October 04, 2008
What is your engine supposed to be to you?
One of the long term goals that I had for my rendering engine was to make it:
1. Flexible
2. Capable
3. Easy to use
The first two kind of go together - I wanted to be able to implement just about any algorithm in the engine (flexibility) and I wanted to be able…
One of the long term goals that I had for my rendering engine was to make it:
1. Flexible
2. Capable
3. Easy to use
The first two kind of go together - I wanted to be able to implement just about any algorithm in the engine (flexibility) and I wanted to be able…
September 25, 2008
Go Figure
The past 4 weeks have seen a rapid succession of engine growth and new features being added at a blistering pace. However, I'm in my final semester of course work for my Masters degree and it is taking up all of my free time! I'm still squeezing some time in here and there, but it is slo…
September 19, 2008
Completing 3D UI System
After a week of great progress being made, I am very close to completing my 3D UI system. This comprises several major updates to the engine, ranging from the addition of an event system, addition of the actual UI system (made up of aggregates of existing objects), and the c…
September 12, 2008
Progress Update
I have been spending the past few days getting oriented bounding boxes implemented, and more specifically with intersection tests set up with rays. In addition, I added a composite shape class to allow entities to be composed of several different shapes at once. Overall, the implem…
I have been spending the past few days getting oriented bounding boxes implemented, and more specifically with intersection tests set up with rays. In addition, I added a composite shape class to allow entities to be composed of several different shapes at once. Overall, the implem…
September 06, 2008
Event System
After spending some time with the event system, it seems to be working quite well. I have implemented about six different messages regarding the cursor position (entering area, leaving area, and over area) and the mouse button state (button up, down, and pressed). I'm using these to i…
After spending some time with the event system, it seems to be working quite well. I have implemented about six different messages regarding the cursor position (entering area, leaving area, and over area) and the mouse button state (button up, down, and pressed). I'm using these to i…
September 04, 2008
Event SystemWhile putting together my fancy new GUI framework, I decided to bite the bullet and implement an actual event system as well. Prior to now, I had always used either a (very) simple message passing scheme or just tied to subsystems together to communicate information around the various …
September 02, 2008
I Choose Aggregation!All of the Hieroglyph versions that I have worked on over the years are based on a variant of the Wild Magic object/entity design. This design uses a class to represent a 3D 'entity', and then uses a subclass to implement a 3D 'node' class, allowing for scene graph style conne…
August 29, 2008
Ray Picking In The EngineAfter spending a bit of time to get it right, I have successfully integrated ray picking into the Hieroglyph 2 engine. Overall, it is great to finally get it in since I have been wanting to do it for a while now. To commemorate the implementation, I whipped together a dem…
August 21, 2008
Reliable SourcesI started taking the necesary steps to implement picking into my engine. For those unfamiliar with the concept, picking is a way of selecting rendered objects with the mouse cursor. The mathematics behind it require constructing a ray from the camera's location through the point t…
August 13, 2008
Hieroglyph 2 UpdateI've decided to continue working on my DX9 engine, Hieroglyph 2, even though I have started preliminary work on the next version of the engine. The last work that I did on the HG2 was to add in the material system with XML based material definition files. After revisiting the l…
July 16, 2008
Finally, I am done writing all of the chapters and articles that I had been committed to. The final one was pretty short notice, and since I was out of town on business I was cut a little short on time. Anyhow, the following image was generated during the writing of the article and I thought it w…
July 05, 2008
I have been working on a few designs and interfaces for the new engine's renderer. Nothing concrete yet, but it should be fairly interesting once it is finished up.
Well, I'm off to Germany tomorrow for work. I'll be gone until Thursday, but then I'll be heading off to go camping for a few days so…
Well, I'm off to Germany tomorrow for work. I'll be gone until Thursday, but then I'll be heading off to go camping for a few days so…
July 01, 2008
I was recently working on an updated POM demonstration program, and ran into a driver problem on my Dell Vostro (with a Geforce 8600M GT). I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but this image is made with the hardware device:
and this one is generated with the reference device:
Unfortunately, I do…
and this one is generated with the reference device:
Unfortunately, I do…
June 26, 2008
Hieroglyph 3 :: The PluginsAfter a couple of hours of work, I have a basic framework for the next iteration of my engine put together. The basic idea is to have a core library with individual components loaded at runtime - essentially making my game engine a big fat plugin system. I am not an exp…
June 25, 2008
Hieroglyph 3With the material system implemented, I have begun to turn my thoughts to the next iteration of my engine. It wasn't too long ago that I started work on the second version of the engine, but I would like to add enough content and make enough changes to warrant an increment in the versi…
June 22, 2008
Materials in XMLAfter spending some time working on the XML format for the material system, I have arrived at quite a different format than I had originally envisioned. Even so, after the third or fourth revision I feel fairly comfortable with it and it seems pretty intuitive to put together.
