Bump Mapping

Game Technologies: DirectX 101

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    - XNA GSE for 360 ? - This Holiday Season ? Where exactly on XBOX 360 Live Marketplace is the 360 Part of the Download Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - unloading model resources Im trying to figure out how to manually unload models/textures/shaders ect. Halp me Intertron! Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Custom Content Processor - Usage Hi, I am looking from some advice on writing a custom content processor for XNA. I have been working on a tile engine and have my Windows based tile map editor up and running. This editor produces an XML file holding all the tile set bitmaps, a list of all the levels in the map and a list of layers on each level. I am thinking of using a custom content processor to load this XML file, parse it and serialise it to the xnb file. I then plan to write a custom importer which will create a top level map object which will hold the tile sets as Texure2D objects and a dictionary of levels in the map. Does this seem like the correct use for a content processor Andy Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Custom soundtracks I've only had XNA Game Studio Express since yesterday, but I've been having a lot of fun with it. I've started working on a game which is coming along nicely, but one thing irks me - I can't figure out how to have music playing that stops when a user chooses a custom soundtrack instead. At the moment, when a user chooses their own track is starts playing fine, but the game soundtrack continues to play in the background. I'm sure I've missed something simple, but I can't for the life of me figure it out. Any hints would be much appreciated. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Whats the deal with DirectX being owned by XNA? That explains quite a bit. Thanks. There are a couple things I'd be curious about if you have a chance to find anything out over the next 6 months. First off, suppose I have a basic game engine class structure like this: AudioServer - AudioDevice VideoServer - VideoDevice InputServer - InputDevice At the time of DirectX 8.1 (circa May 2002) all I needed to add for DirectX hardware support was this: #include <d3d8.h> #include <d3dx8mesh.h> #include <d3dxerr.h> #include <dsound.h> #include <dinput.h> At this point in time with my DirectX 9.0c code, before porting to DX10, I need to add this: #include <d3d9.h> #include <d3dx9mesh.h> #include <dxerr.h> #include <dsound.h> #include <dinput.h> When I get finished porting my code to DX10 it looks like I'm gonna need this and possibly more: #include <d3d10.h> #include <d3dx9mesh.h> (for legacy X File loading which isn't in DX10 yet) #include <dxerr.h> #include <dsound.h> #include <dinput.h> #include <xact.h> (for new sound support. why couldn't this be added to dsound.h ) #include <xinput.h> (for rumble support which DirectInput doesn't have on an XBox360 Controller. dinput.h ) Based on the recent changes internally it would seem the XNA team is starting to name all its additions to DirectX as seperate API's in order to reorganize and perhaps reinvent/rename/reconstruct DirectX into its own X*** architecture. XNA, XAct, XInput... Anyhow, please keep the forum informed. I'd rather the XNA team either swallow their pride and admit they are just an add-on to DirectX Managed and just submit to the old school Direct*** naming API. If not that then at least keep the basic DirectX API coherent so simple developers don't have to go searching for old Feb 2005 DX sdks just to install DirectShow headers that were already in DirectX and got "put back" into the Platform SDK. When the basic DirectX sdk starts to fragment with certain parts having functionality(XInput) and other similar parts(DirectInput) not then its definately something that can start causing headaches. That is unless you like including 20 headers in your application. :) Thanks again for your input. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Bug in BoundingFrustum.Contains()? That can't be right. Suppose i have two spheres of radius 10 one centered at 0,0,0 the other centered at 0,0,5. They have the same volume, which by your logic means they are Contained. Yet they most definitely are not contained. They are intersecting. Hence i assume that those definitions arent from official documentation, or i'm misunderstanding something. The way i look at it is as follows: Contained: Body A is contained by Body B if all the points of Body A lie inside Body B. Intersecting: Body A intersects with Body B if one or more points in Body A lie inside Body B *and* one or more points in Body A lie outside of Body B. Disjoint: Body A is disjoint from Body B if all the points in Body A lie outside of Body B. By that definition volume is irrelevant. Hence a BoundingBox of volume 0 still should be contained in my Frustum. However this isn't true. I'd like to see official documentation somewhere explaining these kinds of things. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - The Unofficial "Hooray I'm Done With my DBP Game" Thread I just submitted mine. Unfortunately, it has a couple of glaring problems. I considered not submitting it, but decided I'd worked to hard over the past week to not at least enter it. I'll post an updated version for the community over on gameprojects.com within a week or so. Tom Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Where do I start Simply search the forums for Tutorials for more info and read the XNA docs that came with GSE, the XNA team spent a lot of time getting usfull stuff in there. For 2D start over at http://www.xnaresources.com/blog.asp , good 2D tuts for 3D head over to http://www.riemers.net/eng/Tutorials/xnacsharp.php for 3D tuts. Lots more links on the forums and my blog site (which remind me I have a few more to add) Dave "LetsKillDave" Weller has also posted a humongous link page on his blog which whould be checked out - http://letskilldave.com/pages/XNA-Sites_2C00_-Blogs_2C00_-Games_2C00_-and-Tutorials.aspx Enjoy learning Darkside Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - DXT