a computer program that runs on graphics hardware and provides a high degree of control over how scenes are rendered

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9
votes
4answers
499 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 ...
3
votes
1answer
409 views

How are vertex shader outs sent as inputs to the fragment shader?

I'm learning some OpenGL 3.2 way of doing things and I think it's quite great, I'm actually understanding more of shaders and non-fixed pipeline in 1 week rather than those 2 years I tried to learn ...
1
vote
1answer
222 views

Light following me around the room. Something is wrong with my shader!

I'm trying to do a spot (Blinn) light, with falloff and attenuation. It seems to be working OK except I have a bit of a space problem. That is, whenever I move the camera the light moves to maintain ...
12
votes
2answers
337 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 ...
5
votes
1answer
269 views

Performance of pixel shaders vs. SpriteBatch: XNA

Precondition: I read this question/answer about using shaders, or spritebatch, to render and mark a sprite. I need to do something like that. I also have a 2D lighting PoC which I need to write. The ...
2
votes
1answer
168 views

How can I pass an array of floats to the fragment shader using textures?

I want to map out a 2D array of depth elements for the fragment shader to use to check depth against to create shadows. I want to be able to copy a float array into the GPU, but using large uniform ...
1
vote
1answer
244 views

Low-level GPU code and Shader Compilation

Bear with me, because I will raise several questions at once. I still feel, though, that overall this can be treated as one question that may be answered succinctly. I recently dove into solidifying ...
1
vote
2answers
160 views

How to shade a texture two different colors?

To give an example of what I'm asking about, I'll use Saints Row 3 since I've been playing that lately. In that game you can customize your looks and your car's appearance a lot. Your coat can have ...
2
votes
1answer
542 views

Blur shader without render textures?

Is it possible to append a blur shader to a standard (diffuse) shader ? I am looking for a way to do this as Unity indie doesn't allow render textures.
1
vote
1answer
226 views

Rendering different materials in a voxel terrain

Each voxel datapoint in my terrain model is made up of two properties: density and material type. Each is stored as an unsigned integer value (but the density is interpreted as a decimal value ...
1
vote
2answers
202 views

Deferred rendering order?

There are some effects for which I must do multi-pass rendering. I've got the basics set up (FBO rendering etc.), but I'm trying to get my head around the most suitable setup. Here's what I'm ...
2
votes
1answer
269 views

shader coding: calculate screen coordinates of fragment

Good morning, I'm new to shader coding and trying to implement some visual effects code in shaders using billboards. (Yes, I couldn't have picked anything harder to start with, but I'm lucky that way) ...
11
votes
1answer
546 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 ...
3
votes
0answers
192 views

Suitability of ground fog using layered alpha quads?

A layered approach would use a series of massive alpha-textured quads arranged parallel to the ground, intersecting all intervening terrain geometry, to provide the illusion of ground fog quite ...
0
votes
2answers
209 views

How can I capture every frame in DirectX 9 using a shader

This is actually a follow up to this question How to capture the screen in DirectX 9 to a raw bitmap in memory without using D3DXSaveSurfaceToFile The proponent of the best solution suggested that I ...
0
votes
0answers
82 views

Opengl binding shaders vs binding buffers performance

Quick question for an opengl guru, I'm in the process of building a render queue and can either reduce the number of shader binding or the number of vertex buffer binding. I just want to know which ...
-1
votes
1answer
202 views

New to CG shader programming, what program should I use to write and test them? [closed]

I have started witting some shaders. First ones were fairly easy to write in notepad but now I need something with a bit more meat. I have checked rendermonnkey that seems to support CG but it is ...
1
vote
2answers
307 views

HLSL Pixel Shader that does palette swap

I have implemented a simple pixel shader which can replace a particular colour in a sprite with another colour. It looks something like this: sampler input : register(s0); float4 ...
1
vote
0answers
124 views

loading a heightmap as texture in shader

I have a height map of 256x256, containing, foreach cell, not only height as a normal float value ( not 0-1 ) and also 2 gradient values ( for X and Y ), also as normal float values ( not 0-1 ). I ...
2
votes
1answer
150 views

Using Ogre particle point billboards with shaders

I'm learning about using Ogre particles and had some questions about how the point type particles work. Q. I believe point type particles are implemented as a single position. Is one single vertex is ...
2
votes
0answers
233 views

Where is the Shader Designer?

I have VS2012 Ultimate and I've been trying to access (find) the Shader Designer. I searched through MSDN's text and Channel9's videos, but they keep failing to mention how to access it... Can ...
1
vote
0answers
277 views

Need help transforming DirectX 9 skybox hlsl shader to DirectX 11

I am in the middle of implementing a skybox to my game. I have been following this tutorial http://rbwhitaker.wikidot.com/skyboxes-2. I am using MonoGame as a framework and in order to support both ...
1
vote
1answer
186 views

XNA Shader Texture Memory

I was wondering about texture optimization in XNA 4.0. Will the the contentmanager send the texturedata to the GPU directly when the texture gets loaded or do I send the texture data to the GPU when ...
1
vote
0answers
526 views

ssao implementation

I try to implement a ssao based on this tutorial: link I use a deferred rendering and world coordinates for shading calculations. When saving gbuffer a vertex shader output looks like this: ...
0
votes
1answer
204 views

Calculating distance from viewer to object in a shader

Good morning, I'm working through creating the spherical billboards technique outlined in this paper. I'm trying to create a shader that calculates the distance from the camera to all objects in the ...
0
votes
2answers
131 views

GPU optimization question: pre-computed or procedural?

