatever is behind the current ...
10
votes
4answers
886 views
How can I acheive a smooth 2D lighting effect?
I'm making a 2D tile based game in XNA.
Currently my lightning looks like this.
How can I get it to look like this?
Instead of each block having its own tint, it has a smooth overlay.
I'm assuming ...
10
votes
2answers
1k views
Realistic metal shader
How do you create a good metal shader?
For different metals and say more or less eroded / rusty and so on.
I know that one difference from ordinary materials is that metal should 'colour' the ...
10
votes
2answers
2k views
Efficient skeletal animation
I am looking at adopting a skeletal animation format (as prompted here) for an RTS game. The individual representation of each model on-screen will be small but there will be lots of them!
In ...
10
votes
2answers
903 views
Why are trees shining in background?
Currently I am creating a forest scene in the dark, and the trees are shining far away, but when I get close they are fine. I have the shaders set to "Nature/Tree Soft Occlusion [bark/leaves]", but ...
10
votes
1answer
424 views
Special relativity shader in GLSL
I'm trying to implement a GLSL shader which helps understanding special relativity Lorentz Transformation.
Let's take two axis-aligned inertial observer O and O' . The observer O' is in motion w.r.t ...
10
votes
2answers
876 views
Projective texture and deferred lighting
In my previous question, I asked whether it is possible to do projective texturing with deferred lighting. Now (more than half a year later) I have a problem with my implementation of the same thing. ...
9
votes
6answers
8k views
OpenGL ES 2.0: Repository of Quality Shaders
Could I kindly ask, to suggest me a repository of high quality OpenGL (OpenGL ES 2.0) vertex and fragment shaders, please?
I am looking for pixel based ligting shaders (such as phong) and simmilar. ...
9
votes
4answers
517 views
Avoid if statements in DirectX 10 shaders?
I have heard that if statements should be avoid in shaders, because both parts of the statements will be execute, and than the wrong will be dropped (which harms the performance).
It's still a ...
9
votes
3answers
10k views
Fastest way to draw quads in OpenGL ES?
I am using OpenGL ES 2.0
I have a bunch a quads to be drawn, would love to be able to have to pass only 4 vertices per quad as if I were using GL_QUADS, but basically I just want to know the best way ...
9
votes
3answers
540 views
What is a fragment?
What is a fragment in a fragment shader? Wikipedia says that:
In general, a fragment can be thought of as the data needed to shade the pixel, plus the data needed to test whether the fragment ...
9
votes
3answers
973 views
Fastest way to render lines with AA, varying thickness in DirectX
So I'm doing some DirectX development, using SharpDX under .NET to be exact (but DirectX/C++ API solutions are applicable). I'm looking for the fastest way to render lines in an orthogonal projection ...
9
votes
2answers
532 views
Handle many lights in a scene (with shaders)
I'm curious about how to handle many lights in a scene. Given a very big map in a role playing game, with dungeons (with lights in there) etc. I know about deferred lighting, but that only answers how ...
9
votes
1answer
315 views
How can I incorporate physics into a procedurally generated world from a geometry shader?
Essentially I want to remove the need for generating coherent noise from the CPU to the GPU. From there, I also want to generate the terrain for a three dimensional world using this noise as densities ...
9
votes
3answers
904 views
Pixel-perfect rendering to a rendertarget with a fullscreen quad
I have some trouble rendering a bunch of values to a rendertarget. The values never end up in the exact range I want them to. Basically I use a fullscreen quad and a pixel shader to render to my ...
9
votes
1answer
5k views
How can I create an efficient bloom shader with GLSL?
I have searched the net for resources related to rendering a bloom effect using GLSL, but haven't found anything. Although the tutorial at Philip Rideout's website is a good one, it performs very ...
8
votes
4answers
1k views
Fixed-Function vs Shaders: Which for beginner?
I'm currently going to college for computer science. Although I do plan on utilizing an existing engine at some point to create a small game, my aim right now is towards learning the fundamentals: ...
8
votes
4answers
590 views
I need help with 3d shading/lighting
How do you guys handle shading in a 3d game? I have a directional light source that shades one side of a tree made of cubes. The remaining 3 sides all get ambient shading only. So the 3d effect is ...
8
votes
1answer
233 views
Curious Transparent Holes Render Artifact
So I'm trying to implement "smooth" terrain in my block engine by giving each surface block a heightmap.
Basically, what I do to generate these "heightmaps" for each block is I generate the heights ...
8
votes
3answers
607 views
What exactly can shaders be used for?
I'm not really a 3D person, and I've only used shaders a little in some Three.js examples, and so far I've got an impression that they are only being used for the graphical part of the equation.
...
8
votes
3answers
859 views
Very slow direct3D texture sampling
So I'm writing a small game using Direct3D 9 and I'm using multitexturing for the terrain. All I'm doing is sampling 3 textures and a blend map and getting the overall color from the three textures ...
8
votes
6answers
3k views
Good example of a multi-pass effect?
In XNA (and Direct3D in general AFAIK), rather than creating individual vertex and fragment shaders, you bundle potentially many related shaders into 'Effects'. When you come to use an effect you ...
8
votes
1answer
283 views
What is Ramp Shading or Lighting?
What is ramp shading or lighting and how does it work? Is it different than toon shading or is it the same concept? How is specularity calculated differently for ramp shading versus blinn-phong or ...
8
votes
1answer
322 views
How do I create a cel-shaded cartoon look?
I am interested in everything related to this kind of effect (modeling, game engine, animation). What sort of stuff is needed?
Here are some sample images of what I mean:
