XSI realtime shaders

wenglish

hello

I'm just wondering how to set up realtime shaders in XSI, for instance to help me with painting my spec / gloss maps. the node based shader editor is really nice but so far ive only figured out how to use it with mental ray. is it possible to use the node based editor to create shaders that could be later exported for use with UDK/Unity? that would be ideal, because then I could be sure that my maps would read *exactly* the same, rather than using marmoset during map creation and then trying to translate it in engine to achieve the same look, using the actual same shader would be awesome

I dont mind programming, but of course the node type stuff is nicer and leaves more time for art

.Wiki

You can try it with the Ultimap_preview shader.

Just open the rendertree and then choose "nodes" -> "realtime" -> "ultimap_preview" it has a color, normal, specular and ambient imput. The ultimap preview shader works great if you bake directly inside softimage. I haven´t tested it with xNormal Normalmaps or other sources.



To use it you need to switch the viewport to Realtime.



In addition to this you can try to play around with the High Quality Viewport setting. This allows you to use depth of field and some other nice looking effects straight in the viewport.

I know that the normal phong, blinn and lambert shaders export to unity. But it exports only the map connections. Other settings stay untouched.

cryrid

Depending on the version, I have a few cgfx/directx shaders that are simple to set up and do their job.

I don't think there is a way to export them for Unity/UDK though, so you might be better off writing your own in order to make sure they're using the same math.

wenglish

ok, so I have some basic confusion about this. do I have to do anything with ultimapper, or just add the node? first I just added Nodes -> Realtime -> CgFX -> Ultimap_preview, plugged in my maps and then connected the ultimap node to the realtime input. when i switch to directx display it is blank. so then I added the ultimapper property to the mesh and under the Preview Shader Tree tab I select Create Preview. that created a new material which... works, but is seriously bugging out. so thats progress. It looks fine until i zoom out and start panning the camera, then it freaks out. ill attach a screen grab.

[edit] I just found out that this is not an issue with ultimapper, all the realtime shaders do it. the same mesh looks fine though in Blender and Marmoset, so it has to be something local to XSI

.Wiki

The right image looks like you are in the "user" view which is normally ortographic. These errors look like z-fighting in the viewport. Maybe because of the ortographic view.

wenglish

ah! .Wikki you glorious fellow, thats just the ticket! thanks, I wouldve been at that one all day!

wenglish

you guys know of any resources for learning to write shaders? i'm part of a 3 man game team and the only graphics artist, so it falls to me to write our shaders. we've made some fun indie games but now im wanting to create something real (i.e. with normalmaps, color specular, bloom, etc.) I would really like to make something in the style of dark souls. my googling has turned up rather little. know of any good sites, or maybe a book?

.Wiki

If you are working with unity you can try the "strumpy shader editor" its free. The only problem is that it is only supported til unity 3.5. But the compiled shaders should still work with unity 4.

wenglish

I did check out stumpy in the past, but I ended up just writing the shaders for some reason. Also, it would be ideal if i could create shaders that are "engine agnostic" (if there is such a thing) as we may be switching to unreal in the future