Where can I learn about doing shaders?

Post your questions, suggestions and experiences regarding to Image manipulation, 3d modeling and level editing for the Irrlicht engine here.
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Jallen
Posts: 46
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: Hampshire, England

Where can I learn about doing shaders?

Post by Jallen »

I've been using C++ for about 4 years now and made games and things in both 3d with irrlicht and 2d with SFML so I wouldn't call myself a noob.

One thing that I really want to get into though is shaders. Like parallax mapping, ambient occlusion, pixel motion blur, HDR, that sort of thing.

My problem is that I don't really know where to start.
Since GLSL is cross platform maybe that's the best course of action... but I hear that Cg can be converted to glsl or hlsl for directx?

I guess the language doesn't matter too much since they are all similar when it gets down to it and will use similar concepts...

But where do I start?
How can I start making applications which use shaders and of course the shaders themselves?
I've gathered that some shaders need inputs... so I guess I can't just always just apply a shader to the screen (motion blur for example)

How would I go about learning about all these things? I'm honestly lost and don't know where to start :(
Jallen
Posts: 46
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: Hampshire, England

Post by Jallen »

There is also this, a Cg book I found ages back...
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/CgTuto ... ter01.html

So do you think buying a book on the subject is the only / best option? Up until now I've only really required a book for C++ itself...
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