Q3A shaders?

A shader is simply a procedural way of describing a surface. Instead of having an artist drawing a bitmap, you write a function that will define a point of a surface. It''s very powerfull for surfaces that has a random pattern, like marble, or a non random surface that is easy to model mathematically, like a brick wall.

If you want to know more about shaders read

texturing and modeling by Ebert et Al.

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Original post by Gorg

A shader is simply a procedural way of describing a surface. Instead of having an artist drawing a bitmap, you write a function that will define a point of a surface. It's very powerfull for surfaces that has a random pattern, like marble, or a non random surface that is easy to model mathematically, like a brick wall.

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Crap.
DX8 is not RenderMan nor Mental Ray.

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Original post by InFerN0

what are shaders in Q3A? I noticed DX8 supports them also?

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Well, same name doesn't mean they are the same .
So, DX8 supports, but not exactly "them".

The shader in Q3 describes how to render the polygon (whether the lightmap is required, specularmap or whatever, whether some blending is required, etc.)

The pixel shaders in DX8 - it's kind of advanced, flexible and fully programmable version of the NVIDIA register combiners.

Of course, pixel shaders can be used to implement the Q3 shaders.
The complex shader in Q3 usually requires multipass rendering, and more flexible hardware allows to reduce number of passes.


Edited by - Serge K on September 19, 2000 1:09:11 AM

Actually, the q3a shaders can be implemented in the VERTEX shader ability of D3D8. You know, vertex manipulation (position, color, orientation) and tex coord manipulation (same). The Pixel shaders allow for per pixel lighting, etc and provide more of what a rendering program would do.

Ok, I''m gonna ask this for the last time. Are high order primitivies defined with vertex shaders?

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"the only thing I ask, is that if my games get pirated, people must do a good job of it." - Erick

No, you can''t create geometry with VS.

Check www.nvidia.com/developer for presentations on new features of DX8, in particular the vertex and pixel shader presentations.