A Whole New World

Last class we were shown a little bit about shaders, and quite frankly it was a little much to take in at one time. But hopefully as time goes on and I continue to explore the world of shaders I will come to understand what the strange man at the of the class is talking about. Though some of what I did understand was vertex shaders, or at least the theory regarding them.

From what Professor Hogue (aka Shaderman) taught us last week, vertex shaders dont actually change the vertices or geometry of the objects in any way but instead change the characteristics of the object to achieve numerous different effects. One such effect, or technique, is bump mapping which does not change the shape of the object but instead changes the data of the normals of the object to give it the illusion of having all these additional details such as cuts, cracks, and bumps when in reality it is just a simple shape.

I took a couple of screen shots from a game I am currently playing called Guild Wars 2 while playing around with the options to see all the different shaders they implemented within the game and I found that the following two shots best show the effect of bump mapping.

This shot was taken with all the setting on low or off

 Now as can be seen in the image above the terrain is as more or less flat, even the stone walkways seem flat but look what happens when the shaders option is cranked up to maximum.

Shaders!

Now look at that! Now the terrain way more interesting, the sand looks wavy and uneven and the walkways have some depth to them. I am definitely looking forward to implementing this technique within our game, though it is unfortunate that I do not have any code to show just yet as I am still trying to wrap my head around how this works. Anyways, till next time! Laters!