Catchup Post: Graphics

ShaderToy

Another set of interesting links:

• Inigo Quilez's Demoscene Shader Toy is absolutely fantastic. It is like the modern day version of Grant Smith's (Denthor) Asphyxia Tutorials. Many demoscene effects in glsl shaders, including a whole bunch with raytracing and ambient occlusion, etc. You will need a webgl compatible browser (e.g. the new version of Chrome (v9 - currently beta)). With any luck I'll spend some time in future describing how each effect is achieved.
  
• A web based mandelbrot fractal viewer with a google-maps interface.
  
• A short explanation with some nice visual examples of how procedural buildings are generated in Unreal Engine 3.
  
• Once you have built your city, you can use more procedural tools to destroy a city.
  
• Visual glBlendFunc tool, for helping you decide what blending you would like. (Additive glBlendFunc(GL_ONE,GL_ONE) and Screen glBlendFunc(GL_ONE,GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_COLOR) are useful ones)
  
• Color Scheme Designer 3 helps you pick good colors.
  
• An interesting one kilobyte javascript christmas tree with an explanation of how its done.
  
• The tiny 3d modeler Qoob has made great progress, and the library is now public. Should help with those 64kb intros/games.
  
• Open Asset Import Library has made good progress and can now load a large number of 3d model formats.
  
• The OpenGL / OpenCL gDEBugger is now free.
  
• AMD's triangle order optimization tool has had its final release.
  
• AMD OpenCL presentation on Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics. Now everybody is doing it...
  
Farbraush's latest demo does SPH, but at a pretty low resolution for some reason. Still worth a watch: And that's it for another month.