compressed Textures :-) .. it depends on your requirements. If you run a renderer without gamma correction == gamma 1.0 ... you are pretty lost. Here is a list of formats: - the new RGBE format and RGB can not convert to gamma 1.0 - a common format for HDR textures is DXT1 + quarter size L16 with the exponent ... two problems: bilinear filtering can be a bit screwed, but maybe you can live with that .... second gamma correction is tough - DXT1 + a scale and exponent value for each of the color channels in the header: you have to hack the DDS header for this ... the trick here is to store the scale and exponent values in gamma 1.0 but the rgb values in gamma 2.2 ... when the texture is fetch and than converted to gamma 1 and now that it is in gamma 1.0 space the scale and exponent are applied I implemented this on PS3, XBOX 360, DX9 and soon on DX10. You need a texture converter for this that offers this functionality and a few other controls that allows artist some artistic behaviour :-). If someone from MS would ask me today what my most favourite feature in DX10 is that I am missing: a nice HDR format with gamma correction ... every next-gen game runs with gamma 1.0. You can hear more of this in the tutorial "Core Techniques and Algorithms in Shader Programming" on GDC 2007 ( www.coretechniques.com .... soon available). Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - ODD Bumpmap issue Shawn, I have ran PIX and captured the render state before and after FX Composer has been ran, I now have a shead load of data and don't know how to compare it other than going through it line by line. Is there a method to compare the two PIX Events without me trawling through them one line at a time Thanks. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Let's go 3d engine sorry about that the hardware reference is a 7800 gpu and a 2.0 mhz cpu pixel shader 3.0 i will not run on 2.0 cards the 2.0 cards can handle but all the power is used up so i thing it is xbox360 ready there is a total use of 4 postprocess shaders and 8 mesh shaders running putting it all in to the depth hdr buffer well i cood realease the engine now but the sample game is not finish all there is missing is the animation of meshs ( gameplayer ,leaf , and tree) i hope microsoft will provide a sample animation in the x or fbx format on the 11.dec. ( if they do not i will plugin my halflife 2 meshs system width animation ) best regards michael hansen Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - DirectX - How to pick a point on 3D object Hello everybody, I'm working with DirectX to develop a simple 3D application in my VB.NET project. Actually, I'm able to rotate, move and zoom my 3D objet and now I would like to implement the possibility to pick a point on the 3D object with the mouse. In particular, the user must have the possibility to click everywhere on the object and put a "chek" on the selected point (mybe a circle or similar, I don't know at the moment). How can I approch the problem From where can I start Does exist some tutorial that can explain me something of analogous Thanks in advance for your help. Igor Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Rendering hundreds of models I have the ShaderX4 book and I've flicked through the X3 volume at work. I think they are useful references to have around. The articles can be a bit hit and miss but that can be a problem with any of these books that have many authors (Game Programming Gems is similar, though I have all of them and only one of the ShaderX books). Check out the contents and see if some of the other articles are interesting to you. Also have a look around the web as many of the authors eventually put the articles up on the web. Cheers, Leaf. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Get Screen Coordinates of Vertices? Hey, I'm looking to obtain the screen (X and Y) co-ordinates of vertices. Whenever I move my mouse over a vertex I want to change it's color, but don't know how to compare the mouse position with my vertices. Any suggestions Thanks Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Question on deferred shading with normal mapping Do you mean your actual normalmap textures store normals in worldspace, or just that your deferred shading output buffers do this For a general purpose engine it is important that the actual texture data hold normals in tangent space. Otherwise it becomes impossible to reuse a texture on surfaces with different orientations, for instance there would be no way to reuse a single brick normalmap across a whole level. When it comes to the actual lighting, it doesn't really matter whether you do this in world space or tangent space. One way you have to transform your lights, the other way you have to transform your normal the other way, and it's really up to you which way you want to go. On early (shader 1.1) hardware you pretty much had to do it in tangent space, and these days that might be slightly more efficient for some shaders, but I personally prefer to do world space lighting just because it is so much easier to visualise and debug. For deferred shading specifically, you don't really have any option here: you have to get your normals in world space in order to write them to your output buffer! You don't need to invert a matrix for this: just multiply by the transpose. That is the same thing as an inverse for 3x3 rotation matrices (ones that don't contain any scaling, shears, etc), and will usually work just fine for tangent space transforms. If you have very distorted UV mappings (textures that are extremely stretched or slanted) you might see some minor errors from this: if that turns out to be a problem you could apply a proper matrix inverse during the build stage, modifying your vertex data to hold tangent space matrices going in whatever direction you prefer. I bet it won't be a problem though. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Use XNA to make a map maker? I imagine you would create a map maker using standard Winforms. You would really only need the XNA Framework to import graphics. You should be able to incorporate the XNA content pipeline for this. XNA's Graphics rendering and Update routines wouldn't be necessary. I really don't think constructing the interface in XNA is the way to go. XNA doesn't natively support GUI elements. But WinForms do. The focus of XNA's rendering is to make real-time time appliations. Unless you're talking about constructing full-3D maps, XNA rendering shouldn't be needed. Now, if you are talking about constructing full 3D maps...then that changes things. I still think you would want to use WinForms. But it might be possible to embed an XNA window in your application. Generally speaking, XNA is for constantly updating games, while WinForms is for Windows applications, such as map makers/editors. Constantly updating applications eat up more system resources than WinForms, so you want to avoid using them where ever possible in a Windows application. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Saving Files I'm glad I searched before posting... One more question though, how do we save in regards to the logged in profile For example, Marble Blast Ultra saves the user's best times without asking for a name or anything. Is there a way for us to determine the current user so that we are able to do this as well or is that something likely coming along with the Live support Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Blending Multiple RenderTargets to the BackBuffer (Another RT) Ok. I am trying to write a SceneManager that contains a list of RenderGroup. Each RenderGroup is responsible for rendering a set of items (models, etc) to a RenderTarget and then rendering their RenderTarget to the BackBuffer (in this case a RenderTarget that SceneManager sets). The Problem: Blending between RenderTargets is not working. I have it working so when a RenderTarget is rendered multiple times with separate passes in the PixelShader it blends in Add mode. Between to RenderTargets, or RenderGroups in this case the blending fails. No matter what order I have the RenderGroups setup, it just won't blend correctly. Here is a picture of what I am trying to do: http://images.jsedlak.org/random/Xna5D_SceneManager.jpg Here is the code... RenderGroup: https://opensvn.csie.org/viewcvs.cgi/Windows/Xna5D/Xna5D.Graphics3D/RenderGroup.cs root=Xna5D&view=markup SceneManager: https://opensvn.csie.org/viewcvs.cgi/Windows/Xna5D/Xna5D.Graphics3D/SceneManager.cs root=Xna5D&view=markup Game1.cs: https://opensvn.csie.org/viewcvs.cgi/Windows/Xna5D_PostProcessing/Xna5D_PostProcessing/Xna5D_PostProcessing/Game1.cs root=Xna5D&view=markup Or maybe there is a better way to go about this Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Rectangle collision detection help ProfEclipse wrote: I would agree with Bill as to your problem. I'm wondering, though, why you don't use the BoundingBox structure It has an Intersects method that will take care of this for you. I should use BoundingBoxes, but I don't know how to make them. Edit: I worked out how to make them, now I just gotta figure out how to move it with the sprite. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Any suggestions for defining direction of partical effects on a 3D model? Mike36 wrote: Hm.. Interesting idea, I'll have to try that, thanks. Since I can define any data for the ModelContent's Tag property, if I were to define a hashtable (er, Dictionary nowadays) with the name of the marker node and its position data, would that persist into the runtime object Say, (Dictionary<string, someStructure)myModel.Tag["RCSPortYaw"].. Mostly, yes. The issue here is that for a type to be serialized into XNB, there needs to be a ContentTypeWriter and ContentTypeReader for it. We have built in support for dictionaries, strings, and all the XNA math types, so if your tag was something like a Dictionary<string, Matrix>, that could be serialized totally automatically. If your someStructure is a custom type that the framework doesn't already know about, though, you will have to write your own ContentTypeWriter/Reader for it (not hard, just a bit of code to fill in). Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Compiling DX10 example with C99 compatible compiler (Pelles C) Thanks again! It seems on my way to compile a DX10 program with Pelles C there is only one problem left. If anyone could give me a helping hand with getting the GUID under C. g_pSwapChain->lpVtbl->GetBuffer( g_pSwapChain, 0, __uiidof(ID3D10Texture2D), (LPVOID*)&(pBackBuffer) ) ; This is what I have. Initially I thought that IID_ID3D10Texture2D would help here, but it doesn't. The compiler gives me the following error message. C:\ExampleSpace\Intro Programming\Intro VX1\Window.c(102): warning #2027: Missing prototype for '__uiidof'. C:\ExampleSpace\Intro Programming\Intro VX1\Window.c(102): error #2066: Illegal use of type name 'ID3D10Texture2D'. C:\ExampleSpace\Intro Programming\Intro VX1\Window.c(102): error #2140: Type error in argument 3 to a function; found 'int' expected 'const const struct _GUID *'. *** Error code: 1 *** I looked into d3d10.h and it seems like lots of this stuff is only available for C++. I can see that the define for __uiidof seems to be only available in C++. Thanks in advance for your help, - Wolfgang Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Optimized graphics question: Which is better? I'm in the process of developing an XNA game and am currently documenting the artwork portion of the game. I am specifically interested in optimizing the art assets so the game performs as best as possible. The game I am working on will target 720p as its native resolution. Of course, in the interests of compatibility, I'd like the game to support lower resolutions as well. My question is (seemingly) simple. Should I have the artists create assets targeting native 720p resolutions and scale downward in code or vice versa In addition, if creating small graphical assets is the way to go, what recommendations do you have for creating assets that scale well enough to appear as HD content. Now, I'm assuming the latter is a loaded question and am happy to RTFM of any resources anyone suggests. Hopefully I am not asking for world peace. :) TIA! - Robert Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - New XNA 3D tutorial DJBurkey: Good luck with your univ project; that's exactly how and when I started my DirectX programming!! ProfEclipse: Excellent comment, hadn't thought about that one. It's easy to fix in my pages, but a question: with device recreation, do you mean the handling of lost devices (don't even know if this still has to be done in XNA) Because then I think I might also get away by putting a reference to the new graphicsManager.Graphics object in my device variable, after device recreation. