Post-Effect creation application

saigo · Post by **saigo** » Sat May 16, 2009 7:53 am

Hello,

I would like to propose my application for post-effects creation (pixel shaders). This application allow to assemble several effects together to create higher level effect compositions (designers). This application is free and already contains some pixel shaders and sample projects.

Here is the web site : http://sites.google.com/site/studioposteffect
I would suggest you to visit the forum and subsribe the "New versions" post to be automatically notified of the new releases in the future.

In the "Tutorials" section, there are video tutorials (YouTube) in English and French. In the "Documentation" section, it quickly explains how to use the effect workflow data from the xml project file.

Irrlicht engine can freely uses this application as part of tools/package/other...

Please do not hesitate to have a try, at least to watch the tutorals, and ask any question or feedback.

Thank you all for your attention.

Darktib · Post by **Darktib** » Sat May 16, 2009 10:13 am

Very good!

I already use RenderMonkey, but now I think I will use StudioPostEffects in addition.
The 2 tutorials are very impressive. I'm French so tutorials in French are a very good plus (event if I can understand English).

Does it use DirectX or OpenGL

saigo · Post by **saigo** » Sat May 16, 2009 10:25 am

Hello Darktib,

I'm happy that you think it very good, I hope everybody will just think the same.
I'm afraid that English speakers might not understand properly my poor English, and I'm trying to find a native English speaker to doub the English versions or even remake them.

Studio Post-Effect uses DirectX only, and I have no plan to make it OpenGL-compatible. (sorry for OpenGL-lovers community)

sio2 · Post by **sio2** » Sat May 16, 2009 10:56 am

What are the benefits of using this as opposed to, say, FXComposer which I can use to produce portable Cg shaders (between D3D/GL) and has a shader library?

saigo · Post by **saigo** » Sat May 16, 2009 11:35 am

This application is specific for post-processing.
Using FX Composer, RenderMonkey or MentalMill, you can check your shaders on the fly too, of course, but often an effect applied to an object and applied to a full render surface does not look the same.

For exemple, you have a car model, you apply a glow effect to that car, or to the full render, the effect will look very different.

Just have a look at these two shots, the first has no glow effect applied, the second has :
http://www.onversity.com/image/actual/glow_sansg.jpg
http://www.onversity.com/image/actual/glow_avecg.jpg

If you load such a scene model in FX Composer and apply to glow effect to all objects, you'll just produce a "glowed texture" effect, which I have no idea what it could look like...

Of course I have absolutly no pretention to make something better than FX Composer, just something different. FX Composer is a very good and powerful tool, and moreover free so I just can't challenge it.

sio2 · Post by **sio2** » Sun May 17, 2009 1:38 pm

I've watched a couple of the tutorials and it certainly looks interesting. I'll install the app and give it a go.

saigo · Post by **saigo** » Tue May 19, 2009 5:49 am

Now Studio Post-Effect have an official forum, so I invite you all to register and post there. (more appropriate place)
Sorry to Irrlicht community to have used your forums for non-Irrlicht, personal purpose, and thank you for your help.

Studio Post-Effect forum : http://studioposteffect.freeforums.org

saigo · Post by **saigo** » Sun May 31, 2009 4:06 am

I released a new version, 1.0.204.
Several bug fixes, and it should be more flexible for older graphic card compatibility.
64-bit processors and Vista/Window 7 issues are still being investigating.

Also there are two new tutorial videos here.

sio2 · Post by **sio2** » Sun May 31, 2009 3:47 pm

The new version and the previous version both have rendering artefacts for me. From your post it sounds that you're already investigating some issues.

I switched to the debug Direct3D dlls and re-ran the app: I got the folowing messages:

[484] Direct3D9: (INFO) :Direct3D9 Debug Runtime selected.
[484]
[484] D3D9 Helper: Enhanced D3DDebugging disabled; Application was not compiled with D3D_DEBUG_INFO
[484] Direct3D9: (INFO) :======================= Hal HWVP device selected
[484]
[484] Direct3D9: (INFO) :HalDevice Driver Style b
[484]
[484] Direct3D9: (INFO) :Using FF to VS converter
[484]
[484] Direct3D9: (INFO) :Using FF to PS converter
[484]
[484] Direct3D9: (INFO) :Enabling multi-processor optimizations
[484]
[484] Direct3D9: (ERROR) :All attenuation factors are 0 for non-directional light
[484]
[484] Direct3D9: (ERROR) :SetLight failed.
[484]
[484] Direct3D9: (INFO) :MemFini!
[484]

I can't say for sure whether this is the source of your problems, but it would be a good idea to check that your light attenuation factors are correct.

I also noticed that you set the vertexshader to null in the effect. Although not technically wrong I personally would always match up a SM3 vertex shader with a SM3 pixel shader (SM3 cards take the fixed-function state to generate a SM3 VS internally anyway).

I'd suggest compiling your app against debug direct3d and using the control panel applet to get more information. First thing I would try, though, is adding vertex shaders to all my effects!

Hope that helps...

saigo · Post by **saigo** » Sun May 31, 2009 9:28 pm

OK I could fix the applied effect bug on Vista. It was not due to no vertex shader defined to effects, though I tried your suggestion and I noticed that the effect was applied but render was totally broken due to incorrect matrices settings, and so I understood it was just a matter or vertex positioning. As long as I don't want to use vertex shader, I just changed the way to draw the "applied effects" square, before I used PositionTextured vertex elements, I just changed it to TransformedTextured vertex elements when creating the vertex buffer.

For the lighting issue, some stuffs are still mysterious, but at least there are no problems with the attenuations, I do not use it and the 3 ones are manually set to 0.0f in the code. So for the moment, investigation in progress...

Also, I fixed a bug that made the application to fail on old graphic card machines. So there is still lighting bug on Vista version but still I will provide an intermediary version with this major fix in the middle of the week.

Stay tuned...

PS: By the way, the Skybox plugin does not use light so, there is no problem using this plugin in the meantime

saigo · Post by **saigo** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 2:53 pm

New version released!! 1.0.269

This version has major fixes, and now works on Vista.
There are some new effects (one new pixel shader), there is a new interesting plugin to load complex scenes.
There are also all the source codes of the plugins for the one interested in creating new ones and learn how it works, there is also a new tutorial video to show that new scene plugin in action.

Enjoy!

sio2 · Post by **sio2** » Sun Jun 07, 2009 10:51 am

It now works for me just fine on Vista.

I no longer get the messages about incorrect attentuation and SetLight() failing, so you must have done something to fix that! I'm 99% sure that was the cause of the weird lighting artefacts (especially considering that you use VertexShader=Null).

I've had a quick go with the tool and it looks excellent. I'll be investigating it in-depth for my post-process shader needs.

BTW Do you support FP16/FP32 formats? Is the Scene Input an FP16 texture?

saigo · Post by **saigo** » Sun Jun 07, 2009 12:35 pm

sio2, indeed the problem was partially due to wrong attenuation (many other setting problems).

What do you mean FP16/FP32 ? Do you mean pixel format and depth format ? If it's that, the back buffers format are A8R8G8B8 and the depth format is D16.

trivtn · Post by **trivtn** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 6:56 am

I like it , Thanks saigo!

saigo · Post by **saigo** » Tue Jun 09, 2009 1:13 pm

There is a new verison available that fixes several bugs and add some new little features.
From now on I would suggest you guys to use the forum to be notified of the new releases, for that you just have to subscribe to the following post : "New versions"

Thank you very much.