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Thursday, January 11, 2001 |  |
Made in the per-pixel Shade
More clarification from Timothy Wilson about some of the technical aspects of graphics rendering:
Pixel Shaders are a little bit of code that runs per-pixel. They combine textures and may compute lighting. Vertex Shaders are a larger bit of code that runs per-vertex. A vertex shader can move vertices, in addition it may 'shade' them. This is not a requirement, as I have written vertex shaders that do no shading at all, but instead let the pixel shaders do the lighting calculation.
Vertex shading is primarily what we have now in current hardware, each vertex is "shaded", and the values are interpolated across the polygon. Also known as Gouraud shading.
Per-Pixel shading just means each pixel is 'shaded' separately, ie the light calculation is computed in one-way-or-another for every pixel.
Just a lot of confusion as to whats-what. Many of the names are similar, and somewhat misnamed even.
In addition, he sent along an example of per-pixel shading, so you can see what he's talking about. Hope you all read this carefully... there'll be a test on Wednesday. (Louis Wu 21:17:34 UTC) (permalink)
Matt Soell sets the record straight
Matt Soell popped into our forum yesterday to clear up questions like "who is behind cortana.org?" and "when will www.bungie.com be updated?" (Read the whole thread for more nuggets - it starts here.) Where's my Big Mac? (Ding 10:05:54 UTC) (permalink)
My brain hurts...
Okay, we're seriously confused. We misinterpreted John Carswell's comments a little bit, it seems... he wrote to point out the nVidia PR Director interview that MSXbox held this week. There were two quotes that stood out for me:
MSXbox: What is the difference between these 2; Per-Pixel Shading and Bump-mapping?
Derek: Bump-mapping is kind of a hack, for lack of a better term. Per-pixel shading and Vertex shading are more accurate ways of doing texture and coloring. No more helmet head, like in sports games, you always look in the back of the head and [the hair] stands still, but in real life hair bounces. It'll give images personality, and it'll give scenes more personality. It'll make scenes more organic and give it more ambiance.
And then later on:
MSXbox: When are the developers going to get final Xbox development kits- we've heard around March?
Derek: That sounds about right.
(That second one was exciting because it means that the final card will probably be in the playable Xbox folks will get their hands on at E3.) Okay, I thought I had a handle on this per-pixel shading/bump-mapping thing, until we got a note from Timothy Wilson (warning - heavy on the geek-speak), which suggested that John was wrong when he said there was no bump-mapping in the Malice shots. NOW who do we believe? (Louis Wu 02:07:39 UTC) (permalink)
Wednesday's news in brief:
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Pixel THIS! Playable Xbox at E3 PC gaming on the way out? Matt says no Halo ad Wallpapers page updated Fit to be Thai-ed |
Tuesday's news in brief:
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Halo SETI Marines to take a beating Miscellaneous Art page updated |
