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In: 3D Engine, Game Engine, Programming, Review

Game Engine Gems 2 is the second book in a series from editor Eric Lengyel, one of the premiere game engine developers in the scene. I read the first book and I will say this second volume is even better in my opinion. There are a vast number of topics covered, and I found the depth in most of them to be thorough, considering that this is a gem collection and not a full book. Inside there are 31 chapters, each from a different author, and a lot of ground is covered. Chapters include: bounding boxes, volumetric clouds, night vision, deferred shading, OpenGL tricks, stereo 3d, web browser 3d, object-oriented design, networked games, GPGPU cloth physics, bit hacks, memory management, multi-threading, and more. Each section was given about 10 to 20 pages, but the authors were concise and were able to explain the concepts well in the short space. I very much enjoyed the wide span of content and I feel this is a text I will look back upon for reference in my own development.

While some of the topics were a bit over my head, I did find most of the book to be digestible and relevant. The text would be most apt for people developing their own engines, especially in C++. A few of the early chapters could likely be applied to commercial engines (for example, the sections on volumetric clouds or night-vision shaders) but the the vast majority of the book is focused on more lower-level engine work. I liked that stereoscopic 3d was covered in a few chapters, and the depth was greater than in the first book. The chapters on multi-threading were also very helpful, even though this is admittedly a confusing area for me (I bet I’m not alone). And the section for bit hacks was pretty interesting, which showed some tricks like how to test the sign of a number without branching. Overall, I think this is an awesome book and feel it was somehow overlooked. I would recommend this to any engine developer. Also bought the 3rd book in the series, and I’m looking forward to see how that stacks up.

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In: 3D Engine, Game Engine, Math, Programming, Review

Volume 1 Mathematics

I’ve always been a big fan of Eric Lengyel, from both his work on the C4 Engine (and now the new Tombstone Engine) and his previous math book, Mathematics for 3D Game Programming and Computer Graphics, which is on it’s 3rd edition and is one of the definitive texts in the genre. This latest book, Foundations of Game Engine Development, Volume 1: Mathematics, I feel does it again and is well worth reading.

The text, which clocks in at around 200 pages (short for a technical book) actually has a decent amount of information crammed into those pages. Lengyel breaks it up into 4 chapters, each focusing on a different aspect. Chapter 1 starts with vectors and matrices, then continuing to transformations, next to geometry and the finishing chapter on advanced algebra. The first 3 chapters are about what you’d expect from a game math book, but explained clearly and succinctly. Early in the book, when discussing vectors, the author states: “Loosely speaking, the dot product provides a measure of how much one vector is like another.” Though it seems obvious now, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it explained quite as clear before. Much of the rest of the coverage in the first 3 chapters feels like this. While it may be a refresher to many, it’s like seeing some of these concepts in a new light just from the stellar delivery.

As I mentioned, chapters 1 through 3 cover the basics, that most game programmers are likely familiar with. Vector and matrix operations, transformation spaces, finding relations between points, lines, and planes, etc.  I’d consider this to be a good refresher for people at least somewhat familiar with game mathematics. Though I could also see it as an decent introduction for some, there may not be enough hand holding for a complete novice.

However, in chapter 4, Lengyel dives into new territory with Grassmann algebra. Though the math is very old, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it covered or mentioned in any of the popular game math books I’ve read. The concepts are actually quite interesting, and seem to tie together some different areas that originally seem disparate. To be honest, I think I’d have to read this chapter a second time for the concepts to really sink in. It did make some sense but, being somewhat new material to me, I wasn’t sure how I’d immediately apply the knowledge. That said, I applaud the author for bringing something new to the table and I can’t imagine it being described better.