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - DreamBuildPlay is up!!! ..jeez whoever designed the website should be shot for this oversight Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Capturing live video from a camera Hi, Have anyone tried to use a USB to capture live video and present it onto a form I wish also to augment this with another computer generated picture of mine..!!! Any help will be greatly apprciated.. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - 3d collision detection If a math is your friend you'd know the GJK algorithm has been improved from the initial introduction to eliminate erroneous behaviour. This resulted to enhanced GJK, ISA GJK and Lin-Canny combined algo for convex polyhedra. But there are some more advanced algotithms and computer implementations, including these for non-convex boundaries, f.e the V-Clip. The V-clip does not explicitly construct closest points while iterating, but localizes the closest points to various regions of interest through simple clipping operations and scalar tests, i.e. uses topological primitives while Lin-Canny must compute new objects (closest points between objects). Edge-face and face-face are the two most problematic cases in Lin-Canny algo. In V-Clip, the edge-face case is much simplifed, and the face-face case is eliminated. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Trouble Installing Refresh Are you sure you downloaded the correct SP1 The SP1 install ran fine on my machine. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Creating BasicEffects in content processor Hey all, I was wondering how one would go about creating a BasicEffect in a content processor, in exactly the same way that say, the default Xna mesh processor would do so More specifically is there a specific content class that one can serialize (and deserialize) that will result in a BasicEffect instance Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Official List of Features and Limitations of the various Pixel Shader versions? Worth noting that the Xbox360 XNA is using a custom version of SM3.0 so it has some differences (mainly for the better :) ) than the normal PC SM3.0 Deano Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Problems with rendering... Hey, I'm pretty sure that these are both simple fixes.... But I've been having two problems with rendering things with direct x 9. I've worked around both of them for a while but I don't really like doing that, although I've been unable to come up with a reason/solution for either and my research on google and these forums hasn't yet provided a solution, so I figured I'd actually try asking for help... I'm writing a 2D/3D engine, and I've found that when I'm using 2D rendering, nothing shows up on screen until I render a font to the screen. I'm not doing anything excessive with my fonts - I'm just using the LPD3DXFONT class with the DrawTextA function to render my text. So as far as I know, that shouldn't be changing anything important. Regardless, until I've rendered a font to the screen, none of my 2D sprites will show up on screen. I'm using the following render states: m_pDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_LIGHTING, false); m_pDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE, true); m_pDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_SRCALPHA); m_pDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_INVSRCALPHA); m_pDevice->SetTextureStageState(0, D3DTSS_ALPHAOP, D3DTOP_MODULATE); EDIT: okay, apparently half of my message disappeared. So let's try this again... In case it's relevant, here's what I'm using to set my projection matrix: D3DXMatrixOrthoOffCenterLH (& m_mtxProjection , 0, 1, 1, 0, -100, 100); Other than that, there really isn't any difference between my meshes and my sprites (other than the fact that one's a textured quad and one's a full fledged mesh). The other problem I've been having is that in release mode, nothing shows up on screen even though everything works fine in debug mode. I'm not quite sure why this is happening. So any insights as in to why that happens would be much appreciated :) Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - Creating projectiles, need help with list. George is right that this is the likely cause. This kind of thing can be highlighted at compile time as a warning, for example: Field 'ProjList' is never assigned to, and will always have its default value null YourFile.cs You could have the compiler treat warnings the same way as errors (i.e. the build fails) by going to Project|Properties... and, under the Build tab, choose "All" in the "Treat warnings as errors" section. At the same time, you also need to set the "Warning level" - the default is 4 which will catch unassigned variables. Treating warnings as errors can be a real pain when you're in the early stages of coding a new project or when you're in the middle of a heavy refactoring session but when things stabilise, my advice would be to treat warnings as errors and set the warning level to 4. Hope this helps. Cheers. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.
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    - display fractal Hi, everybody I 'm looking for a solution to display fractal with directX., does it exist solutions to draw it , 'cause fractal hasn't got any surfaces and are infinite. Thanks for your answers, and merry christmas. Tag: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping Game Technologies: DirectX, XNA, XACT, etc.

