Hello all
I was curious if there is anywhere or any resource that teaches how to write shaders. I am still relatively new to the concept of shaders and they intrigue me. However my school doesn't offer any courses that teach how to write shaders, so any resources whether it be books or websites would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
Polyman13b
Student of Cogswell Polytechnical College
Have a look here in the section called "Scripting, Expressions, Layouts, etc.." on my web site: http://www.edharriss.com/tutorial.htmlhttp://www.edharriss.com/tutorial.html
There is a tutorial called Converting Shaders to XSI. It might contain some info that you can use as a starting point. Also have a look at the mental ray docs that come with XSI. They can be found here: YourSoftimageDirectoryDochtmldocmental_ray
Hope this helps.
Ed
XSI Videos, Tutorials, Tools, Shaders....
Available at:http://www.EdHarriss.comhttp://www.EdHarriss.com
Start reading "Programming mental ray" (included with your installation of XSI and SI3D). It covers scene syntax, raytracing techniques, code samples and more - quite explicit. This should allow you to get up and running with mental ray within SI3D. You can also check out the source code to a few shaders in you Shader_Lib database.
To write mental ray shaders for XSI will require some code changes that will documented in the next release to account for mental ray v3.0. But you shouldn't worry about that right now.
You may want to start with an output shader, which are the simplest, then move towards lens or light shaders and finally material and texture shaders which are more complex.
Matt
Matt Lind
Animator / Technical Director
Softimage certified instructor:
Softimage|3D
Softimage|XSI
speye_21@hotmail.com
Hey Thanks for all the info, I am pretty sure that my school has all the text that came with XSI in their Library so I'll check that out!!!
Polyman13b
Student of Cogswell Polytechnical College
Can you do that without the XSI SDK??
short answer: yes
Matt
Matt Lind
Animator / Technical Director
Softimage certified instructor:
Softimage|3D
Softimage|XSI
speye_21@hotmail.com
ooh! I believe that will be my next study target once I finish absorbing scripting =D
Don't worry, one of the features of XSI 2.0 is Enhanced Scripting. Your not finished with it yet... 