rendermonkey for newbies?

S

sethro

New member
hi all, i just got a copy of rendermonkey and had a bit of fun with impoting my own max models etc. some cool stuff going on there.

my question is, how much of a coder do you have to be to use this app? it looked right over my head but i havn't read through the documentation yet. Basically i would like to write some custom shaders for 3ds max and im trying to work out where to start.
 
Hi Sethro

I think Rendermonkey is a great place to start if your looking to get into shader writing, as the compiler is all built in and the preview pane updates as you change the shader to give you instant feedback. However version 1.0 of Rendermonkey should be out sometime this month and should support DirectX9' Higher Level Shading Language (HLSL) which you'll find alot easier to manipulate than assembler if your from an art background, their much more like Renderman shaders infact it's rumoured that Rendermonkey can run Renderman shaders but I've not seen it yet.

As for integrating with max as far as I'm aware the way ATI do it in their engine is they have custom modifiers in max which translate to vertex shaders and custom materials which translate to pixel shaders, search around on ati' site for a paper on writing a shader engine and look at the art section for more info.

Have fun :)
 
thanx for that. ill give it a go. ive been importing my own max models into rendermonkey and messing with them which is fun but as for writing the vertex and pixel shaders i'm nowhere.
 
Well, if you're really just starting out even with multitexturing, you may want to get your head around the basics by playing with Multex. From there, you can play with multitexture render states in RenderMonkey™ and then move on to code. If you're not familiar with basic multitexturing or coding, just jumping into shader code (especially assembly) will be a bit daunting. Additionally, you should load up the different shaders that come with RenderMonkey™ and tweak them to see what they do before jumping in and writing your own from scratch.

For more on the HLSL, have a look at my Mojo Day Presentation.

-Jason
 
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