How to do 3D graphics development on the Amiga?

[TheJackal]

by Karlos
Is it me or did it suddenly get pretty busy in here?

Yeah, so squish up to make rum for us all. [edit that should be room, but the typo rum is funnier :-D /edit]

by Nightcrawler
Nice to see that hyperion are still alive. I was worried for a while that the workload had killed/institutionalized them  .

I though they where institutionalized? Nice padded cells, Amigas,.. Wonder if there are any nice female nurses? ( I keep asking for them here, but still no luck! )

As to the topic in hand. I have worked with several API's on many platforms, and currently work with people who do as well.

The requirement for an API is not for it to mimick another API (although that can be handy), it just has to be clean, and easy to use. Any decent programmer would be able to write a translation layer to interface the new API with the games general engine interface.

@EntilZha and @Rogue and @hyperion guys in general.

I think you are doing a good job so far and seem technically compitent to provide such services when you get time. (or you get cloned, one of the two!)

However in your "Multimedia" API I would suggest trying to go for something eligant and "future proof", (if there is such a thing) like DX9, since I feel OpenGl has lost its way recently, and seems to be struggling to restandardise itself with all these new extentions.

by Roge
...The other problem with a general-purpose OpenGL implementation is that some things are not really working, or require a myriad of different code paths ..

As you mentioned all the different code paths required on OGL becomes a nightmare, in DX its easier, the effects stuff in DX are quite interesting, even though I've not personally used them.

[TheJackal]

by Rogue
I never used the Effects stuff in DX either, but the SDK samples look quite promising. I wonder if anyone is using the D3DX model code - doesn't look that bad either.

The closest I've come to using the D3DX lib stuff is for matrix gubbins. As for the model handeling stuff it looks interesting. The x file format is also interesting, as there are many tools out there to convert from to x files.

However if you are developing multi-platform stuff you are most likely going to "roll your own" model format, which can be quite flexable with DX and cards supporting multiple streams.

[TheJackal]

Since gfx cards are having more and more onboard vram, a very nice feature for future API/OS would be for each application to render to a texture. This is instead of the way Windows currently repaints the app.  This way apps won't "interfere" with each other in a desktop enviroment.

Also it woud be easy to display a small version of the app in the dock menu, or when you do "alt-tab". (abit like XP iirc).  Also it might have interesting applications in future Human Interface technologies which diferent paradgms from the current 2D view.

As for 3D, it would be nice to have along side vertex and pixel shaders, geometry shaders. So logical operations can be performed on "geometry" (And or Xor etc). Of course it would be just a stub interface for now, but keeps the API more open for future development.
I suggest this since I see it as the next logical step to mathmatical descriptors of geometry which then with hardware get tesslated to triangles, (in real time or on startup). So artists can build assets at the highest possible detail level and not worry about hand building specific lod models for different hardware/setups etc.

Sorry for the rambling, but my brain is in one of "those" modes! :-D

[TheJackal]

by Rogue on 2003/12/5 14:10:12

Quote:
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However if you are developing multi-platform stuff you are most likely going to "roll your own" model format, which can be quite flexable with DX and cards supporting multiple streams.
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Sure, the non-portability is a problem, but then it didn't stop you from using D3D in the first place  I mean, not many people in the windows world really care about portability (otherwise there would always be some sort of file I/O abstraction that is endian aware... *Sigh*)...

Yes true!

However here where I work we have platform specific formats, some *very* different. Of course this is for speed/data size issues, however if handled correctly its very simple to have the same asset data spat out into target platform formats. (as we do)

[TheJackal]

by EntilZha on 2003/12/5 14:20:52
[...]
The vision is clear: OpenGL *will* be in. Possibily, there'll be another API, but you can definitely count on OpenGL.
 

Count on OpenGL? I thought it was a rendering API, not an abbacus! :-D

Sorry for that, I'll go and stand in the corner now!

PS:I guess it must be Hyperions dinner time? :-P

[TheJackal]

by Rogue on 2003/12/5 14:28:25
[...]
I'm not aware of any modern graphics card that can actually do that. They operate on isolated vertices, or fragments, but not on geometry. There is no connectivity information passsing through the shaders.

Neither do I. I was just putting forward what I see as the way things will be going. DX9 with its Higher-Order primitives is the start of this IMHO. (OpenGL does similar stuff to IIRC)

And when I said geo shader I men't the concept of a shader, not specifics as you mentioned. (Heck, branches in shaders is relatively new!)

Anyhow I dont expect you guys to implement such a thing, (well perhaps in you "spare" time :-P )