Pieter Germishuys

Water rendering tutorial (HLSL)

I have look at water rendering earlier this year and thought that before I leave for rAge2005 I will write a tutorial on rendering water just to get something up.
Expect to have a revision up for it soon though as there are topics that I would like to discuss such as specularity, indepth look at the reflection vectors and the cube maps. Right now I only scratch the surface. I

I appreciate everyone who comes to my blog/site and finds some helpful information here. To my friends and family thank you so much, without you I wouldn't have the time and the patience to do this. Anthony Whitaker and the guys from #graphicsdev. SAdeveloper.net members and leads, you guys/gals are awesome and getting me to rAge 2005 is a huge effort and I appreciate every contribution that has been made to get me there. The list of people to thank are just so huge but thank you to everyone.

Tutorials Updated (August SDK tested and new framework)

I have updated the tutorials code with my latest framework that includes some structure and a first person flying camera. This might help some of you to see how structure is formed from the basics upwards.
Furthermore I have tested all the tutorials with the August SDK update and they work perfectly. This is just basically a general maintenance on the tutorials. Please send me your comments, I greatly appreciate any comments/suggestions.
Till later

Progression - Game/Graphics development (Training the brain)

An essential part of any kind of career is the part of progression. I am a firm believer in setting goals for yourself. They must be reasonable though and through that the sky is really the limit.

I suggest that anyone in the field of game/graphics programming look at games that you play and try and figure out what effects you like and try an implement them. These are excellent exercises for training your brain to look and duplicate/recreate/improve effects that you have seen.

Also.. a very important part of development progression is if you don't have money to buy books really start looking at opensource game projects and learn how to look through and study large code bases. If you plan on making a career out of this it's excellent practise and should help you in the long run. I was really busy this week with cirricular activities but this coming week I shall provide you with some much needed updates on my tutorials and another release of my framework to work with. Stay tuned cause I also have that tutorial I am working on and an excellent study of the sample framework.
Have a fantastic day ladies and gentlemen

Discussions and wanted tutorials

This site is primarily used to express my views and provide a concise related information on Game Programming with focus on Managed Code and Direct3D. I would like to know what you guys/gals want to see in the tutorial base.
Also if you want to write a tutorial and get it posted on here, I would be happy to provide the space and give you the credit you so rightfully earned.
This page is not just for me, I feel that by growing the community not just in South Africa but all over the world we are assisting the up and coming game developers with the needed resources to make a living out of it. That is the purpose behind this blog and site of mine.

I am busy with an article for the community called:
"An Introduction to Modern Graphics Development for Games
  By Anthony Whitaker and Pieter Germishuys". This will layout a guideline for new comers to follow. The topics being looked at for now are the following
CONTENTS
1.0 MATH FUNDAMENTALS
2.0 GRAPHIC FUNDAMENTALS
  2.1 THE RENDERING PIPELINE
  2.2 COLOR
  2.3 LIGHTING
  2.4 TEXTURING
  2.5 MESHES
  2.6 FONTS
3.0 ADVANCED GRAPHIC TOPICS
  3.1 BLENDING
  3.2 STENCILLING
  3.3 PROGRAMMABLE SHADERS
4.0 GAME DEVELOPMENT BASICS
  4.1 PROGRESSIVE LEARNING
  4.2 DEVELOPING YOUR FIRST GAME
  4.3 LEARNING FROM GAME DEVELOPMENT
5.0 ONLINE RESOURCES If you have any topics that you would like covered please let me know.

I'm still alive

Just to let everyone know, i'm still alive. I am just busy with assignments and tests. I will get some more tutorials up within the next week or so.

Site Update

This weekend was really prosperous as I got to do alot of interesting work done. I finally got around to finishing the links section and added a games section where you can download some of the little games that I code for fun.

If you want your name added in the links section, please contact me with your details and what your site is about.

PonGoNoid - Arkanoid Clone

This weekend I tried to get a good arkanoid clone running for people who want to learn loading resources like maps from files and get some game states running...
Contents
- Loading levels
- Game States
- Input
- Scores/Lives
- Menu
This is basically a very nice introduction to get someone started at seeing how a game is built. Not the cleanest of code and begs for much improvement, none the less a good way to start is building a game like this.



The Game (234kB)
The Source + Game (800kB)

Pixel shader tutorial

I have updated my shader tutorials once again and added a pixel shader tutorial. It's a very simple tutorial but it shows how the vertex/pixel shaders tie in and just gets you up and running. It's located at my site I hope you have as much fun with them as I have writing them.

PonGo - Pong clone

I quickly whipped together a pong clone, The AI needs a little work but here it is.



The Game (8kB)
The Source + Game (129kB)

Shader Tutorial update

I have just been contacted by a friendly person who has let me know that my first shader tutorial was in shambles.. there was a problem with the server and so part of the page was corrupted. I have now updated the page and all the tutorials should be in working order :)

Shaders update

Just as a note to those who read my blog. I have updated the HLSL tutorials. They now include a texture and diffuse light shader tutorial. If you need any clarification or help directly. Do not hesitate to contact me. I am always glad to help. On another note. I will be working on some pixel shader tutorials this week. I hope to have them up by the end of this week. *Sorry, no screenshots this time*

HLSL tutorial no. 2 (Diffuse shader)

The diffuse shader tutorial is now up. I include the source to these tutorials as it's important to sometime see the bigger picture rather than just snippits of code. Well without further a due.

HLSL - Tutorial 2 - Diffuse color

High Level Shading Language - A new beginning

A move in the right direction for the tutorials on my site. Introducing the readers to HLSL (High Level Shading Language) opens up a whole new perspective on effects programming. Think of a shader as a method of painting and coloring tools at your disposal. Water effects, bump mapped surfaces. Although done in the FFP (Fixed Function Pipeline) it's much simpler and more flexible in shaders.

HLSL tutorial 1
Please send me your comments, I would like to hear from all of you.

Tutorials to be updated.

I am hoping to get some of the tutorials updated during the course of the weekend and add some new additions. The tutorials will include how to do some shadowing and mirroring using stencilling, Stencilling is a intermediate technique that allows you to stencil out pixels from a surface and create effects.

What is a stencil buffer?
you will have to wait for the tutorial to find out.