I've seen a lot of cool threads around here recently, from LitSpheres to Snow blending shaders etc...
It's a pity we wait to have proper finalized stuff to show it...
So what about a technical wip thread?
I also stumble upon tons of cools papers but i never share with anyone...

There was a similar one at tech-artists.org but there's just too few users.. Is polycount big enough? We'll see

I've been lazy for almost a year, but we have to start with something right? SO, I dug up some stuff

Spherical lights:
Some might remember these endless talks about how point light have no accurate specular blablabla, so I came up with this simple model where lights have a defined radius. (http://www.mentalwarp.com/~moob/show...hereLights.jpg)
I recently updated this shader to generate a procedural floor reflection and to take the new model into account into the diffuse contribution, and not only specular.
Yes it is expensive as hell, but i was bored at Xmas, forgive me: lights are calculated in a loop in the pixel shader, and the process is done a second time just for the floor (even tough in a simpler manner: no normal, no spec) (yes i cheated there is precomputed occlusion/shadows)


Multilamp BRDF shader, yay!:


I've been working with unity on iPhone, which only supports 'Sphere Map' instead of regular cube. So i had to write a shader to transform cubes into this funky oldschool format:
.

Some of my recent work at CCP got released not so long ago:

You Tube

- procedural moons (i did selfshadowing craters at first, but it's not very old cards friendly...)
- animated gaz giants with moving clouds
- planetary rings with procedural cast shadow


Let me see your stuff now

Nice stuff, and good idea Brice!

I've got a couple of WIP MEL scripts and Maxscripts, will see if I can grab any useful screenshots tomorrow and maybe polish one or two ready for release.
A maxscript LWO importer, a Maya "OBJ bits box" and some random UV tools I think...

Good idea, and really nice planets.

I just got random MEL's I kick out, and messing with adding custom attributes to things. Was tooling around with a Hammer material exporter.

I tried the LWO importer for MEL and it never worked, but maybe now since I have a better understanding, I can take it on again.

clipboard RTT camera mapping:

You Tube

renderhjs that's looks great!

yeah! looks awesome!

please guys, stick this

that is pretty nifty RenderHJS!

Awesome stuff in here. I support a sticky - though, somebody needs to seriously do something about the page-long string of stickies we have already. It's a bit much.

I've been working on a lot of windows tools lately. The most promising is a sort of pie-launcher, very similar to the one in Maya, or Modo. Or if you have a Wacom Intuos4, it's a bit like that one.

It's used for launching files, apps, etc.

I got busy with some work crunch so I had to put it aside, but I'm going to pick it up again soon. I'm just about ready to start having people test it.

@Render
if its not already implemented could you do a snap to pixel center function for finished layout,
(selects all vertexes and snaps it to a pixelcenter given the dimension of the map)

(input height with button output -> snapped)

right now I work on a Lua script that generates maxscript code for UI layout stuff. So that I can use a pair of .ms and .lua file to generate an output .ms file with rollout code.

the lua file describes the content (widgets...), and I can have some fun with automatic layout management.

I foresee lots of awesome in this thread

Personally I'm working on a 2d unity3d clone for XNA. It's not really pimpready though :P, maybe in a few months.

Trying to learn World Machine 2 as a tool for RTS level editing. I gotta say I'm really starting to love working with node based apps like these. Slowly getting there, need to add output nodes for a heighfield and texture masks.

Anyone have any cool to share regarding WM2?

The coloring of the terrain is just for preview purposes, to see how my masks will work.

@kodde : the size of your GUI scares me, that looks like something for a touch screen used with only thumbs. Seriously its like 4x bigger than my UI stuff in windows

Resized to not get really widescreenish screenshots ;)
I use one monitor at home, at 1920x1080, I don't work with the nodes that small.

But yeah, Windows 7 default or whatever. Can't be arsed to change what I don't find broken.

renderhjs Thats a amazing new tool your working on,

I do have a question though, would it be possible to have it export out at preset sizes already? I noticed it was at a lower rez (800X800) when you brought it back into photoshop,

Is it possible to keep it for higher end detail when copying over so if your texturing lets say a 2048 based model etc It gets good pixel depth? Or are those all in the works right now?

Originally Posted by seforin

renderhjs Thats a amazing new tool your working on,

I do have a question though, would it be possible to have it export out at preset sizes already? I noticed it was at a lower rez (800X800) when you brought it back into photoshop,

Is it possible to keep it for higher end detail when copying over so if your texturing lets say a 2048 based model etc It gets good pixel depth? Or are those all in the works right now?

I could filter out only the visible faces of the 3d model and calculate for those the used triangle UV space within the texture size (similar to how I computed texel sizes) . This would mean that I'd have the pixels area visible in the view but in texture space.
With that again I could compute a scale ratio (by comparing visible texture space and screen view space) and scale the perspective output by that. I think I will add that, that might be a nice way to go to determine the optional size for painting on based on the texture size.
I will add some checkbox for switching to either viewport renderer or CPU renderer.

Originally Posted by renderhjs

I could filter out only the visible faces of the 3d model and calculate for those the used triangle UV space within the texture size (similar to how I computed texel sizes) . This would mean that I'd have the pixels area visible in the view but in texture space.
With that again I could compute a scale ratio (by comparing visible texture space and screen view space) and scale the perspective output by that. I think I will add that, that might be a nice way to go to determine the optional size for painting on based on the texture size.
I will add some checkbox for switching to either viewport renderer or CPU renderer.

yeah if they stood at set res's that you could calculate based on 128X128, 256 X256 Etc that would work great...though would it work with odd set dimensions? Like 128X256?

I think some of the stickies were actually removed from the top of the section since yesterday. Maybe the Polycount overlords are making room for something?

This is a great thread idea and I've enjoyed reading it so far. Hopefully it continues to grow.

Some of my recent work at CCP got released not so long ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InimDSMVHiY
- procedural moons (i did selfshadowing craters at first, but it's not very old cards friendly...)
- animated gaz giants with moving clouds
- planetary rings with procedural cast shadow

The new eve stuff is lovely! Round of applause for you.

Great work guys.

I have and always will be working on my coolRIG system.

You Tube

that's a very nice looking set of rigging tools, monster!

wow, that rigs pretty sick

Instant classic thread! Great idea. <3