Aelx

Hi
I have rendered my model and now wish to apply a bump map to it. Although i have no idea where to start and google has not been helping :-/

I am using C#

-Prey

Re: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping

The ZMan

http://www.mdxinfo.com/tutorials/normalmapping.php

These days normal maps are better used than bump maps - the difference is subtle but will help your google searches. Also I find that searching for managed directx rather than c# gives much more specific hits.

In addition the more advanced you get the more likely you will have to use C++ samples - its not that hard to read usually and there are good samples in the DIrectX SDK

Re: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping

Prey

Thank you that helped slightly, but my bumpmap texture is of the format P8 so is theyre code you know of to convert it (i need a runtime converter as i wish to keep it P8)

Re: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping

Prey

Ah no worries i found how how to take from the predefined palette. Thanks ZMan for the link!

Re: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping

The ZMan

Sorry no I don't. In fact I'm having a hard time imagining how a bump/normal map can be in P8 format. P8 is indexing into a 256 color map meaning you could only have 256 possible normal.bump vecotrs which seems wrong somehow.

Where are these bump maps coming from.

Re: Game Technologies: DirectX 101 Bump Mapping

Prey

i loop through the predefined palette 256 times, each time storing the a, r, g, b values (each are a byte long) in an array.

I then read the P8 into a byte array. Once done i loop through that byte array and each time take the a, r, g, b of the predefined palette array at ['byte array'[x]] and slot them in one after another in a temp. array - which eventually becomes the normal map.