Skull

Another screenshot

admin — Wed, 12 May 2010 09:36:01 +0000

Some interface content from the test framework. Windows are based on a single image and can resize, scroll content and attach buttons as needed. Support for tabbed content and buttongroups is included. Every icon can be dragged and dropped into any socket. Also pictured: dial/bar gauges, tooltips and a cel shader/lighting test.

Texture cube lighting

admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:48:16 +0000

One technique I discovered early on is ambient lighting using a texture cube. A texture cube is a texture made up of 6 images, one for each side of a cube, that should smoothly fit together to make a complete panorama.

Rather than use this texture cube just as a skybox, I use it to sample ambient lighting.

Texturecube ambient lighting

The other nice thing about using a texture cube is you can quickly blend them together to subtly alter the lighting or smoothly transition from sunset to night.

This technique works well in conjunction with an Ambient Occlusion layer in your shader, as you don’t have to have overwhelming fixed lighting when baking your model’s textures out.

Water shader update

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:26:35 +0000

Getting closer to being done. Still plenty of bugs to fix and small features to implement. Decent normal convolutions are a big priority.

I’m quite pleased with how different the water looks at different depths, angles and proximities.

The (semi) finished water shader

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:37:55 +0000

A pretty accident

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:20:12 +0000

The new water shader is a work in progress, but already looks the part.

I accidentally clipped the terrain while I was working on masking out the cel shading under the water. You can see how the cel shading applies itself to the terrain quite clearly in this shot.

Time for an update!

admin — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:50:19 +0000

I’ve been hard at work on behind-the-scenes things such as mesh collisions and level construction tools. That didn’t stop me from adding major updates to the primary shader however.

Directional lights are out, ambient cubemap lighting is in! There’s also environmental fresnel reflections, ambient occlusion and specular.

The ATV

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 01:43:55 +0000

The primary mode of transport in the Rugged world is a sexy, growling ATV. You can also see the new haze shader in the background.

The first thing you see when you load Rugged

admin — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:53:10 +0000

The new lighting model is so good that the vehicles glow under the hot desert sun and all have to be re-rendered. Until then, here’s a look at Rugged’s title screen.

Rugged Update

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:53:28 +0000

Here’s a couple more shots of the shader progress. The slope texture is now quite visible, as is the full-size normal map.

Rugged Update

admin — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:02:37 +0000

Big terrain updates. The game engine can now have vast swathes of land and will even subdivide nearer terrain to remove sharp polygon edges and raise the detail.

This update also includes my first shader, as seen below. Don’t forget to click through to the high res version.