Comments on: It’s harder than “just use shaders”! http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/ Random thoughts of a triangle pusher Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:56:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Aras Pranckevičius http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/comment-page-1/#comment-9726 Aras Pranckevičius Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:43:38 +0000 http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/#comment-9726 noisecrime, I was under impression that the blogosphere operates in such way - take something out of context and rant about it! :) In other words, sorry for taking it out of the context. Edited the post to clarify. My only point is that shaders are nothing more than an interface to access the hardware... not more revolutionary than dot3 bumpmapping or multitexture, just in this case the hardware got more complex. And <em>just</em> exposing shaders only gets you so far, because some of the really hard problems (integration with lighting, shader combination explosion, ...) are still not solved by the hardware, and must be solved by whatever is built around it (usually "the engine"). noisecrime, I was under impression that the blogosphere operates in such way – take something out of context and rant about it! :) In other words, sorry for taking it out of the context. Edited the post to clarify.

My only point is that shaders are nothing more than an interface to access the hardware… not more revolutionary than dot3 bumpmapping or multitexture, just in this case the hardware got more complex. And just exposing shaders only gets you so far, because some of the really hard problems (integration with lighting, shader combination explosion, …) are still not solved by the hardware, and must be solved by whatever is built around it (usually “the engine”).

]]> By: noisecrime http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/comment-page-1/#comment-9719 noisecrime Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:39:09 +0000 http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/#comment-9719 Wow, very disappointing, way to take my post completely out of context there! My orignal post was refering to the fact that that sw3d is woefully limited technology wise (limited to circa 1999 tech) and that a whole bunch of effects are either pointless (results way to slow) or simply not possible. I don't remember the exact nature of the skin demo now, but i'm pretty sure without shaders the task would be pretty horrible and vastly slower in performance via any alternative. Sure it may well use renderbuffers and other tools, but hey guess what we don't even have that capability either (well its possible with various hacks but lets not go there). That was the whole point of my post, not that shaders do everything Whilst its possible to achieve a number of effects without shaders, e.g the old dot3 bumpmapping, even these are not possilbe purely using the graphics card since the functions are not supported by sw3d even though there are in the various 3D API's. Although not supported something like bumpmapping is still possilbe, I posted a demo to that list sometime after, but its all done in a convoluted method using bitmap image manipulation and simply uploading them as textures. Having shaders would make it almost effortless. Your rant just doesn't make sense. Granted many effects rely on a complete toolset, but shaders form the basis and without them you'd have a hard time achieving effects with the standard api extensions. So before you go and use a post as a basis of a rant and knocking the knowlecdge, perhaps do a little research into what they are talking about in the first place. Now if only Unity had a windows IDE, then I could drop sw3d work work with some modern technology ;) Wow, very disappointing, way to take my post completely out of context there!

My orignal post was refering to the fact that that sw3d is woefully limited technology wise (limited to circa 1999 tech) and that a whole bunch of effects are either pointless (results way to slow) or simply not possible.

I don’t remember the exact nature of the skin demo now, but i’m pretty sure without shaders the task would be pretty horrible and vastly slower in performance via any alternative. Sure it may well use renderbuffers and other tools, but hey guess what we don’t even have that capability either (well its possible with various hacks but lets not go there).

That was the whole point of my post, not that shaders do everything

Whilst its possible to achieve a number of effects without shaders, e.g the old dot3 bumpmapping, even these are not possilbe purely using the graphics card since the functions are not supported by sw3d even though there are in the various 3D API’s. Although not supported something like bumpmapping is still possilbe, I posted a demo to that list sometime after, but its all done in a convoluted method using bitmap image manipulation and simply uploading them as textures. Having shaders would make it almost effortless.

Your rant just doesn’t make sense. Granted many effects rely on a complete toolset, but shaders form the basis and without them you’d have a hard time achieving effects with the standard api extensions.

So before you go and use a post as a basis of a rant and knocking the knowlecdge, perhaps do a little research into what they are talking about in the first place.

Now if only Unity had a windows IDE, then I could drop sw3d work work with some modern technology ;)

]]> By: Maverikou http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/comment-page-1/#comment-444 Maverikou Thu, 10 May 2007 07:25:10 +0000 http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/#comment-444 Why do people think that shaders can do anything? Because they simply don't know how stuff works (and there's also the silly marketing thing). Probably 97% (random figure) of all consumers measure the power of their video card by megabytes of video memory :-) Why do people think that shaders can do anything? Because they simply don’t know how stuff works (and there’s also the silly marketing thing).
Probably 97% (random figure) of all consumers measure the power of their video card by megabytes of video memory :-)

]]> By: uber1337 http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/comment-page-1/#comment-435 uber1337 Wed, 09 May 2007 11:46:03 +0000 http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/#comment-435 Serious guys write distributed shader compilers and store the results. Anyways this is hell :) Serious guys write distributed shader compilers and store the results. Anyways this is hell :)

]]> By: nearaz http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/comment-page-1/#comment-427 nearaz Wed, 09 May 2007 04:54:52 +0000 http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/#comment-427 blackpawn: yeah, and some future APIs (D3D 11) seem to be planning to combat this as well. A good thing definitely. zeux: :) blackpawn: yeah, and some future APIs (D3D 11) seem to be planning to combat this as well. A good thing definitely.

zeux: :)

]]> By: Zeux http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/comment-page-1/#comment-421 Zeux Tue, 08 May 2007 21:24:38 +0000 http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/#comment-421 - Hey, I've just seen [a piece of software], it's wonderfull! How do I create something like THAT? - It's simple. Just use C++. ;) - Hey, I’ve just seen [a piece of software], it’s wonderfull! How do I create something like THAT?
- It’s simple. Just use C++.

;)

]]> By: blackpawn http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/comment-page-1/#comment-420 blackpawn Tue, 08 May 2007 20:50:34 +0000 http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/#comment-420 yeah the "shader explosion" is a pain. i think it's really just a temporary thing though and applies to the "early" shader hardware (sm1-2). in the future i think we'll all just use lots of conditionals in the shader and let the drivers figure out the most used / expensive permutations and bake those out to optimized versions. it's a waste for every developer to do this manually. yeah the “shader explosion” is a pain. i think it’s really just a temporary thing though and applies to the “early” shader hardware (sm1-2). in the future i think we’ll all just use lots of conditionals in the shader and let the drivers figure out the most used / expensive permutations and bake those out to optimized versions. it’s a waste for every developer to do this manually.

]]> By: nearaz http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/comment-page-1/#comment-410 nearaz Tue, 08 May 2007 07:17:12 +0000 http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/#comment-410 Yes, that is one of the possible solutions (and we use that at work). But it's not ideal either: it takes time to compile the shaders, the shaders take up space, it increases the load time to load all of them etc. Yes, that is one of the possible solutions (and we use that at work). But it’s not ideal either: it takes time to compile the shaders, the shaders take up space, it increases the load time to load all of them etc.

]]> By: uber1337 http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/comment-page-1/#comment-409 uber1337 Tue, 08 May 2007 07:07:50 +0000 http://aras-p.info/blog/2007/05/07/its-harder-than-just-use-shaders/#comment-409 AFAIK, serious guys write a sort of shader "combiner", which generates all combinations of available shaders (e.g. specular + diffuse + nm out of separate ones) and compiles them as a prebuild step. AFAIK, serious guys write a sort of shader “combiner”, which generates all combinations of available shaders (e.g. specular + diffuse + nm out of separate ones) and compiles them as a prebuild step.

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