The No Subject Thread
-
YOU WILL PAINT THE SKULLS is definitely my favourite so far. -
Yep.
I'd be quite annoyed if I got on the choir as I know I'd be fired immediately. -
poprock wrote:YOU WILL PAINT THE SKULLS is definitely my favourite so far.
Needs to be given to a GW hobbyist, as we spend about 90% of our painting time doing this already. -
SpaceGazelle wrote:I'm going back to Uni at the tender age of 45. Just a year but still. Computer science MSc. I don't even know rudimentary computer science but they've offered me a place anyway on the understanding I will learn Python and SQL to a competent level in three weeks.
Related to this, I'm currently trying to learn to program shaders. It's bloody hard though, so if anyone has any good resources let me know.
I've seen Shader toy, did some tutorials using that, going through maths again at khan academy (but a lot seems to focus on knowing how to calculate things that a computer can do, I need to know when to use what, I don't want to be able to calculate the square foot of something on paper) and an slowly working my way through a linear algebra playlist by 3Blue1Brown, learning all about vertices and matrices.
Trying to work towards a vfx artist position, as I know my 3D and animation skills ain't good enough, and I've always liked doing math related things. It's hard to keep motivated as progress is really, really slow, I can't do this for long periods yet as it takes up so much of my concentration. I'm gonna need to look into Houdini at some point, and of course Unity and Unreal. First goal is being able to program some stuff in Shader toy though. I've gotten so far as making gradients. Hardest part is getting to understand the way of thinking for this. -
Hey Nina, I taught myself shaders and I'm a graphics programmer now - here's what I'd recommend. (NB, I started back in the DirectX9 days, but I figure most of this is still relevant).Nina wrote:
Related to this, I'm currently trying to learn to program shaders. It's bloody hard though, so if anyone has any good resources let me know. I've seen Shader toy, did some tutorials using that, going through maths again at khan academy (but a lot seems to focus on knowing how to calculate things that a computer can do, I need to know when to use what, I don't want to be able to calculate the square foot of something on paper) and an slowly working my way through a linear algebra playlist by 3Blue1Brown, learning all about vertices and matrices. Trying to work towards a vfx artist position, as I know my 3D and animation skills ain't good enough, and I've always liked doing math related things. It's hard to keep motivated as progress is really, really slow, I can't do this for long periods yet as it takes up so much of my concentration. I'm gonna need to look into Houdini at some point, and of course Unity and Unreal. First goal is being able to program some stuff in Shader toy though. I've gotten so far as making gradients. Hardest part is getting to understand the way of thinking for this.I'm going back to Uni at the tender age of 45. Just a year but still. Computer science MSc. I don't even know rudimentary computer science but they've offered me a place anyway on the understanding I will learn Python and SQL to a competent level in three weeks.
IDE
I think Shadertoy might not be the best way to learn about shaders, as it's pixel shader only so you won't learn about vertex shaders, which IMHO is a big part of tech art.
I started out using FX Composer to learn about HLSL/Cg vertex and pixel shaders: https://developer.nvidia.com/fx-composer
It's no longer developed/supported but hopefully it still works. HLSL is directX, if you want to start out by learning openGL's GLSL format, the AMD RenderMonkey app was similar to FXComposer: http://gpuopen.com/archive/gamescgi/rendermonkey-toolsuite/
However, like FXComposer it's now no longer developed/supported. They're both discontinued because they don't support the DX10 and above stuff like geometry/hull/domain/compute shaders - but IMHO it's best to start out simple with just vertex and pixel shaders. That way you learn how the data that comes out of Maya is read into the vertex shader, transformed by the VS, passed along the interpolators to the PS and then rendered to screen.
The advantage of FXComposer or RenderMonkey is that you can import your own meshes and textures and develop the shaders and see the preview/output all within the same IDE. If either of them don't work anymore (or on your system), I reckon Unity or Unreal is the next choice. I only know Unity, so if you wanted to start there I'd recommend skipping their custom "surface shader" format and jumping straight to the vertex and fragment/pixel shader programs: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-ShaderPrograms.html
The advantage of Unity or Unreal is that they're still in active development and there are huge tutorial and other learning resources and example projects available for them. You can also do stuff like put test scenes with lots of different objects, simple test rig games and animations etc together - whereas in FXComposer it's pretty much just a single mesh preview. This is very important for when you start wanting to hook up shader properties to game events (e.g. making a mesh flash a colour when it gets hit, or pulse slowly over time, etc)
Also, a game engine will let you try post processing shaders/effects (i.e. pixel shader only, applied to the whole screen - pretty much what you do in Shadertoy) much easier than anywhere else.
