FX Composer 2 - Public Beta Released

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Neo Binedell   (Jun 17, 2007 at 22:14 GMT)

Bah this blog post has been shredded and flayed... RIP

Phil Carlisle   (Jun 17, 2007 at 22:23 GMT)

Oooh, now thats interesting. I might see if this will fit in with my plans for the new art pipeline stuff.. It'd be nice if this could be used to setup the shaderific parts of the pipe.

Wonder if it supports plugins.. will go read.

Phil Carlisle   (Jun 17, 2007 at 22:27 GMT)

ooh, yep, SDK and python plugins..

Nice one.. I was waiting for them to release this. Might well have to do some R&D on this sucker, see if it integrates well into a shaderific pipeline.

Neo Binedell   (Jun 17, 2007 at 23:24 GMT)

Yeah plugins (and in Python no less) seriously rule and I'm chomping at the bit already ;p

Can't wait to play with this more...

Eric Forhan   (Jun 18, 2007 at 02:57 GMT)

Fixed link.

Neo Binedell   (Jun 18, 2007 at 03:17 GMT)

My blog post got eaten a few times and then simply drove me mad, I've updated the link so it works.

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 18, 2007 at 17:03 GMT)

By plugins do you mean that this could be made to export TGEA friendly shaders?

I downloaded this and I found the Mental Mill Tool very cool. super user friendly. It is just like making shaders in maya.

Although I have yet to get a shder from either one of these apps into the game and working.

Nikhil Sharma   (Jun 18, 2007 at 18:10 GMT)

I have a question. With FX Composer are you limited to only specific animations and effects or you can go ahead and create 'any' special effect with 'any' type of animation?

Unlimited possibilities or limited?

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 18, 2007 at 18:45 GMT)

to my understanding you can create anything that can be coded in one of the supported languages. "hlsl,cg,glsl"

Russell Fincher   (Jun 18, 2007 at 20:40 GMT)

Hm... FX Composer 2 crashes on startup every time. Having a blast with Mental Mill, though.

Neo Binedell   (Jun 18, 2007 at 20:55 GMT)

@Russel:
Yeah same here, and knee deep in work so don't have time to sort out. Wonder if having the latest DXSDK has got something to do with it.

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 18, 2007 at 22:11 GMT)

it all works fine for me I have the June SDK.

and yeah TGEA works on the JUNE SDK

Dave Calabrese   (Jun 19, 2007 at 01:07 GMT)

@ James: "TGEA Works on the June SDK"... might I inquire as to what specifically you are referring to there? Do you mean that the latest FXComposer 2 exports TGEA friendly shaders that do not need any form of re-scripting (IE: Export and 'they just work')?

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 19, 2007 at 01:16 GMT)

Neo said that he was crashing and wondered if having the latest DX SDK had anything to do with. and I said that I had June "the latest" and it was working fine as does TGEA 1.01 I have not had anyissuse with any of them.

Dave Calabrese   (Jun 19, 2007 at 02:04 GMT)

Ah.. dang. So still nothing that can export directly into TGEA format. =/

Anyone know if there are plans to make TGEA compatible with .FX files? It would be very, very nice if we could just use one of the countless .FX editors and use the exported files directly in TGEA without needing to recode them.

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 19, 2007 at 03:30 GMT)

I'm not a good programmer but perhap someone here we can put our heads together and make some sort of converter that can convert them to a tgea xxxV.hlsl and xxxP.hlsl files

Dave Calabrese   (Jun 19, 2007 at 04:19 GMT)

I could not agree more with you, James. And the majority of these Shader editing programs all have SDKs for writing plugins. It is most certainly doable to write a plugin for almost any of these tools that will allow us to export TGEA compatible shaders.

We should have all gotten together and done this a year ago - but let's do it now. I know I could desperately use something that just makes TGEA shaders in my art pipeline. I'm not a bad programmer, however my skills end at scripting. Are there any knowledged programmers out there who understand both Shaders and the TGEA required modifications to help write a plugin for something like FX Composer? You would be doing the community a bigger boon than you may realize. Please, let's all get together and make this a reality!

Anyone who think they can help, email me at dave.calabrese@21-6.com. While I may not be able to directly program this, I certainly can help to manage the project to see that it gets completed. I imagine we will need both programmers, and artists who can stress-test the plugin to see that it works for all exported shaders.

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 19, 2007 at 16:54 GMT)

I have looked at the example plugins solution for FX composer 2 and it look like all but one of them is done in C#

only the FBX wrapper is written in C++

and the is very complete documentation on the API.

Hopefully Mental Mill will have this in the future but for now it sure seems like building and export for FX composer should be extremly doable.

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 20, 2007 at 04:03 GMT)

I got to a buddy that does c# all day that is going to take a look at it tomorrow.
I was wondering though, what is the best route here? Originally When I said something I was thinking it would end up being stand alone app that would just convert the formats. But then I started thinking if it would be possible to instead make a plug-in that would allow FX composer to use TGEA rendering logic. Maybe a small TGEA in a window, or something like that.

But then I started thinking further I would think that a more logical approach would be what was done in show tool pro, But with shader creation. Make an app with the engine that is a little more functionally wise like Mental Mill with nodes and what not so as to keep it user friendly for artist to deal with. Would be more like nodal compositing. Then have a text editor window built in where you could change the code by hand if you wanted to.
I defiantly think the later would be the best route.

I think all in all the gui could be the hard part.
Edited on Jun 20, 2007 04:04 GMT

Dave Calabrese   (Jun 20, 2007 at 04:35 GMT)

James: That's an awesome idea, a stand-alone app. It's also a LOT of work. Chances are we'd have a stand alone app up and running in about 4 - 8 months if not longer, especially if it's all "when we can find free time to work on it" time. I'd more vote for just a plugin to an existing program such as FX Composer that will allow it to save the HLSLs in TGEA format for now. I certainly agree that a stand alone program is the ultimate perfect way to go - but why wait 8 months just to have a beta of it when we can be working on our shader artwork NOW in perfectly good and working programs. Once that's done, and we have an intermittent solution - THEN let's start working on something stand alone. 8)

James Brad Barnette   (Jun 20, 2007 at 14:23 GMT)

Well I was thinking perhaps the codebase for show tool pro could be utilized but posted to TGEA. and then a material editor added. If the programer would be up for it. I agree I still Have a meeting with a C# guy later today. I'm trying to arange a second meeting with anoterh guy that is out of college for the summer. I will let you know what I come up with.

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