RF2, Ogre & Shaders

[scott]

Shaders are the next big thing in game devlopment, they are becoming more and more frequent and more and more complex, almost all majour effects are now done with shaders, i am just wondering if and how this will be implemented in RF2 will it have importers, on those lines, ogres .material files can be somewhat complex and more than a basic programe can produce e.g. milkshape (main modeling app for RF) these types of materials can be created in 3ds max & maya, as these are premium applications that will not be used in the mainstram of RF2 users will there be an in-editor material editor?

[ardentcrest]

And an update on whats new and whats to be done. Cant wait for the update

[paradoxnj]

RF2 will use the Ogre Material System. RF2 is nothing more than a gameshell built with Ogre. This means that it will use all of Ogre's formats and features. The only custom format will be a level file which will either be an Ogre .scene, a custom XML file or a binary file. It's undecided as of yet.

[scott]

thats what i mean, i do belive from what i have read and understood is the material file format contains the shader information, there are FX composers out there that will graphicly create shaders but has no way of importing to ogres .mesh system, as stated above, most game engines now use shaders and most games created actualy use them, water, bloom, glow, cell shading etc. I worked on Viva PInata as my time as a games tester, the entire game was made out of shaders almost. If there is no way to import or easily-create these then this is a majour holding back, volumetric sun rays the kind found in crysis and GRiD are shaders i belive, with DX10 in development for ogre there are even more possibilities to be had from these kinds of things, in turn this would make RF2 somewhat limited.

shaders are becoming like levels, compiled from different parts to make the whole. I recently downloaded FX composer 2.5, the capabilities on models are awsome, with most of them being shader driven, even if there is a text editor to create these with RF2, with a list of all the possible options for a shader if possible, but in my opinion, if its a shell that just imports different programes, such as ogre python and bullet etc. then its going to be limited in the aspect of shaders. If i am mistaken and there are already ways to work on shaders simply with ogre then I would like a link if possible as I am trying to get the best start I can.

[paradoxnj]

There is a material editor on Ogre's Wiki. It's visual. Check it out.

[jonas]

I believe I also saw in the ogre wiki a native support for .cg files which are what the nvidia fx composer uses. I may have misread it. But the Ogre wiki does have several programs that would help with development. Here Seems one thing to rf2's advantage is Ogre is pretty popular, and has a lot more people contributing to it.