Displayhack website

Love it!

It will be an ongoing series. I want to get the demo-sceners and others up and running, making their own patches, etc., and just flesh out more things that can be done in QC. I'll intend to show how to do different things in QC that are demoscene oriented and that people may not understand how to pull off.

Once I've laid a bit more groundwork, one can expect to see some unique patches make appearance, see how to do various demoscene type tricks in QC, and generally just a lot of cool stuff.

I might chip in with something in a few weeks. I have a fairly hardcore demo underway just now (mixed raytrace + raymarch with landscapes so far).

I've also been helping somebody get a new QC demo running for a competition this weekend, so expect something cool there :) It's not so much coded as pure QC work, but it's very cool and pretty unlike anything we've seen here from a design POV ;)

I'm going to give a mild spoiler, against my good judgement (mainly because I'm on a project right now, and I'm not sure if I'll finish the patch up by next installment, split it up over installments, or...).

One treat that I'm planning, unless something goes seriously awry in implementation (I don't see why/how it could, but those are famous last words), is a patch that will seriously help those wishing to do deferred rendering in QC. I'm also planning on a cool AO enabler.

I plan on really breaking down the system and it's fine points, so that people can understand the ins and outs of the way that QC actually evaluates things, underpinnings of how it works, etc. I have a very determined interest to lay out a lot of detail about QCPlugin as well as GFPlugin/"skankySDK". For some more examples of upcoming things, I plan on showing how to implement a similar plugin in both realms, to help highlight difference. I'm going to show how to incorporate QC into apps successfully. I'm going to show how to do a lot of classic "GPU Gems" type tricks in QC.

A recurring notion will be the fact that there are many ways to accomplish the same goal in QC, with slightly differing outcome, and that one may choose given different contexts. There will be a strong emphasis on assessing a "problem", breaking down the steps to solve the problem, doing it a few different ways, testing performance and assessing pros and cons, then finally implementing. I want to humbly attempt to give people all of the tools to help teach themselves, hopefully.

psonice wrote:
I might chip in with something in a few weeks. I have a fairly hardcore demo underway just now (mixed raytrace + raymarch with landscapes so far).

I've also been helping somebody get a new QC demo running for a competition this weekend, so expect something cool there :) It's not so much coded as pure QC work, but it's very cool and pretty unlike anything we've seen here from a design POV ;)

I'm going to email you about something that we may have a fruitful collab on; you've spent a bit more time on a couple of things like the raytracing, and maybe we could do some fun stuff to give people some things they wouldn't expect (or maybe I've already covered it in something I'm doing)... I should be able to do raytracing from a high quality depth channel (as opposed to procedural raytracing stuff, right?)

You've made a good strong opening and laid out some pointers for future postings. You are going to be busy indeed :-)

@gtoledo3, You should check out the new FX Factory, we have a good solution for a iterator and render in image replacement (with AA) with depth image as well in there, very helpful for deferred rendering in QC.

vade wrote:
@gtoledo3, You should check out the new FX Factory, we have a good solution for a iterator and render in image replacement (with AA) with depth image as well in there, very helpful for deferred rendering in QC.

Yeah, but I'm going to make an RII-like macro environment (GFPlugin) that sets people up to do this automagically (somewhat), and loads a shader to provide people with high quality normal out of a scene. Feel free to email me off-forum if you have any thoughts on it; I have it all sussed out basically, just haven't had the time to finish it.

I'm aware of your iterator - it's real cool! It inspired me to try the same kinda a thing :)

Yeah I figured as much. I have a deferred app which loads QC comps and renders them in realtime, normals and all with multiple g-buffers using MRT, etc, but I never polished it up.

Let me know if you want help, this sounds like a great project. Def ping me :)

Yep, exactly what I'm doing, using MRT, etc., etc. I have all of the code laid out (and I will give a friend some serious props for taking the time to explain MRT a little better to me).

I've made a non-crazy RII patch (eg., it doesn't do all of the crazy, arguably wrong, stuff behind the scenes that the stock one does, doesn't switch how it works when you're on external display, etc., etc), and I have shader loading working fine. I just haven't had the time to put it all together yet, setup the MRT code into the patch yet... it's all hanging out in parts basically.

I mean, when I see the group (eg., the displayhack audience) that this is bringing in, I'd like to help them have some tools that they're used to, and understand how to make the kind of patches they need to do those things as well, so I'll be breaking down the process step by step with that, and a variety of other types of patches. Even though we can't do core profile (afaik), there's a mountain of stuff we can do in QC that we have not.

Interesting articles, I read most of them. Kind of funny how the qc article begins. Saying people don't find the documentation that helpful but then offering the documentation and developer examples as the solution. It's true though the documentation is outdated and the developer examples are one of the most valuable resources next to kineme.

dust wrote:
Interesting articles, I read most of them. Kind of funny how the qc article begins. Saying people don't find the documentation that helpful but then offering the documentation and developer examples as the solution. It's true though the documentation is outdated and the developer examples are one of the most valuable resources next to kineme.

That's not what I said.

I'm conveying that many people are seemingly unaware that Apple has copious documentation, and that reading this documentation is a good starting point for learning QC. I never said people don't find the documentation helpful.

Sounds like a really valuable series of columns coming up, George. May inspire me to bite into some of the more hard-core QC rendering/plugin stuff.

It's really the lack of a show and tell that's stopped me from jumping into making plugins and patches. I know the documentation is there but it takes time to get to learn Xcode and Obj-C so a gentle push is what many like me probably will appreciate. Thanks for your generosity in helping others.