Jol
02-27-2002, 03:02 PM
Hi I'm doing a bit of research on Hardware (Pixel and Vertex) Shaders in Max.
Max 4 ships with a Hardware Shader which is a simple cubic reflection map hidden in a folder called 'HardwareShaders' within the 'Plugins' folder. You can activate this by configuring plugin and map paths to find it. If you have a card that supports it (GeForce 2 and above) you can now access a Pixel Shader through the materials editor. Apply it, and make visable in viewport, and 'Hey Presto' you have real time reflecting chrome effect .
This Shader doesn't render but does show how a similar Pixel Shader would look realtime in a game. After contacting our supliers I've managed to get Membrane, Blinn Bump, Cartoon and Fur shaders which will work in the Max viewport real time on a GeForce 3 card. These shaders are ports of the shaders Nvidia give away free (check out their developer site and down load their 'Effects Browser 2.0').
So the question is 'Does anyone know a way of using Max's material editor to 'edit' these Shaders. Or does anyone know of any developments towards a GUI style editor for Hardware Shaders. Apparently Lithtech do have such an editor but it is bundled with in their compleat games SDK.
Max 4 ships with a Hardware Shader which is a simple cubic reflection map hidden in a folder called 'HardwareShaders' within the 'Plugins' folder. You can activate this by configuring plugin and map paths to find it. If you have a card that supports it (GeForce 2 and above) you can now access a Pixel Shader through the materials editor. Apply it, and make visable in viewport, and 'Hey Presto' you have real time reflecting chrome effect .
This Shader doesn't render but does show how a similar Pixel Shader would look realtime in a game. After contacting our supliers I've managed to get Membrane, Blinn Bump, Cartoon and Fur shaders which will work in the Max viewport real time on a GeForce 3 card. These shaders are ports of the shaders Nvidia give away free (check out their developer site and down load their 'Effects Browser 2.0').
So the question is 'Does anyone know a way of using Max's material editor to 'edit' these Shaders. Or does anyone know of any developments towards a GUI style editor for Hardware Shaders. Apparently Lithtech do have such an editor but it is bundled with in their compleat games SDK.