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I wish to create more realistic human characters in my little test game, and a friend tells me I can use shaders. I know what they are, but:

1) What do they do? [examples - pictures?]
2) What type of shader can I use to make realistic characters?
3) Can you make your own? [If so, how?]

Please help...

ok i'm by no means a shader guru...but i think i know a few things about them...(if i'm wron on any of these points come in here and slap me raven)

1) there are two different kinds-

Pixel Shader-
According to the position of lights(and maybe some other stuff) they chage what the pixels look like when they are rendered to the screen....so it's more of a post effect (but can look great!)

Vertex Shader-
According to the position of lights(and maybe some other stuff) they change the vertices color...(exactly how i'm not sure)

these aren't as fancy as pixel shaders

2) you wouldn't use a shader to make a realistic character...you would use a modeling program...but you could use a shader to make a realistically lighted character (vertex or pixel depending on what you want to do)

3) yes...you can code them straight or use a program to help you do it (I.E. NVidia FXComposer


as you can see my definitions of shaders are kinda sketchy...because i've never made one (i can't until i get a better graphics card )

Shaders do all sorts of fun stuff.

But they're largely useless for creating realistic human characters, unless you're talking about normal mapping.

Heh.. not wrong Peter

Q: What do they do? [examples - pictures?]
A: Shaders, provide programmers and artists with a more direct access to the graphics pipeline. It allows you to create screenspace and objectspace based effects.

Object-Space Effect would be something like Normal Mapping.
(insert screenshot here)

Screen-Space Effect would be something like Bloom.
(insert screenshot here)

Q: What type of shader can I use to make realistic characters?
A: Any type.. The NVIDIA Character Nalu, created for the GeForce 6-Series Graphics Processor utilises over 35 seperate Shader Effects on a single model. It provides Nalu with some of the most awe-inspiring visual effects. While DarkBASIC Professional cannot create Nalu (as it doesn't support Shader Model 3.0), what you can currently create is something similar to the original GeForce FX model Dawn.

(insert Nalu and Dawn screenshots here)

A current project I'm working on will show off what DarkBASIC Professional is capable of in this area. Generally speaking if you want to have a larger number of models on-screen at once, sticking to simple shader effects like Dot Product 3 Bump Mapping (Normal Mapping) will allow you to create models that look higher polygon than they really are. Similar to Doom3.

(insert Doom3 screenshot here)

You can always expand on this however. To provide your characters with Fur, or Hair and such. Starfox Adventures was possible one of the most beautiful Shader games I've had the pleasure of playing, while not providing realistic humans or litering everything to have to have a shader. It is the perfect example of what a well used Shader game should look like, in my opinion.

(insert Starfox Adventure screenshot here)

Q: Can you make your own? [If so, how?]
A: Creating shaders is quite simple work nowadays. You have so many options available to you with which to development them with.

- NVIDIA FX Composer, is a good WYSIWYG Editor
- ATi Rendermonkey, provides a more artistic side for Shader creation.
- Real/Time Shader, is an excellent artist based Shader Developer & Editor.
- Maya, Softimage|XSI, and 3D Studio Max all now have the ability to create Shaders as materials an export them as .FX to use in your games, and applications.

To this end, it is a hope that Milkshape 1.8.0 should have a similar Shader system. MilkShader already provides you with this for $30, but this said it isn't exactly great at it yet.

i see no screen shots O_o

yeah i'll upload later, lol i'm a lil swamped ^_^