I hav…
I hav…
June 18, 2008
Materials Are In!
Finally, the materials have been integrated into the engine - and I like it!!! Its one of those ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a long time and I finally had a chance to put it into the engine. I don't know about the rest of the lone developers out there, but …
Finally, the materials have been integrated into the engine - and I like it!!! Its one of those ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a long time and I finally had a chance to put it into the engine. I don't know about the rest of the lone developers out there, but …
June 12, 2008
The EndFinally the environment mapping chapter is finished. Coming in at around 25 pages with all the figures, it took me the better part of two months to complete. Even so, it is nice to sit back and review the work that I've accomplished and know that it will help out someone else sometime soon…
June 09, 2008
Material SystemSo, the big picture with my material system is that I want to be able to assign an object a particular material, and have the material prepare everything that is needed to render that object. This includes rendering additional render views as required, such as cube maps, shadow maps…
June 03, 2008
Engine UpdatesOver the last couple of months I have been collecting ideas about how to update and streamline Hieroglyph 2 (its my homemade engine for those of you that haven't heard of it before [wink]). There is quite a laundry list of things to do now, and I am pretty excited about getting them …
May 30, 2008
I have been having a great time working on the environment mapping chapter. Comparing and contrasting the differences between cube, sphere, and paraboloid environment mapping is an enlightening task and I have a much better understanding after doing it.
One example of what I've learned is how to co…
One example of what I've learned is how to co…
May 23, 2008
Environment MappingThe final chapter that I have been working on for the book is on environment mapping. Originally I was just going to compare cube mapping, sphere mapping, and dual paraboloid mapping and show the differences between each of them. However, once I got to that point of completion,…
May 10, 2008
It has taken much longer than I thought it would, but I am nearing completion on the book project. I have thoroughly enjoyed doing the research, writing, and illustrations and its always fun to get a demo up and running to try things out. Hopefully over the next few days I can wrap up my final ch…
April 25, 2008
Been away for a while...It has been quite a while since I was able to post - things at work flared up, I had an unusually busy semester at school, and I have been working on a DX10 book project for approximately the last two months. Finally school is over and work has subsided somewhat for a while…
February 26, 2008
SSAO Revisited
After spending some time updating my SSAO code to run in DX10, I have actually improved my implementation quite a bit. It's now slightly more efficient, and I think the quality is significantly improved. I wanted to show a simple example of what I have been working on, so here's a s…
After spending some time updating my SSAO code to run in DX10, I have actually improved my implementation quite a bit. It's now slightly more efficient, and I think the quality is significantly improved. I wanted to show a simple example of what I have been working on, so here's a s…
February 13, 2008
Direct3D 10 Development
I have been busily working on getting a few demos up and running in D3D10. All in all, I have to say that I like what I see so far. The changes that I have seen to the API all seem to be rooted in a logical basis and, although they take some getting used to, seem to be work…
I have been busily working on getting a few demos up and running in D3D10. All in all, I have to say that I like what I see so far. The changes that I have seen to the API all seem to be rooted in a logical basis and, although they take some getting used to, seem to be work…
February 06, 2008
I don't know if you guys have heard about this or not, but nVidia is gobbling up Ageia:
Press Release
In my opinion, this is a good thing since I have been integrating PhysX into my engine and there was some doubt about how long Ageia could hang in there if their physics cards weren't selling very go…
Press Release
In my opinion, this is a good thing since I have been integrating PhysX into my engine and there was some doubt about how long Ageia could hang in there if their physics cards weren't selling very go…
February 05, 2008
I have no idea what is wrong with my installation of Vista (Home Premium). I have an 8600M GT video card in my laptop, and I can run DX sample programs in hardware. But if I run the windows experience rating utility, both parameters for graphics performance come up as 1.0! Because of this, I can…
February 02, 2008
XP and VistaSo I've been setting up my laptop to dual boot XP and Vista, and I have to say that it hasn't been the easiest thing to do. First XP didn't want to let me resize it's partition, then I used GParted to do it and hosed the whole installation anyways. So I ended up manually partitioning …
January 18, 2008
Microprocessor Interfacing CourseThe course that I am taking this semester is all about how to interface a microprocessor with external sensors and signals, and there is a final design project required at the end of the semester that uses the microcontroller board that is required for the course. …
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