Seeking more knowledge and research ideas
polycounter lvl 11
Well, to summarize my mission of the last few weeks, I am basically seeking more knowledge pertaining to visual effects, lighting, and shader development in regards to video games. The most important of which to me, at this point, is lighting(and post process techniques to enhance lighting) and shader development. My roots lie in visual effects so I am familiar with shader development for Renderman/Maya and lighting for CG films, but it is difficult to find any current material concerning these practices in next-gen games. The material I have found in these categories is very helpful (i.e the hdr lighting write-up from Naughty Dog and various posts here on PC concerning cubemap implementation and certain shader theory), but they really only serve to open up more questions at this point.
Research I am really interested in includes color lookup tables (CLUTS), Tonemapping implementation, HDR/LDR lighting in games, cubemap use in games, and shader and material development(this is a big one for me, understanding when and why to use something to get a desired result: including fresnels,reflections,LERP'ing,and any of the various math functions such as Powers,Clamps,Normalizing,etc)
I realize this is a really broad request, but I think they all serve the same purpose of creating a better looking final product. For me, I've always loved this aspect of computer graphics, but because of work deadlines and things related to stuff we deal with daily as environment artists (normal maps, AO, etc) and the tech associated with just modeling and texturing, this skill-set of lighting and shader development has fallen behind for me. I'd like to at least beef my understanding and knowledge of these some more. And possibly, if this thread gets some good suggestions and links from you guys it will help some other people out that are also curious.
Any books, research materials, website links, presentations, write-ups, videos, or w/e you found helpful along the way to better understanding the things listed above would be very much appreciated! I'd prefer it to be a bit more advanced and descriptive, but to be honest even intermediate knowledge is appreciated.
Thanks guys!
Research I am really interested in includes color lookup tables (CLUTS), Tonemapping implementation, HDR/LDR lighting in games, cubemap use in games, and shader and material development(this is a big one for me, understanding when and why to use something to get a desired result: including fresnels,reflections,LERP'ing,and any of the various math functions such as Powers,Clamps,Normalizing,etc)
I realize this is a really broad request, but I think they all serve the same purpose of creating a better looking final product. For me, I've always loved this aspect of computer graphics, but because of work deadlines and things related to stuff we deal with daily as environment artists (normal maps, AO, etc) and the tech associated with just modeling and texturing, this skill-set of lighting and shader development has fallen behind for me. I'd like to at least beef my understanding and knowledge of these some more. And possibly, if this thread gets some good suggestions and links from you guys it will help some other people out that are also curious.
Any books, research materials, website links, presentations, write-ups, videos, or w/e you found helpful along the way to better understanding the things listed above would be very much appreciated! I'd prefer it to be a bit more advanced and descriptive, but to be honest even intermediate knowledge is appreciated.
Thanks guys!