Adding a feature to Irrlicht as bachelor project

[gigilibala]

From the irrlicht's todo list:

• Generic Post-Processing
  Irrlicht Shader Files

Hit two birds with one stone, and make a shader phaser; it would simplify things nice effects for all users and make irrlicht more professional.

One idea would be to read openGL vsh/vert/frag and convert it to Dx's hlsl/psh/vsh

Thanks torleif

Can you give me more reference to this shader phaser and what exactly is it. and in the wiki I couldn't find any information regarding Generic Post-Processing. Idk what do you have in your mind.
About Irrlicht Shader Files, It's a good Idea. You want some file structure for Irrlicht to support both Dx and opengl shaders? am I right?

[gigilibala]

Yes, Nadro has a Cg add-on, which might be merged into Irrlicht at some point.
You could go for a DX10/DX11 driver, or OpenGL-ES2.x. Those all need a shader-based material system.
A somewhat outdated list of things to work on can be found on the Wiki:
http://www.irrlicht3d.org/wiki/index.php?n=Dev.TODOList
A list of larger project ideas, which might still fit your schedule (such as the drivers I suggested) can be found here:
http://www.irrlicht3d.org/wiki/index.ph ... .IdeasGSoC
It's the list of topics for the Google Summer of Code, which is going to start in the next weeks again.

I think DX10/DX11 driver needs understanding of fundamental of Irrlicht. Isn't it?

[gigilibala]

how about creating some sort of plugin , for example paged geometry or paged terrain, although i wouldnt know the difficulty of doing this

Thanks conallmmcg

Yes. I think paged geometry and paged terrains needs lots of work and understanding. But can you estimate how much work does it need working on one of them? Those are very good ideas.

Thanks again

[hybrid]

There are alsready some paged terrain implementations, I guess you'd need a special algorithm if you really want to make a thesis from it. Shader files are probably not that useful, as Cg also comes with that sort of things. So it might be redundant once Cg is integrated into Irrlicht (alas not being available without Cg support then). The DX10/11 driver does not need much insight into Irrlicht, a Video driver doesn't need much knowledge about the internals of Irrlicht. But you need to know many things about the render API you want to implement, in this case DirectX10/11.
I'd suggest to check out certain nice papers/book chapters on 3d rendering, and simply implement one of those algorithms. That'd be a typical bachelor thesis, and would perfectly fit into the amount of time.

[gigilibala]

There are alsready some paged terrain implementations, I guess you'd need a special algorithm if you really want to make a thesis from it. Shader files are probably not that useful, as Cg also comes with that sort of things. So it might be redundant once Cg is integrated into Irrlicht (alas not being available without Cg support then). The DX10/11 driver does not need much insight into Irrlicht, a Video driver doesn't need much knowledge about the internals of Irrlicht. But you need to know many things about the render API you want to implement, in this case DirectX10/11.
I'd suggest to check out certain nice papers/book chapters on 3d rendering, and simply implement one of those algorithms. That'd be a typical bachelor thesis, and would perfectly fit into the amount of time.

Thanks alot for your help Mr. Hybrid

I have some questions. You suggested implementing some algorithms of 3D Rendering and I cannot understand whether you suggest implementing them on Irrlicht or as a stand alone program.

I am doing some research on Dx10/11 and OpenGL-ES2.x Drivers and I want to find how much work do they need.
I want to continue my graduation of Compute Graphics and Visualization but I came to this area a little late and with little experiences. In my university we have no professor specialized on Computer Graphics and I should get help for doing my thesis only from internet. I am really glad you nice guys are helpful and kind .I appreciate if I can use your experiences more.
I really don't want my thesis comes out on a piece of paper and on a program and no one later uses it. I want it to be something useful which can help others and this was the main reason I came to game engines.

I will appreciate any more ideas about these topics.

[shadowslair]

Yeah, Dx10/11 + OpenGL-ES2.x sounds really nice. The multithreaded Irrlicht is a must too. The Cg support is here and working already, doesn`t matter it is not build-in. The better flexible vertex format will be useful too, though I think it won`t be that "shiny" for a diplom work. I personally don`t know what I die to see in Irrlicht- I really like it at this stage of my small project.

Anyway, no matter what you decide, it`s really nice of you to implement something in Irrlicht, making it even more powerful tool. Any kind of help with Irr dev is warmly welcomed and highly appreciated. You have my respect for that. Oh, and hell yes, be sure it will be used!!!

Good luck, buddy!

[hybrid]

Creating a nice effect or custom algorithm would be made in Irrlicht, possibly as material renderer or custom scene node. This wouldn't require much knowledge of Irrlicht, you just need to know how to do certain things with Irrlicht's means.
The new drivers definitely need knowledge about Shader programming, as you'd have to replace the material system by a shader implementation.

[stefbuet]

You could try to make a dynamic water scene node, that is to say ripples which react in real time with external interactions. I think it's a pretty cool project as it involve not only programming but also a little bit of physics, and you don't have to know so much about Irrlicht internal mechanism to do it. If you don't do it, I will probably do it in the next years...

[xDan]

Make me a decal system with some kind of decal manager, and decal clipping... (perhaps the decals are even meshes, triangles extracted from the scene geometry and clipped to a decal volume). Something that is easy to use and can just be dropped into a game.

Maybe it wouldn't get into Irrlicht but it would be a nice addon, as an irrlicht extension.

Then again, cloth modelling is cool, a quick and easy way to add wind-blown flags or something into a game would be nice

Ahhh! Also, something I failed at recently but would be nice: code to perform various mesh boolean operations, like difference, intersection... Like in a 3D modeller:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:M ... h/Booleans

just some ideas

[hybrid]

Nice ideas, I'll take some of them into our GSoC proposal

[gigilibala]

Make me a decal system with some kind of decal manager, and decal clipping... (perhaps the decals are even meshes, triangles extracted from the scene geometry and clipped to a decal volume). Something that is easy to use and can just be dropped into a game.

Maybe it wouldn't get into Irrlicht but it would be a nice addon, as an irrlicht extension.

Then again, cloth modelling is cool, a quick and easy way to add wind-blown flags or something into a game would be nice

Ahhh! Also, something I failed at recently but would be nice: code to perform various mesh boolean operations, like difference, intersection... Like in a 3D modeller:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:M ... h/Booleans

just some ideas

Very nice ideas xDan.

My Adviser forced me on developing cloth modeling, but I think it is a little complex if I want to come into complex clothes other than flags. Mr. Bate also said that Irrlicht do not want to become a game engine, it will remain a gfx, and physics will not be add to Irrlicht. How do you think? cloth modeling should only be in level of some flags and these stuffs or become more complex on modeling character animation's body cloth? These questions should be answered before I can make a decision.

Thanks again for your ideas.

[hybrid]

Yu should be able to get a decent cloth effect without using a full-blown physics engine. Just create some animators which move certain kinds of geometry in an acceptable way. If you lay out your code such that one could even add a physics engine - even better. But I don't think it's absolutely necessary.

[stefbuet]

You don't like the dynamic water idea ?

[gigilibala]

Yu should be able to get a decent cloth effect without using a full-blown physics engine. Just create some animators which move certain kinds of geometry in an acceptable way. If you lay out your code such that one could even add a physics engine - even better. But I don't think it's absolutely necessary.

You mean there will be no wind ro reaction to enviroment? only some kind of animation like moving cloth?

Thanks

[gigilibala]

You don't like the dynamic water idea ?

Yeah. That sounds nice, But as you see there is no physics in Irrlich and Idk whether it can be implemented without external physics engines or not.
Do you have any idea about that?

Thanks alot,