For actually writing the Unity shaders I'm not a big fan of Visual Studio, so I use Notepad++ with a user-defined language to add context highlighting for HLSL/Unity CG/GLSL. This is the def file I've cobbled together from various sources over time - paste it into "C:\Users\<<your.name>>\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\userDfineLang.xml":Spoiler:
Reading
When I was starting out this was a nice, clear book about Cg/HLSL shaders (it's free to read online now, but not very well laid out - the chapter links are at the bottom of each page): http://developer.download.nvidia.com/CgTutorial/cg_tutorial_frontmatter.html
There's tonnes of other stuff out there but I'd recommend finding a "learning vertex and pixel shaders" book you like and sticking with that - I find it less daunting if I'm just working through one thing at a time instead of trying to grab pieces from lots of different sources. Also, it'll probably have minimal bits of maths and "just the bits you need to know" as you go through it.
The most important part I've found is to get to grips with coordinate spaces and the matrix transforms. Object space -> world space, world space -> view/camera space, view space -> screen space/NDC. Most of the real headscratching problems I've had have turned out to be that some part of a calculation was in the incorrect coordinate space. Constructing
view space -> NDC and the perspective divide (dividing by the W component of a projected position vector) is still kinda confusing as my maths isn't great.
As a tech artist, you'll need to know an overview of the whole creation pipeline - though I don't figure anywhere would expect you to be an expert artist in Maya or whatever, but it would be very advantageous to know about Maya scripting and how to get Maya to do the kind of mesh/art asset frigging that a render pipeline might need (e.g. adding extra UV sets, baking vertex colours etc). That way, when you have a concept to hit, you'll have a good idea how you'll need the meshes/textures from artists to be formatted so that your code/shaders have the informatino needed.
Any questions just gimme a shout in the "code and shit" or techy gubbins threads:
http://www.thebearandbadger.co.uk/discussion/587/code-and-shit
http://www.thebearandbadger.co.uk/discussion/1045/techy-gubbins
Have fun!
PS - ooh, forgot a couple things:
This is probably my most visited single webpage on the internet (I can never remember which way round parameters go, so it's handy to have an easy link to a "cheat sheet" page like this): https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff471376(v=vs.85).aspx
This guy has some really nicely-written Unity tutorials: http://www.alanzucconi.com/
The 5 parts of this guide are a great intro to shading in Unity and in general: http://www.alanzucconi.com/2015/06/10/a-gentle-introduction-to-shaders-in-unity3d/
Loads more resources here: http://www.realtimerendering.com/index.html -
Just realised why the Beeb was posting that yesterday:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/aug/23/league-of-gentlemen-alan-partridge-bbc-return -
It is, thanks a lot! I'll take a look at the links once I'm on my laptop, will star the other two forum links!Childintime wrote:A Chump (Information) Dump.
Awesome.
I'm still really new with this, so I'm not sure where I'm heading yet. I do know I don't wanna go into UI design and want to stay away from networking as far as possible, but I've always liked math and had a dabble with Java years ago. Had a really nice book for that, "head first into". That helped me a lot at the time.
B is a tools programmer, so he can help me out, but I don't like bugging him with questions when he's working. I remember seeing some Shader books at his work, I'll ask if he can bring some home to take a lot at them.
-
The Daddy wrote:It's not python but this is a great resource for getting your head around OOP, something I imagine would be of benefit on a comp sci MSc.
http://sepwww.stanford.edu/sep/jon/family/jos/oop/oop1.htm
I liked this. Excellent advice all round in here. -
No probs!Nina wrote:
It is, thanks a lot! I'll take a look at the links once I'm on my laptop, will star the other two forum links!A Chump (Information) Dump.
Awesome.
I'm still really new with this, so I'm not sure where I'm heading yet. I do know I don't wanna go into UI design and want to stay away from networking as far as possible, but I've always liked math and had a dabble with Java years ago. Had a really nice book for that, "head first into". That helped me a lot at the time.
B is a tools programmer, so he can help me out, but I don't like bugging him with questions when he's working. I remember seeing some Shader books at his work, I'll ask if he can bring some home to take a lot at them.
I find having a book to browse through is a nice secondary way to learn, with my primary approach being just hacking something around so I can see the results in front of me.
The thing I found most useful is having a program that I can frig about with and see the results straight away - otherwise if you have to wait for compile and export and blah blah blah it gets boring and I lose interest.
If B's a tools guy then he'll know maya scripting and stuff, but I figure that's for a bit further down the line if you want a tech art job.
If you're fully into vfx, getting to know a particle system will come in handy as well - simulation, movement, authoring textures etc
There's a couple of classic presentations that i really enjoyed from a vfx point of view:
Bungie's Halo3 fx: http://halo.bungie.net/images/Inside/publications/presentations/halo3_fx.zip
Drew Skillman's one about the vfx in Brutal Legend: https://blog.drewskillman.com/s/GDC2010_VFX.pdf -
Great info chumpy - i'll be giving that lot a read too -
I have a nosebleed. Its not serious. But it's annoying. So I have to wait until it's finished it's little rivulet so I can go to bed.
There's about 200 threads to catch up on.