Good morning, I'm learning shader program and need some general direction. I want to add noise to my laser beam (like this). Which is the best way to handle it? I could pre-compute an image and pass ...
0
votes
2answers
218 views

LWJGL - OpenGL - Texture shading

I want to use LWJGL to create a shader that all it does is change the color of the given texture. For example I tell it to draw the letter A using a sprite sheet then I can tell the shader to draw the ...
3
votes
1answer
195 views

cocos2d mask rotation

I've been experimenting with Ray Wenderlich's tutorial about masking sprite using shaders with cocos2D 2.0. It works pretty well but now I'd like to rotate the mask independently of the masked ...
1
vote
1answer
211 views

assigning values to shader parameters in the XNA content pipeline

I have tried creating a simple content processor that assigns the custom effect I created to models instead of the default BasicEffect. [ContentProcessor(DisplayName = "Shadow Mapping Model")] public ...
3
votes
1answer
466 views

Monogame/SharpDX - Shader parameters missing

I am currently working on a simple game that I am building in Windows 8 using MonoGame (develop3d). I am using some shader code from a tutorial (made by Charles Humphrey) and having an issue ...
5
votes
2answers
629 views

How can I acheive a smooth 2D lighting effect?

I'm making a tile based game in XNA. So 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 ...
0
votes
0answers
82 views

How to move a directional light according to the camera movement?

Given a light direction, how can I move it according to the camera movement, in a shader? Think that an artist has setup a scene (e.g., in 3DSMax) with a mesh in center of that and a directional ...
1
vote
1answer
929 views

How to make 2D water like in this video?

I wanna make water and waves for my little 2D PC game like in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooU6cTeirlQ I don't know how to write a similar shader. Does anybody know how to write a ...
5
votes
1answer
305 views

Partial Shader Signatures HLSL D3D11 C++

I had been debugging a problem I was having in a single shader file with 2 functions in it. I'm using DirectX 11, vs_5_0 and ps_5_0. I have stripped it down to its basic components to understand what ...
11
votes
2answers
361 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 ...
5
votes
2answers
309 views

Geometry shader for multiple primitives

How can I create a geometry shader that can handle multiple primitives? For example when creating a geometry shader for triangles, I define a layout like so: layout(triangles) in; ...
1
vote
1answer
533 views

2d game view camera zoom, rotation & offset using 'Filter' / 'Shader' processing?

I wish to add the ability to zoom-in, zoom-out, rotate and move the view in a top-down view over a collection of points and lines in a large 2d map. I split the map into a grid so I only need to ...
4
votes
1answer
717 views

Custom shadow mapping in Unity 3D Free Edition

Since real time hard and soft shadows are Unity 3D Pro only features I thought I will learn Cg programming and create my own shadow mapping shader. But after some digging I found that the shadow ...
1
vote
2answers
206 views

Depth buffer values reset on change shader?

I have 2 different shaders, and when I change the shader (glUseProgram), it seems that the depth information is lost, because everything drawn with the 2nd shader appears completely on top of anything ...
6
votes
1answer
321 views

Huge 2d pixelized world

I would like to make a game field in a indie-strategic 2d game to be some a-like this popular picture. So every "pixel"(blocks) changes it's color slowly, sometimes a bright color wave happens, etc, ...
10
votes
2answers
876 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 ...
1
vote
0answers
173 views

Outline Shader Effect for Orthogonal Geometry in XNA

I just recently started learning the art of shading, but I can't give an outline width to 2D, concave geometry when restrained to a single vertex/pixel shader technique (thanks to XNA). the shape I ...
3
votes
2answers
444 views

Learning OpenGL GLSL - VAO buffer problems?

I've just started digging through OpenGL and GLSL, and now stumbled on something I can't get my head around this one!? I've stepped back to loading a simple cube and using a simple shader on it, but ...
0
votes
1answer
125 views

Artifacts when draw particles with some alpha

I want to draw in my game some particles. But when I draw one particle above another particle, alpha channel from this above "clear" previous drawed particle. I set in OpenGL blend in this way: ...
1
vote
1answer
482 views

What kind of shader is this?

Cube World uses a pretty good looking shader, I especially like the shading of the characters: Is this soft shading? I'd like to achieve this effect in Unity 3D Free, but since the free version ...
2
votes
1answer
760 views

Unity custom shaders and z-fighting

I've just readed a chapter of Unity iOS Essential by Robert Wiebe. It shows a solution for handling z-figthing problem occuring while rendering a street on a plane with the same y offset. Basically ...
2
votes
3answers
528 views

Rain effect using DirectX 9 capabilities

Is it possible to achieve something similar to nVidia's rain demo using only shader model 3.0 capabilities? If yes, could you point out a few documents/web resources that are suitable candidates and ...
0
votes
1answer
442 views

How to convert Maya shaders and Renderman shaders to GLSL?

I know this 2 products but i have never used them for production, since I have a bunch of cool shaders i would like to use them under OpenGL with GLSL but i don't know where to start. If it's not ...
2
votes
1answer
164 views

What are the factors that determine the default frequency of a shader call?

After i have been played for some days with various vertex and fragments shaders seems clear to me that this programs are called by the GPU at every and each rendering cycle, the problem is that I ...
12
votes
1answer
743 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 ...

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