Monday, December 17, 2007

creativity without the internet

i woke up one morning and found myself going to my computer to do a little bit of light work (as i do every second of every day - promise) but to my amazment the damn internet was cut off! i suddenly came to the realisation that i had no way to cheat my way through life O.o as someone had decided to cut me off! lets skip ahead a bit to the point where it sunk in.
life without the internet at around day three was becoming more of a fear than an irritation as i might actually have to nip to the librery more often than i usually do just to get somthing simple as an anatomy book. well it seems that having little to no outside influence made my creativness more than bland, it got me wondering if i lived in a time when there was no internet or it was just difficult to get connected, would i be producing the same work, would i be producing any work at all? what if my entire workload was reliant on me spending 90% of my time down the librery shifting from book to book in the hopes of finding something somebody had not yet noticed just so that i could get somthing interesting on paper, would the internets absance lead me this? and if so would i be any different as a person, student, brother or friend.
back in the 1960s when packet switching was coined i.e. the baby steps of the internet. people didnt even know the potential of other people on the other side of teh clobe, did einstein have the internet? no. so in what way did people pass on their creative aspects to others? well its simple. they just didnt. the furthest your ideas went were as far as the person standing next to you could pass it on but as soon as more and more people got connected to the internet it was made easier to get information from people without even being face to face. this leads me to my point, if i cant go without internet for 3 days i dread to think what creativity meant to people just 50 or 60 years ago. Was it a myth? or twinkle in someones eye? creativity isnt easy to define but its relitivly easy to find with the masses of people connecting each and every day.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

creativity unleashed

reason why i'm going to really love my job in the future. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkgYret8syk&feature=related
the major feature that will make the games industry so much more interesting is the software that will be used to work with it. dire
cxtx 10 is a windows API that supports shader model 4.0. what it can do is take the strain of working out mutiple processors and sort of collapse them into multi threaded lines, almost like a que. this speeds up processing power allowing your console (hopfully) or pc to process more things faster thus allowing for the evolution of graphics.

shader model 4.0 comparison:
PS_2_0 PS_2_a PS_2_b PS_3_0[2] PS_4_0[3]
Dependent texture limit 4 No Limit 4 No Limit No Limit
Texture instruction limit 32 Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Position register No No No Yes Yes
Instruction slots 32 + 64 512 512 ≥ 512 ≥ 65536
Executed instructions 32 + 64 512 512 65536 Unlimited
Texture indirections 4 No limit 4 No Limit No Limit
Interpolated registers 2 + 8 2 + 8 2 + 8 10 32
Instruction predication No Yes No Yes No
Index input registers No No No Yes Yes
Temp registers 12 22 32 32 4096
Constant registers 32 32 32 224 16x4096
Arbitrary swizzling No Yes No Yes Yes
Gradient instructions No Yes No Yes Yes
Loop count register No No No Yes Yes
Face register (2-sided lighting) No No No Yes Yes
Dynamic flow control No No No 24 Yes
Bitwise Operators No No No No Yes
Native Integers No No No No Yes



Vertex shader comparison


VS_2_0 VS_2_a VS_3_0[2] VS_4_0[3]
# of instruction slots 256 256 ≥ 512 4096
Max # of instructions executed 65536 65536 65536 65536
Instruction Predication No Yes Yes Yes
Temp Registers 12 13 32 4096
# constant registers ≥ 256 ≥ 256 ≥ 256 16x4096
Static Flow Control Yes Yes Yes Yes
Dynamic Flow Control No Yes Yes Yes
Dynamic Flow Control Depth No 24 24 Yes
Vertex Texture Fetch No No Yes Yes
# of texture samplers N/A N/A 4 128
Geometry instancing support No No Yes Yes
Bitwise Operators No No No Yes
Native Integers No No No Yes


i knew that shader model 4.0 enhanced 3d applications and games possibilities in quality but not to the extent that the charts show. it basically runs the same amount of processes in terms of rendering all the effects on screen but at a blinding speed with almost no limit.

an example of the evolution in 3d, direct x10 hardware can borrow ram from your computer if it needs to. basically it upgrades itself. no need to care about a graphics cards on board ram any more as long as you have them expansion slots filled.

to get to the point direct x applications will allow the games industry to go that 1 extra leap forward and create more life-like games with more AI running at once (qued processors). enhanced for multi core processors as well.

if its to much information at once, the simplest way to put it is direct x 10 will allow game artists to be more creative with their tools and with much higher texture sizes and poly budgets, freedom!

Saturday, December 08, 2007


well finally finnished myself as a fool. no normal or spec yet and about 180 polys over budget but overall i enjoyed doing this project. it realy helped me build up my skills in max and my judgment skills.

i think i look really unhappy in this model but i guess i would be if i had to wear something like that.
the major increase in poly cound came at the higher amounts of curves in this model but i kind of used the polys for the prop to make it so im closer to 500 polys over.