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Category: Shaders
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Popular 3ds Max Shaders
(in no particular order)
MoP Texture Blender by Paul "MoP" Greveson. This shader uses blendmodulate for vertex blending with per-pixel detail. From the Polycount thread The Snow and Ice of Uncharted2?.
Brice Vandemoortele and Cedric Caillaud's BRDF shader for Maya, BRDF shader for 3ds Max ported to Max by Christoph "CrazyButcher" Kubisch. More info in the Polycount thread Free Maya/max cgfx/fx Shader. Update: New version here with many updates, including object-space normal maps, relief mapping, self-shadowing, etc.
Laurens "Xoliul" Corijn's 3ds Max viewport shader. More info in the Polycount thread Xoliul's 3DS Max Viewport Shader.
Till "Rollin" Maginot's TF2 Shader for 3ds Max and Toon/Comic Shader for 3ds Max. More info in the Polycount thread TF2 and TOON realtime viewport shader (3ds max).
Agusturinn Shader Demo by Wang "RTshaders" Jing. Shader features: "One UV texture, Two point lights, Diffuse map(include alpha which control transparency), AO(ambient occlusion) map or Lightmap share the same channel, Normal map,Specular map,Specular level map,Gloss map,Emissive map, Two type of Cubemap---One is diffuse cubemap for generating IBL(image based lighting), the other is enviroment cubemap for reflection."
Paragalis Shader Demo by Wang "RTshaders" Jing. Shader features: "Post effect, 3dsmax2008/2009 viewport shadowmap, Subsurface scattering, Cubemap Image based lighting, Diffuse(alpha channel control opacity),Normal map,Ao map/Light map,Specular,Specular lever(mask),Gloss etc., Shadermodel 2.x compatible for AMD ATI card."
Planar Relief Mapping by Fabio Policarpo. "This version works with any mesh and execute the ray intersection in tangent space. Apparent depth can be controlled with a factor (aspect from width or height divided by depth). So depth 0.1 means 10% of texture tile width/height in object space. This version does not require any extra information passed on vertices."
Shaders by Ben Cloward. He has a bunch of HLSL shaders available for normal mapping, ambient occlusion, car paint, skin, etc.
SSS Skin Shader by J.I. Styles. "The aim of this shader is to emulate all the perceptual qualities of realistic skin like translucency (sss), fresnal specular, gloss, oiliness, etc - kludging what I can to produce fast yet realistic looking results."
Popular Maya Shaders
lcNextGenShader by Leonardo "chronic" Covarrubias has many techniques and parameters, including normal mapping, specular, ambient env cube, SSS, etc.
Brice Vandemoortele and Cedric Caillaud's BRDF shader for Maya has also been ported to 3ds Max by Christoph "CrazyButcher" Kubisch. More info in the Polycount thread Free Maya/max cgfx/fx Shader. Update: New version here with many updates, including object-space normal maps, relief mapping, self-shadowing, etc.
Kostas "Kodde" Gialitakis' Maya CG shader also supports a BRDF map. More info in the Polycount thread "KoddeShader", a Maya CGFX shader.
Creating Shaders
Shader Tutorials
Ben Cloward's web site is a great source of information.
Ben Cloward also created these DVDs for CG Academy:
Shader Syntax
There are two popular text-based ".*fx" formats. Both formats are extremely similar. More info at http://developer.nvidia.com/object/using_sas.html.
- .fx is for DirectX only, and is based on HLSL.
- .cgfx is for use with either DirectX or OpenGL, and is based on Cg.
HLSL programming guide and full reference is included in the DirectX SDK downloadable from Microsoft. Unpack the .exe file and find the help file ../DXSDK/Documentation/DirectX9/windows_graphics.chm
Shader Editors
To create and edit shaders, most people use a text editor (like Notepad ++) to write them and a 3d program (3ds Max, Maya, etc.) to view them. For those who are new to shaders the following tools provide a graphical user interface for easier creation:
Shader FX "is a full-featured real-time shader editor for 3ds Max. It allows artists with no previous programming experience to build complex HLSL or CG FX shaders. Free for individuals and companies smaller then 2 employees."
mental mill Standard Edition "allows the user to write and edit shader code, and visually debug the shader by interactively inspecting variables while stepping through the code. As well, the user can export shaders for use in DCC and CAD applications through the supported, customizable back-end formats such as CgFX, HLSL, and GLSL." The more limited Artist Edition is free for personal use, and comes bundled with 3ds Max 2010.
NVIDIA's FX Composer is a shader authoring toolset.
AMD's RenderMonkey is a shader authoring toolset.
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