My technical articles
polycounter lvl 16
Hi guys,
I've recently added an article section to my website, since I enjoy writing stuff and it saves me some trouble having to explain certain stuff over and over to people.
First technical one I wrote is about RGB colormath, meant for artists who are starting to work with shaders. Be it nodebased or plain code, it´s supposed to explain some of the very basic principles of doing math with colors. People working with the Unreal 3 Material system for example, could benefit from this.
Do note it is very low level: a lot of people who frequent this section of Polycount probably already know this. Still, their feedback is appreciated, as well as suggestions on where else I could post this.
I plan to write another one in these series, about basic 3D and shader math: dot products for fresnel, diffuse, blending functions, masking, etc... That one will be a tad more advanced.
There´s also one on AO baking but that is probably well known for everybody who comes to PC.
I've recently added an article section to my website, since I enjoy writing stuff and it saves me some trouble having to explain certain stuff over and over to people.
First technical one I wrote is about RGB colormath, meant for artists who are starting to work with shaders. Be it nodebased or plain code, it´s supposed to explain some of the very basic principles of doing math with colors. People working with the Unreal 3 Material system for example, could benefit from this.
Do note it is very low level: a lot of people who frequent this section of Polycount probably already know this. Still, their feedback is appreciated, as well as suggestions on where else I could post this.
I plan to write another one in these series, about basic 3D and shader math: dot products for fresnel, diffuse, blending functions, masking, etc... That one will be a tad more advanced.
There´s also one on AO baking but that is probably well known for everybody who comes to PC.
Replies
You should get these onto the polycount wiki.
I think one thing that artists (especially starting out) don't realize, which keeps them from understanding things on a technical level, is that graphics on a computer is just a bunch of math. To get different effects or blending, you're just doing a bunch of math.
Once you kind of detach your mind from the abstract ideas of 'textures' and 'colors',and realize it's all just a big bucket of numbers, it's a lot easier to understand.
For example, terms like "additive blending" can be kind of confusing or just abstract at first . You may know the result you get when you use it, but not entirely understand how it works...which is something as simple as color + color.
Exactly. I really wanted to break it down in such a way. Hope I succeed in this, I really tried to keep it clear with the images and all.
Thanks to all the rest also for the good comments!
About Polycount wiki: how would I do that? Add a link in there somewhere?
Once I started using MR as my AO renderer, I haven't looked back. Used in conjunction with Crazybump's sexy specular via normal map settings, you have some killer AO if you know what you are doing.
Something you suggested did stand out though on Method 3:
As far as I know, simply assigning the diffuse as AO and then rendering-to-texture a diffuse map negates the need to set self-illumination or make it white. It should be all of that by default and work correctly. Don't forget to turn Shadows on in the render-to-texture. I always forget that :poly142:
Also, you should elaborate on the Samples-Per-Pixel part. Makes a big difference in final quality.
Good tutorials though!
-N
Well i thought about that, but that might go beyond the scope of the article, I´m really supposing one already knows how to RTT. Maybe I´m being a bit lazy, but people should be able to find out on their own where some of these simple settings are; becoming good at anything requires some dedication at the least
But if people really deem it necessary, I can add some more explaining.
Hey and what is specular via AO in Crazybump ? I never use that program, the Nvidia filter does the same for me.
In my case, that renders out a map that is slightly grey where the AO would be white? I'm not sure why this is, but setting self illumination makes sure this doesn't happen. Diffuse or Completemap does not really seem to matter once it's self-illuminating.
For Vray you mean ? Good point, that is quite advanced stuff however.
Good articles!
The image below is a quick example of using Crazybump to do a quick pass over your normal map to generate an additional bit of detail to your AO. I've never really gotten CB's "Occlusion" to look nearly as good as Specularity, so I will occasionally use the Specularity and adjust a few values to get a really strong fakey AO from the normals.
Once I have the map I can adjust intensity and levels and whatnot in Photoshop to get a good AO overlay to work in conjunction with my Render-to-texture AO bake.
Couldn't I get the same amount of detail from using Render to texture from the high poly source?
Maybe. It really depends on the specific object, amount of overlapped UVs, how much time I have and whether I am doing a true high poly version or a simple detail overlay version. When using this in conjunction with a detail overlay in the normals and you don't have any actual high poly source, Crazybump works great for generating an additional AO.
It also works great since it is so fast and you can dump it in and get a quick idea of whether its even worth using or not. It sometimes requires a little cleanup, but definitely a good tool to play around with.
http://www.laurenscorijn.com/articles
I wrote/recorded a few for CG tuts+, one about architectural rendering, another one about car rigging, plus there's also the viewportshader setup article. Another video about shader setup is coming soon. I have a lot more planned also!
Wrote a new one together with Dukesy!
Great articles!
Such a cocksmith
Please do not reply to an old thread, unless you have some new information that is relevant to the thread. This is a five-year old thread, and your post does not add useful information. This is seen by all those who open the thread, as a waste of their time.
An example of a useful reply would be something like a link to a related technical article. For example...
Some of Xoliul's articles are now on the wiki, here
http://wiki.polycount.net/AmbientOcclusionMap