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Plan for Chris "Hobbiticus" Weiland

Plan for Chris "Hobbiticus" Weiland
Name:Chris \"Hobbiticus\" Weiland
Date Posted:Oct 02, 2003
Rating:5.0 out of 5
Public:YES
Comments:YES
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Profile Page:View profile page for Chris \"Hobbiticus\" Weiland

Blog post
Working with shaders... specifically getting bump mapping + specular lighting working on all torque objects. So far, I've done terrain, .dts models, and water. Water also has skybox reflection, soon to be realtime reflection.
For the passed few weeks, I've been working on specularity in Torque on all objects. So far, terrain, .dts, and water all have bump mapping and specularity using vertex/fragment programs. I've used Cg as the api of doing all of this. I've had to first integrate the Cg api into the engine, then apply it to each type of rendered object to get something that looks quite nice. Torque can be a very dark engine most of the time, so it's nice to see some specular highlights and shininess to brighten it up a bit.

The source code for this will not be made public, but I'm thinking of releasing it at some point as a content pack for $15-20. Hey, I gotta make money some way, right? The most major change was ripping out all references to voodoo and d3d, which greatly simplified the graphics layer, cut the executable down by a couple hundred killobytes, and sped up the startup time. Other than that, it's just a matter of integrating the rendering techniques into all of the objects, which can actually be quite a challenge. Though, so far I'd like to thank Clark Fagot for writing the TS library so nicely as to allow such effects with minimal impact :)

Anyway, I bet you're hungry for some pics, so here are some examples of what's been done:

BEFORE:
Torque guy: hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/things/guyBefore.png
Orc: hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/things/orcBefore.png
Campfire circle: hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/things/campBefore.png

AFTER:
Torque guy: hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/things/guyAfter.png
Orc: hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/things/orcAfter.png
Campfire circle: hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/things/campAfter.png

Here are some links to some movies that really show off the realtime specular and water reflections:
hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/things/shiny.avi
hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/things/shinybump.avi
hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/things/beforeafter.avi


Also, if Mark reads this, can you help me out with this?
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=13110
Thanks :)

Oh, and I know about the wierd stuff - I think those are just errors in the models, but I don't know for sure. My appologies if some of the links don't work as I have no time to test them since I'm going to be late for my physics lab...

Whoops! fixed the movie urls

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02/12/03 - Plan for Chris "Hobbiticus" Weiland

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Justin Mette   (Oct 02, 2003 at 18:18 GMT)
Lookin good! I'd buy that for $20 :)

Paul Dana   (Oct 02, 2003 at 20:07 GMT)
*WEll* worth $20.

Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr   (Oct 02, 2003 at 21:03 GMT)
$20? Heck yeah I'd buy it!

Chris \"Hobbiticus\" Weiland   (Oct 02, 2003 at 21:37 GMT)
Hmmm...$40-50? :)

Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr   (Oct 02, 2003 at 21:43 GMT)
Did you say something, Chris? ;-)

Edward Smith   (Oct 03, 2003 at 00:48 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5
$20 hell yeah! maybe $24.95... got to have .95 in it!

Whats the frames per second lost with all of this in?

P.S. chris the movies are in "things/movename" where the images are.
Edited on Oct 03, 2003 01:34 GMT

J. Donavan Stanley   (Oct 03, 2003 at 09:03 GMT)
Looking good Chris!

Michael Cozzolino   (Oct 03, 2003 at 11:13 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5
Let's see if my post gets eaten again.

Looks great. I will buy.

James Brad Barnette   (Nov 06, 2003 at 20:32 GMT)   Resource Rating: 5
Hey what are the system specs and resolution that you were running there? and what was the frame rate that you were able to get? Looked pretty smooth but would be good to know in comparison with your systems specs to get an idea of "real world" performance

Luke *V8motorhead* Jones   (Nov 16, 2003 at 05:17 GMT)
SOmething id definately support you for.

However!
How about a resource for flushing the references to voodoo and d3d down the shitter?

Thomas "Bulleyes" Cheah   (Dec 27, 2003 at 10:46 GMT)
Cool... I am looking for it. ;)
When is the estimated time to release?

Gabor Forrai   (Feb 13, 2004 at 19:02 GMT)
Hello Chris
Some months has gone, whats up with this wonderfull project ?
When it will be finished ? I hope you arent stopped the work on.
When are you planning to drop it into ebusiness ?

Stefan Lundmark   (May 09, 2004 at 23:02 GMT)
Just emailed Chris and asked.

Tom Feni   (Sep 03, 2004 at 03:25 GMT)
ummm next time could you go faster in circles and maybe get a closer shot of the back of your head.. :)

hehehe just kidding.. well from what I see looks pretty sweet..
noticed the reflections in the underwater scene is reversed.. ie looks like it is reflecting form above but isnt righted underneath.. weird.. :)

looks great..

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