One part I really did appreciate were the code listings, shown in real C++ code that, while I did not type them in a computer and compile, seem like they would be ready to basically lift off the pages and use in a project. I also very much liked the coding style, which felt clean and modern, unlike some other books I’ve seen where it looked like the code came from a 1980’s mainframe.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this book. It was able to cover basic game mathematics in an extremely clear and concise manner, and introduce new concepts along the way. I think this would make an excellent edition to any game development library. While the book was refreshing at only 200 pages, that brevity meant that some concepts could have been in more depth, and other topics weren’t covered at all. For more thorough coverage, I’d look to  3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development by Fletcher Dunn or to Lengyel’s prior book, Mathematics for 3D Game Programming and Computer Graphics. That said, whatever your skill level, I think Foundations of Game Engine Development is a worthy read.

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In: C++, Game Engine, Graphics, Review, Unreal

LearningUnreal

Right here is a book with a clearly defined goal and an excellent execution. Learning C++ by Creating Games with UE4 by William Sherif takes you on a journey from being a total blank in C++ to coding some basic features of a 3D game. Even though I have been coding in C++ for years, I still enjoy reading novice level texts as sometimes they can teach you a new way of thinking about familiar problems. For me, it’s also important to have good book recommendations (especially for people starting out), and I actually discovered this book from a member of the Unreal Engine community looking for a review. So here it is.

William Sherif starts the book proper, with how to setup a project using either Visual Studio or XCode. This is actually a great design, and it’s thoughtful to include both operating systems (Linux is not officially supported by Epic yet, so I can’t knock the author on that one). When first starting with C++ programming, probably the hardest thing is not the syntax but understanding how to configure the project and settings in the IDE, so I like that this was covered first. Next Sherif moves onto the basics of programming: variables and memory (numbers and pointers), control flow (if, else, equality and comparison), looping (while and for loops), functions and macros, variable scoping, objects and classes, inheritance, and finishing up with dynamic memory allocation and arrays. Really quite a good foundation for learning C++. I found the explanation to be clear and concise, and the author did a good job of easing the reader into the information. C++ is a huge topic to cover, and there are volumes of text many times this size going deeper into the intricacies of the language. I wouldn’t actually fault the book for this, I think it’s a strength. Some novices may be overwhelmed by C++ if they start with something like Stroustrup’s 1,300 page tome. So I would say this is a great introduction to the language, and a great refresher if you’re coming back after a while.

The second half of the book is focused on Unreal development in particular. The author opens by discussing templates and containers in UE4, including some basic ones like TArray, TSet, TMap and then discussing the STL versions of these and how they differ in Unreal. He follows up with the first real example in the engine: an inventory system (with a UI) and the ability to pickup items in the world. I like this approach as it’s a real tangible task that many games would include. The author then shows how to code NPCs that are able to display a text message to the player. Next, Sherif talks about how to create monsters – basically enemy characters that can chase and attack the player. He closes with adding spell casting (including the code and setup of the particle system).

So this is not a book that will show you “How to Make a Complete AAA Game in 24 Hours” but I don’t think that was the intention. What the author does is introduce C++ at the right pace, and also show how to get started with applying that knowledge to developing games in Unreal 4. In some ways, it almost feels like two separate books: one on basic C++ programming, and another on coding in C++ for Unreal Engine 4. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and I think both parts are worthwhile. Really, this book would be most valuable to someone that has little experience with C++ and is also new to using C++ in UE4. If you are already a C++ pro, the first half of the book may seem too basic. However, I think the Unreal coverage can be useful to developers of varying skill levels.

Overall I enjoyed Learning C++ by Creating Games with UE4 and would entirely recommend it to anyone interested in gaining knowledge in C++ for Unreal. To be honest, this is one of the only books out there on the topic right now, so it sort of stands alone. I believe it’s taken me a little over a week to read the 342 page text. Certainly, it doesn’t cover everything you need to know (not even close) but it’s a great place to start. I’d also add that I read the book on the Kindle Fire HDX, and the formatting looked pretty good. The price on the e-book was also much more affordable, so now may be a good chance to upgrade if you’ve still been reading on ink and paper.

