Shaderey

A Beyond3D/ATi DX9 shader competition entry (2003 Sep, some additional tweaks for ShaderX3 during 2004 May); history
General readme here: readme.html.

Why such demo?

The basic ideas that can come up when writing a "shader demo":

  1. Good materials (BRDFs, etc.)
    everyone's already doing this :)
  2. Good light transport (shadows, soft shadows, radiance transfer, etc.)
    ditto, though PRT-like something would be interesting
  3. Funky things (non photorealistic, distorted renderings, etc.)
  4. Creative ways of using hardware (raytracing, matrix solvers, etc.)
    usually requires lots of maths skills, plus really lots of creativity :(

Now, I chose 3rd option, that is, some non-realistic rendering.

Since the time of "Bzhykt" intro I was wondering whether it's possible to render the same entirely in hardware. "Bzhykt" intro is here (hey! don't run it! it doesn't work, crashes, and is a complete crap!). So, I set off for terrain, trees etc., with edges/hatches on it, and some "painterly" style. It's possible to achieve exactly the same look -- requires lots of rendertarget changes (similar to building a summed area table). But, alas, it didn't look good at all -- possibly due to some bugs on my part, possibly because of lack of precision or some other thing.

All in all, the final result is this.