Effects in lowlevel or shader level?

[scriptr]

Hi,

I am writing an editor using irrlicht engine. I came up to constructing "Material Editor".

As irrlicht do not have all the texture/lighting settings (specular texture, specular sharpness (not shinines) etc...) i need to implement this in the editor.

For example to implement a velvet effect, i know that i need to write a shader. But for such simple things, i think using shaders, affects performance in a negative way, or is it?

What would you recommend me? Should i modify irrlicht code and write some routines for D3DMATERIAL9 or implement those settings as a property in my shaders?

Thanks,

[BlindSide]

I don't think that on any SM 3.0+ graphics processor that shaders will have a very large negative impact on performance.

It will be a challenge fitting all the lighting properties that are available in fixed function in one shader with decent performance and compile time though. You may want to look into deferred shading.

Cheers

[scriptr]

Thnx BlindSide

What do you exactly mean by saying "deferred shading"?