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In: 3D Modeling, Art, Game Engine, Graphics, Review

MayaGameEnvironments

This is a book with a solid focus, and I feel like it accomplishes it’s goal nicely. Basically what Maya Studio Projects is about is creating environment objects and props for games (as the title implies). There are 9 chapters, and each one chooses a different object to model. McKinley is very detailed in his explanation, and really shows each and every step needed to follow along. Some of the objects modeled include walls and floors, foliage, weapons, vehicles, buildings, lamps, and a simple object animation. Supposedly there is a DVD companion, but I got the Kindle e-book and usually don’t bother with looking at the discs.

What I like most about Maya Studio Projects: Game Environments and Props by Michael McKinley is that the book is very much geared toward game artists. While pre-rendered art and game art do require the same skills, there is a slightly different thought process and flow when you are working within the limitations of a real-time game engine. The author does not assume you are using any particular engine (though Unreal is named a few times) and the techniques can be used in almost any modern engine. However, the instruction steps are very much tailored for Maya. While this is great if you want to follow along, step for step, it may make it more difficult if you use another package. Also, I typically like to just read along and sometimes I felt the author was too specific in each step, making it harder to extract the general philosophy of modeling. This can be a pro or con depending on what you are looking for. I would have also enjoyed more pictures. Sometimes as much as 10 or 12 steps were made in text alone and it can be slightly confusing without a demonstrating photo.

To sum it up, this was a fine book and I learned a little bit. I would not say it was exceptional, but there was nothing grossly wrong with it. Certainly, if you are looking to create props with Maya (especially man-made objects) this is not a bad place to start. If you are using Maya LT for game development, this is a very relevant book since it (thankfully) doesn’t use really any of the features missing in the LT version. One slight disappointment, McKinley doesn’t actually show you how to make the nice art on the cover. Can’t hold that against him, though. I’d consider this a great beginner’s book, and should help to get you started with 3d game modeling.

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In: 3D Engine, Game Engine, Gaming, Graphics, Unreal

 

Today I’d like to unveil what I’ve been working on for about 2 weeks: Pong in Unreal Engine 4. Most of that time was spent reading documentation and watching tutorial videos just to figure out the basics. There is actually a *lot* of good material out there for Unreal Engine 4, the docs have been helpful and there are plenty of videos. Disappointingly, there are barely any books out there for the engine, but I’m sure that will change quickly.

Pretty much anyone will tell you, when you are learning to develop games (or switching to a new engine/platform), the best thing to do is to start small and try to complete something. It’s really silly to try to make an MMORPG as your first game (I have fallen for this one!) and even relatively simple things can become complex fast when you are not familiar with the platform. So I chose to do Pong as my first excursion into Unreal 4. It was not without some trials, but I made it through alive. Oh, and, no. This will not be considered my “finished project of the new year”. There are some other, cooler, things I have in mind.

Previously I was making multi-part blog posts with basically quick status updates. This was fine, but I think it will be more helpful for the community for me to do focused tutorials on a specific topic and post those more frequently. I learned quite a lot about Unreal with this project, and I think I can share some of that on this site. Some of the things I picked up working on this demo include: importing assets, working with Blueprint, basic flow and logic, movement, collision, HUD, events, keyboard control, functions and variables, and just getting familiar with the Unreal Editor interface. Not sure I will make tutorials on everything, but I plan to break this into a few posts. Below you can see the level Blueprint for the game, just to give you an idea of the complexity.

UE4_Pong_BP

Overall I have been impressed with Unreal Engine 4, and I can’t imagine purchasing a more capable piece of commercial software for less than the pennies they are giving this away for. People can complain about the 5% royalty but, really, if you get to the point where 5% is a significant dollar amount, you will be rolling in the the dough and shouldn’t care if Epic wants a piece of the pie. Cost aside, I do like the engine a lot. Granted, I ran into some bugs, and more crashes and stability issues than I’d care to admit. At one point, the project saved in a corrupted state and I was blocked from even opening it at all. Luckily, I was able to update the engine and convert the project, but I was sweating pretty hard for a little while. That said, I’m sure this can be improved in time and it didn’t stop me from developing (I’d just recommend using source control and committing often).

