if you want to take full advantage of the hardware, you should only use your own shaders (providing your min spec will allow). the fixed function pipe does a lot of extra stuff that you don''t nessesarily need on every vertex. it is best (but more time consuming) to write a different shader for all the effects you require. one with two lights, one with four lights, etc. also, in advanced shader methods, you can pack your matrices into the constant registers and do all of your skinning in the shader (which means you will want a skinned shader and unskinned for static geometry. which is two shaders for every effect you desire.).

the reason why the fixed is slower is because it does everything - optionally. for example, there can be up to eight lights on one vertex. but what if you only have two lights effecting that vert? in the fixed pipe, it still has to do the calculations for eight. the result is the same as with two, but almost four times slower. the more familiar you get with shaders, the more sense this will make.

hope that helps,
-tim

There aren''t a lot of video cards on the market that support pixel shaders. Vertex shaders are pretty safe since they can be done in software fairly quickly. If you''re okay with targetting the high-end hardware then that''s fine. Just remember that it''s a small minority compared to the potential market.


Stay Casual,

Ken
Drunken Hyena

hrm.. and if you choose to do the bumpmapping route, dont just
make a B&W version of your texture as the specular map. ever
since those screenshots of doom3 came out, everybody and their
brother is trying to get it in their game. unfortunately a small
percentage is doing it right.
worst one i''ve seen so far was a model of some biker dude..
he had a tatoo across his chest, and since the author used B&W
textures as his specular map, the tatoo was indented.
looked like it was stamped in his chest.



-eldee
;another space monkey;
[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

Do NOT let Dr. Mario touch your genitals. He is not a real doctor!