Yes, I have some people in house attempting to reproduce this in DirectX
and although we have no working demo, from the sample apps it appears
this is the way.
I personally have not worked directly with pixel shaders in DirectX or
OpenGL. What's more, I don't want to! I want to do it in Java3D.
So the next question is, what is the path to get these kind of new
features into Java3D? Do we need to propose API extensions? I imagine
we (the community) need to exhaustively learn DirectX/OpenGL to generate
these extensions?
This is exactly what I was hoping to avoid by using Java3D; having to
learn even more of the underlining C API...
I know the highest priority on most J3d developers' lists right now are
bug fixes. I agree. Fortunately, there are allot of bugs fixed in the
new beta, fixed in the next beta, or are getting fixed. I think we are
quickly reaching the time for reviewing the next-gen features in Java3D
especially since they have to IMPLEMENTED as well as designed!
Jamie Warner wrote:
> I believe that UT is using some of the new shading tricks from DX8 Pixel Shaders
> or OpenGL 'NV_REGISTER_COMBINERS'. Since multiple textures can be combined
> based on a given influence (alpha). 2 textures and an grayscale map could
> render any given portion of the world. This could be procedurally generated
> (fractals and what not...) or be loaded as it sounds UT will do it (the alpha
> map). From what I understand and have seen, the alpha channel is used as the
> parameter in the low level assembly-esque language for DX8 shaders and the 2
> 'registers' and state machine for the GL combiners.
>
> http://www.dailyradar.com/features/game_feature_page_1444_1.html
> -UT tech demo that says they use 'alpha maps' to create layers
>
> http://www.nvidia.com/developer/
> -Nvidia demos and whatnot. GeForce and above hardware should have Register
> Combiners.
>
> If I'm wrong, I'd love to know how they did it.
> -Jamie
>
> David wrote:
>
>
>> Shawn asked that I post his reply to the list. It is included below after
>> my response.
>>
>> I may be missing something here. I am not saying they are using one large
>> texture. What I am saying is that I think they are using a grid of
>> textures, each one laid out side by side. I really don't think they are
>> getting resolutions at the cm level. I haven't look at the movie, just the
>> still shots, so maybe you are seeing something I am not seeing. They speak
>> of layers from the artists persecptive. It looks to me that their artist
>> sprays an alpha blending on one layer, letting the next layer show up. I
>> sincerely doubt they are blending 6 layers at runtime. I will give it some
>> more thought, and I will see if I can reproduce something like this.
>> Whatever they are doing, it sure looks good!
>>
>> Dave
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Shawn Kendall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2000 12:15 PM
>> Subject: Re: Multi-texturing and what is possible?
>>
>> Daivd,
>> I think you are missing that's really happening. Everyone I have shown
>> this to has responded the same. "Yeah that's not so bad, we can do
>> that...". And then they take another look. They are NOT using
>> multi-resolution images (other than the regular mipmapping). The textures
>> are wrapped. There are layers of wrapped textures that blend between each
>> other on the triangle. It is not in the texture.
>> A 128x128 for 100m x 100m would never cut it. Take a look at the pix and
>> the movie again. The texel density is around the cm level. You can't get
>> that with one big texture. It would have to be 10000 x 10000 pixels for
>> 100m x 100m! You could use detail textures, but then you would see the
>> seems.(this is the problem you and I are having right now)
>>
>> Also, the texture clearly repeats. If the terrain map was one big texture,
>> repeating would be an unbelieve waste. You could guarantee variance
>> everywhere with a single giant map. This is actually how they do the
>> terrains for many flight simulators, using satelite data. But only on the
>> big SGI's that have hardware texture paging, and they STILL don't get the
>> close up result you see in UT.
>>
>> Read the article. It explains that they use 6 layers to get this effect.
>> That's 6 texture layers not image layers in PhotoShop.
>> We just had a game artist over from Acclaim this week, and he did the double
>> take as well. If fact, he said they could NOT do this on a PS2 without
>> sub-faced polygons.
>>
>> Once you examine it in depth, I think you'll see it can't be one texture.
>> So the question is, is this kind of blending possible in Java3D?
>>
>> P.S. Please forward this reply to the list for me. I can not from this
>> emial address. Thanks
>>
>> ====================================================================
>>
>> Shawn:
>>
>> I don't think they are doing anything magical. His description of how the
>> textures are being generated are very similar to the techniques we are
>> using. The multitexturing he is doing, if any, is just for shading, but I
>> believe they are using high density texture cells using several different
>> blending algorithms. It looks like he is willing to pay a high price in
>> texture memory, but take another look at the rest of the images in that
>> article. Most are being taken at some height, which we know always favors
>> texture rendering of over stretched textures. But look at terrain3 from
>> their scenes, the only one that is ground level and you can see a fair
>> amount of stretching. My guess is they are using 128x128 textures per 100m
>> x 100m cell. The textures are mipmapped so its only the close ones that use
>> all the memory.
>>
>> I am pretty sure I could reproduce those exact shots using our engine.
>>
>> The way we have written the texture generator I can ask the engine for a
>> texture over any space and at any resolution and it returns the appropriate
>> image. This is great for increasing precision for "closer" shots. So I can
>> ask the engine for a 256x256 texture covering a 5km x 5km area, or ask for a
>> 128x128 texture for a 100m x 100m area and they both will be right, just one
>> will be more localized with more detail.
>>
>> ____________________________________________________________________________
>> _________
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>>
>> ===========================================================================
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>
>
> ===========================================================================
> To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body
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--
___________________________________________________________
Shawn Kendall Full Sail Real World Education
Course Director 3300 University BLVD
Real Time 3D for Gaming Winter Park FL 32792
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.fullsail.com
___________________________________________________________
===========================================================================
To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body
of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST". For general help, send email to
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