The visual programming system, Blueprint, is very powerful and I used that alone for this demo (no C++). I did start checking out the C++ support and it seems to add some extra power and flexibility, but I haven’t got that far yet. However, I can see building some simple games and experiences using the visual coding by itself. This is also great for designers, who may be able to rig up some basic stuff themselves. Keep in mind, it’s still programming (just not with text). You have to understand the basics of logic and control flow and, in some ways, it may even seem alien to veteran programmers. I know there were definitely a few cases where I had a non-trivial amount of nodes and connections and thinking “I could have done this in 1 line of code”. Once I got beyond that, I think I may prefer it to coding manually, as it’s much harder to make mistakes (or to create stuff that doesn’t work).

I hope to continue working with UE4 in the future and I’ll continue updating my blog as I make major developments. Thanks for watching.

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In: 3D Engine, C++, DirectX, Game Engine, Graphics

So it comes with great reluctance but I think I will have to suspend development on my 3D game engine, at least for the near future. Surely this will be a disappointment to anyone following the progress and I did not make the decision lightly. After spending some time thinking about it, I think it’s the right move. It’s just really hard to justify the amount of time and effort put into this when there are much better solutions available off-the-shelf.

In the little less than 2 years I’ve worked on this project, I think I have made decent strides. Honestly, I was not working on it full-time. Just on weekends mostly or maybe here and there when I had time after work. My initial goal was to have something functional in about 6 months to a year. It took a little longer, but I guess eventually I did have the basic features of an engine somewhat working. I will list what was implemented below, but it was enough to load in some textured models and fly a camera around. Not ground-breaking work by any means, but I built nearly everything myself so I was happy about that. There was just an enormous amount of work remaining to get to a state where a game could be produced. Finally, it was too much.

So before I give my personal advice, I’ll break down how I got to this point. First, let’s look at all the books I read as research for this project:

Game Engine Architecture – Jason Gregory
Game Coding Complete, Fourth Edition – Mike McShaffry
Real-Time Rendering, Third Edition – Tomas Akenine-Moller
Game Engine Design And Implementation – Alan Thorn
3D Game Engine Programming – Stefan Zerbst
Game Engine Gems, Volume One – Eric Lengyel
3D Game Engine Architecture – David H. Eberly
3D Game Engine Design –  David H. Eberly
3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development – Fletcher Dunn
Mathematics for 3D Game Programming and Computer Graphics, Third Edition – Eric Lengyel
Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 11 – Frank Luna
Practical Rendering and Computation with Direct3D 11 – Jason Zink
Beginning DirectX 11 Game Programming – Allen Sherrod
Game Programming Patterns – Robert Nystrom
Game Physics Engine Development – Ian Millington
Physics for Game Developers – David M Bourg
Physics for Game Programmers – Grant Palmer
Game Physics Pearls – Gino van den Bergen
Shadow Algorithms Data Miner – Andrew Woo
The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition – Bjarne Stroustrup
C++ Primer (5th Edition) –  Stanley B. Lippman
C++ Primer Plus (6th Edition) – Stephen Prata
More Effective C++ – Scott Meyers

If you are considering engine development, please read on, but I believe all the above books are valuable to look at. I’ve also read a variety of sources online, from tutorials to official documentation and more. Looking at that list it seems huge, but I am an avid reader and have read and listened to a number of non-technical books in that time-span as well.