Ho hum.Sometimes here. Sometimes Lurk. Occasionally writes a bad opinion then deletes it before posting.. -
So I've opened up all those links, added the pdf's to google drive so I can read them on my tablet (next to the pool). Look all very useful, thanks a lot Chump.
I was following these tutorials the last couple days, but got frustrated by how much is going on behind the scenes. It's no fun if it's just a copy and paste job. Did them mostly together with B, he kept on simplifying the problem until I could work towards the solution.
Hopefully I can find my way around a bit, the reason I was asking for books is indeed to have them as a backup, to see things explained in different ways, and to be able to read up and mull over things when away from the computer. I find it hard to pause videos and try to get an understanding of what's going on if I couldn't follow them. I hit a bit of a wall the last few days, shader toy looks very complicated (turns out I was looking in the wrong places, had a look at it with B last night), khan academy was giving me stuff I wasn't interested in (like trying to explain how to calculate a square root without a calculator. I'm using a computer, I just need to know what things do and how I can use them) and that tutorial I linked to wasn't really doing it for me, the first few were good, but after that too much started happening that you just didn't see.
I'll deffo be looking into particles at some point, I know they're gonna be useful, just one thing at a time for now. I'm trying to figure out what I'm aiming for, I want to be doing creative stuff, but as I know my modelling and animation skills aren't fit for industry standard (and I don't want to be doing those jobs anyway), I've always liked math (that was about 15 years ago though) I thought I'd best go into programming visual fx. Real time is way more interesting to me than rendering.
I'll post in the threads you linked to once I've had a look there and have more questions etc. -
Tempy wrote:I keep thinking I should learn to code but I am a total dumbo
Coding ain't too hard if you've got a mind that can do a little problem solving, which is pretty much everyone. The rest is just learning the words. There's good resources and that all over the place including websites where you can code the course content in the browser. -
Skerret draws the pictures, right? -
ShabbyMcCrabby wrote:Tempy wrote:I keep thinking I should learn to code but I am a total dumbo
Coding ain't too hard if you've got a mind that can do a little problem solving, which is pretty much everyone. The rest is just learning the words. There's good resources and that all over the place including websites where you can code the course content in the browser.
Yeah you're don't need to be smart to play around with the basics. And the basics can be pretty powerful and useful to know. Just something like automating tedious, repetitive tasks out of your life can be pretty satisfying. -
Show networks- die
- @CustomCosy
- Xbox
- Skerret
- PSN
- Skerret
- Steam
- Skerret
- Wii
- get tae
Send message
I play all the notes.Escape wrote:Skerret draws the pictures, right?Skerret's posting is ok to trip balls to and read just to experience the ambience but don't expect any content.
"I'm jealous of sucking major dick!"~ Kernowgaz -
Skerret says he's going to draw the pictures then never gets around to it and leaves the rest of us to draw them instead.
-
I can confirm this as a fact.Sometimes here. Sometimes Lurk. Occasionally writes a bad opinion then deletes it before posting..
-
Unlikely wrote:It all sounds like a right load of old shite tbh
It was utter utter nonesense, more like a convention, but ultimately a situation...Page 272 of the book is now known as me...I rewrote the chapter it's from along with the rest of the people who are now the guardians of those pages, Bill and Jimmy tore these pages, Bill gave me mine, and the other even numbered pages to my even cohorts who were parsed into odd and even upon arrival. I introduced our chapter then some of my chapter guardians read out the new rewritten chapter whilst the rest played the tune from the shipping forecast on kazoos accompanied by instruments made hours before in a pub called The Shipping Forecast, which was not the reason why we played the tune. I'd drank a few litres of opium tea by this point, I must stress that these events definetly did not happen. I need to break from confirming how utterly shit it was. I never led the parade either but I did have an interesting conversation with a skull painter who'd never done makeup before.
I gave this convention a score of 23 out 10 last August, or was it April, or March. Hmm."Better than a tech demo. But mostly a tech demo for now. Exactly what we expected, crashes less and less. No multiplayer."
- BnB NMS review, PS4, PC -
I have no idea where cockbeard is."Better than a tech demo. But mostly a tech demo for now. Exactly what we expected, crashes less and less. No multiplayer."
- BnB NMS review, PS4, PC -
Come with g if you want to live... -
Show networks
- die
- @CustomCosy
- Xbox
- Skerret
- PSN
- Skerret
- Steam
- Skerret
- Wii
- get tae
Send message
It's the Skerret way. Btw if anyone needs anything drawn, gimme a shout.Yossarian wrote:Skerret says he's going to draw the pictures then never gets around to it and leaves the rest of us to draw them instead.
Skerret's posting is ok to trip balls to and read just to experience the ambience but don't expect any content.
"I'm jealous of sucking major dick!"~ Kernowgaz -
Skerret'll Scrawl It
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Categories
- All Discussions2,715
- Games1,879
- Off topic836