New CG Academy HLSL Fundamentals DVDs
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A lot of you have mentioned that you really like the HLSL shaders that I've written and that you use them frequently in 3ds Max to view your models with normal maps applied, etc. I'm glad that my work has been helpful! Learning HLSL has really opened up a whole new world for me in terms of being able to control exactly how my real-time art looks. It's very powerful to have direct control over how the lighting is calculated. It's especially cool to be able to see a new type of effect such as hair shading or skin shading and go and implement it in your own shader and start using it right away.
I've received a lot of email from people who recognize what a valuable skill it is to know how to write shaders and would like to learn but don't know where to start. Up until now I've just told them to get some books on programming and jump in, but that's a lot to ask of an artist who has never done any programming before. That's why I jumped at the chance to create a series of DVDs on the topic of learning to write HLSL shaders when Chris Thomas of Cg Academy contacted me. Chris invited me to create a series of DVD's geared toward teaching artists to write shaders in HLSL. We've nearly completed the first DVD in the series and I'm really excited about the chance to share all that I've learned with the community. The first DVD starts out at a very basic level and introduces some of the fundamentals. Since I have a background in game art and animation (I'm definitely not a programmer) I've tried to explain things in artist type terms instead of assuming that people are already familiar with programming.
We're also going to create additional DVDs in the series that go on to explain much more advanced topics and by the end you should be able to create all of the effects you see in the shaders on my site, plus a lot more. I'm hoping to share pretty much everything I know about writing shaders in the DVDs and give those interested in learning the topic a real leg up in the process.
We'll have more info on this new series very soon. DVD 1 of the series is in its final editing and should be released in the very near future.
-Ben
I've received a lot of email from people who recognize what a valuable skill it is to know how to write shaders and would like to learn but don't know where to start. Up until now I've just told them to get some books on programming and jump in, but that's a lot to ask of an artist who has never done any programming before. That's why I jumped at the chance to create a series of DVDs on the topic of learning to write HLSL shaders when Chris Thomas of Cg Academy contacted me. Chris invited me to create a series of DVD's geared toward teaching artists to write shaders in HLSL. We've nearly completed the first DVD in the series and I'm really excited about the chance to share all that I've learned with the community. The first DVD starts out at a very basic level and introduces some of the fundamentals. Since I have a background in game art and animation (I'm definitely not a programmer) I've tried to explain things in artist type terms instead of assuming that people are already familiar with programming.
We're also going to create additional DVDs in the series that go on to explain much more advanced topics and by the end you should be able to create all of the effects you see in the shaders on my site, plus a lot more. I'm hoping to share pretty much everything I know about writing shaders in the DVDs and give those interested in learning the topic a real leg up in the process.
We'll have more info on this new series very soon. DVD 1 of the series is in its final editing and should be released in the very near future.
-Ben
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