Next, let’s look at what features were actually implemented and working (or mostly working):

  • Win32 app template (message pump)
  • DirectX 11 based rendering engine
  • DirectInput mouse and keyboard controls
  • Custom math library (Vector, Point, Matrix, view/projection)
  • Node-based hierarchical scene graph
  • Frustum culling (sphere and point tests, minimal bounding sphere)
  • Generic XML parser (from scratch, kind of hacky and slow)
  • COLLADA importer (only basic vertex and UVs)
  • Custom binary 3D model format (for speed)
  • Camera object (spectator mode)
  • Texture mapping and Skybox (cube mapping)
  • Directional, ambient, and specular lighting
  • Normal and shadow mapping shaders
  • Command-line console window logging
  • Architectural glue and probably some odds-and-ends.

So what wasn’t finished? Way too much to list. I don’t want to get down on myself too hard, cause I think that I accomplished a little something here. Certainly some of this stuff was not easy and, if anything, it has made me a better coder. Even in the current state I guess you could make a Pong game or a simple walk-through demo or the like. Also keep in mind this was a part-time excursion. If I were dedicated to this fully it probably would only have taken months (not counting research time). While I started with a very clean style and deliberate design, by the end I was kind of hacking things together, and some features (like the shadow mapping) became very intertwined with the core rendering code. Of course, this was very much a learning experience, and I planned to go back and clean things up later (which may or may not ever happen, we’ll see).

OK, so by now you are probably getting the idea. As to my advice, if you are trying to make a game (or game-like interactive experience) don’t bother making a custom engine. Everyone basically told me this from the start, and I didn’t listen. It’s sort of like when you see people doing stunts on TV and they tell you “don’t do this at home.” But they did it, and it made them rich and famous. So maybe I was looking for glory, or hoping finishing a big project like this would take me to another level. I guess in a way it did. I’m just not sure that was the best use of my limited time. What I mean to say is that knowledge is valuable, and I feel I learned a lot. However, unless you are really looking to be an engine programming professional, there is not much reason to try to do this.

The crux of the matter is that all-in-one engines like Unity and Unreal are just too complex and mature to expect to compete with. That’s not to say a small team or a single hero-coder can’t produce something great. They can. However, using a pre-built engine cuts out a *lot* of time and risk. Had I been working on a project for a client, I would have never even contemplated a custom engine. It just doesn’t make sense. Both Unreal and Unity have huge teams of expert engineers working solely on engine development. Unless you work for a huge AAA studio with a monster budget, I just can’t see coming up with something better in any reasonable amount of time. Even some huge companies (like Capcom and Square-Enix) are dropping in-house engine development for Unreal 4. Not a good sign for indies or bedroom coders working on their own engines.

But let’s say those big engines aren’t for you. There are a number of open-source engines and libraries out there to help you along. Something like Torque or C4 look promising (if you want a full-featured solution), or OGRE (if you don’t mind having to cobble together a bunch of different libraries). If you are interested in web publishing there are things like three.js for WebGL. With source access you can add the features you need or fix critical bugs. Really there are too many options to ignore.

For the last few weeks I’ve been playing with Unreal Engine 4, and it basically does everything I need and a whole lot more. At $19/month and a small royalty (if you sell your title) making a AAA looking game has never been more affordable. Unity may still have a leg up on ease-of-use and scalability on different platforms, but for high-end development I think Unreal is probably the one to go with. Having the source-code is a huge boon, and the price makes it attainable to almost anyone. Plus, with the visual scripting, Unreal can even be approachable to artists and designers. I’m still in the early stages of getting acquainted with the engine, but so far I am pleasantly surprised. I plan to follow up with some posts and tutorials in UE4 in the future, so don’t think this is the end of my blogging career or anything of that sort.

With all that said, there are still some things I’d like to see in engines that don’t exist today. You typically can’t use the editor in stereo 3D (assuming the engine even supports 3D natively), motion control support for placing objects is non-existent, image and model editing is usually very rudimentary (you must switch back and forth to other apps), real-time code editing and previewing can be limited. So things can certainly improve, and I guess there could be a case made for making plugins or forks to existing projects. I’m not saying things can’t improve. Just that reinventing the wheel to make incremental improvements may not be the best path.

At this point I don’t think I would say engine development is a “waste of time.” As a learning experience, I think it was fun and rewarding. Certainly I hope I didn’t just waste 2 years of my life. Doing all the work and research has brought me here to this place. So it was somewhat worthwhile. It just pains me to think how far along I might have been had I jumped on Unreal 4 when they first announced the subscription model, or spent more time with Unity over the years. If you actually want to build (and finish) a game, it’s a pretty clear choice to use an off-the-shelf solution. I’m sorry, guys. I wanted to prove everyone wrong, but they were right. Make games, not engines.

Finally, I’m sure the question you’re thinking is “will I release the source.” I’m considering it, but there are some hacked bits in there and I’m not sure it’s a great example to work off of. More likely I will pull out portions or classes from the project and use them for future blog posts highlighting a particular algorithm or technique. The full source itself is probably less useful compared to other stuff that’s out there. In any case, I hope maybe you have learned something after 2 years and 25 posts on this project. If you click the (somewhat hidden) 3 white line icon on the top right of the blog, you can see a list of all the blog updates in this series for a little history (if you weren’t following the whole time). Cheers, and happy coding.

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In: 3D Engine, C++, DirectX, Game Engine, Graphics, Physics

 

It’s been some time since the last 3D engine update, but I’m still sticking with it. Currently I am working on getting a physics engine implemented. The video you see above is the first glimpse of this custom physics engine. Obviously it’s ultra basic right now, but it’s a start. The algorithm is based on a verlet integrator, and the code is running using DirectCompute on the GPU.

To be honest, it’s pretty hacked together right now, and the bounds/bouncing behavior is hard-coded. But, hey, it’s something! I also tweaked the style of the demo to more closely align with other demos from researchers (and the clean flat-shaded style looks a bit more classy).

I’m planning on expanding this significantly, but still have a lot of work ahead of me. Though I’m still questioning whether GPGPU is the way to go with this, especially since there are 8-core CPUs available for consumers (and which I am running now). There is also added difficulty and limitations of DirectCompute rather than straight C++. But if there are big gains on the GPU obviously I would like to go that route. Definitely more testing to do here, but progress is being made. Stay tuned.

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In: 3D Engine, C++, DirectX, Game Engine
engine_zero_08

While I implemented frustum culling a little while ago, I never actually coded a proper bounding volume. For the  bounding test I was using a sphere, but I just set the radius to some hard-coded value. This was fine when I just had a bunch of similar sized cubes on screen, however it broke apart once I started getting varied models imported. This week I decided to do something about it.

After a quick Google search for bounding spheres, I ended up on Wikipedia. There was some good information there regarding minimal bounding spheres (also known as smallest enclosing ball or minimal enclosing ball), and I was given a few options for different algorithms. After reading the whole page I become very interested in the “bouncing bubble” algorithm, especially due to the spiffy gif animation showing it in action. The brief explanation seemed easy to follow compared to the other methods, and the error percentage was only around 1-2% which is much lower than Ritter’s algorithm (which can be as high as 20%). So far so good.

Unfortunately I found next to nothing on the internet describing the method. What I did find is a post from last year on StackOverflow by someone in the same situation as me. This lead me to the original paper describing the method, which was for sale for $18 on Grin.com. Honestly I don’t mind paying the money for quality information if it’s going to help improve my engine. The article was fairly easy to follow, and provided just enough information to base the implementation on. At first I was disappointed that no source-code was given, but I managed to pull it together using the pseudo-code. All in all I think I spent about 4 hours on it (including research) so I’m happy to have got it working so quickly.

Below is my bouncing bubble implementation. Keep in mind I have not profiled this code, it’s possible it’s not fully optimized. However, I’m only doing the calculation when a 3D model is loaded, so it shouldn’t effect performance at all really.

BoundSphere RenderCore::calculateBoundSphere(vector vertices){
	Vector3D center = vertices[0].position;
	float radius = 0.0001f;
	Vector3D pos, diff;
	float len, alpha, alphaSq;
	vector::iterator it;

	for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++){
		for (it = vertices.begin(); it != vertices.end(); it++){
			pos = it->position;
			diff = pos - center;
			len = diff.length();
			if (len > radius){
				if (i < 2){
					alpha = len / radius;
					alphaSq = alpha * alpha;
					radius = 0.5f * (alpha + 1 / alpha) * radius;
					center = 0.5f * ((1 + 1 / alphaSq) * center + (1 - 1 / alphaSq) * pos);
				} else {
					radius = (radius + len) / 2.0f;
					center = center + ((len - radius) / len * diff);
				}
			}
		}
	}
	
	return BoundSphere(center, radius);
}

Also, I should remind myself to do benchmarks more often. After I added all the normal mapping and shadow stuff performance has taken a big it. Before I was getting likely over 2400fps, now I’m only getting around 1600fps. Still acceptable, but maybe could be better with such a simple scene. The culling definitely helps, but I may have to look into other optimizations like batching and instancing if I want to get the speeds I need for my project. I’ll probably get started with the physics engine aspect soon and then optimize later if I can’t meet my 120fps target. Cheers.

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In: 3D Engine, C++, DirectX, Game Engine, Graphics

 

After struggling for a bit with the shadow mapping implementation, I finally have something presentable. I followed a tutorial from Microsoft and thought I understood what was happening. However, it required a lot of changes in the rendering code and it took a little while to get things working. Even once it was somewhat functional, I still had some issues with what they call shadow acne. It seemed really bad on the self-shadowing side of objects. I tried tweaking all the values I could (i.e. the bias in the shader), but I was not able to get it to look right. Finally I just set it so that there wouldn’t be self-shadowing of a single polygon. This happens to look fine, since the lighting equations make the polygon shaded anyhow. I’m not sure if this will work for every single instance, but with the simple models I’m testing with it’s fine.

I’m at the point where I really want to get the physics engine up and running. Still have some more research to do, so I bet it will take some time before I have something more to show. But it’s coming along.

 

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In: 3D Engine, C++, DirectX, Game Engine, Graphics

After a few days of hacking away at the code, I’ve got a new video up. In this update I have added normal mapping and specular lighting. I did have a few set-backs while working on the shaders, and it was made even more difficult since I was basically “flying blind” without a debugger. It seems that the Express version of Visual Studio does not support shader debugging, and neither does Nvidia’s debugger tool. Very sad, and I may (at some point) have to upgrade to the Pro version. I’ll probably hold out for a little bit, and I did end up figuring the problems out this time.

With the specular lighting shader, the issue I had was doing the matrix multiply and output on a float4 instead of a float3. To be honest, I am not quite sure why it didn’t work, but switching things around seemed to help. The change I made was also follows.

output.normal = normalize(mul((float3x3)worldMatrix, normal.xyz));

Instead of:

output.normal = normalize(mul(worldMatrix, normal));

Again, not sure why that works, but I’m happy it does. With the normal mapping, there was a lot of math and changes involved, and it became difficult to find which piece was broken. As it turns out, all the math was (mostly) correct, but the values I was sending to the constant buffer were not being updated. From what I can tell, the pixel shader cannot read the constant buffer (cbuffer) but the vertex shader can. Strange, and I’m not sure why this must be the case. So instead of trying to read the cbuffer values directly from the pixel shader, I passed them in as output values from the vertex shader. In addition, trying to pass bool or int values to the pixel shader would not work. So, as a hack, I added the same int value to all parameters of a float3 and passed that instead. I bet I can figure this one out eventually, but I’ve already spent all day on this and I’m happy just to see something working on the screen.

Next up I will probably try to model something more substantial than a cube so I have something better to look at.