Impoting FX file into Ofusion and max

Lee04

17-12-2006 13:46:58

Ogre has a fx file material utility know. Could it be used with Ofusion?

Or shoiƶd we import Ogre materials into Ofusion?

Lee04

Evak

17-12-2006 16:09:04

I'd like to be able to use something like this excellent tool for 3dsmax I found the other day, is easy to use and saves out FX files, Currently its HLSL only, But CG and GLSL is in the works.

It's a great tool for anyone like me that just can't get into shader programming and finds tools like rendermonkey and FX composer really difficult to use, it has a nice simple flowchart UI from within 3dsmax with realtime update in viewports.

It's not exactly cheap, but I figured people that can afford max can probably afford this plugin if they want to work with shaders.



Couple of videos that show you how it works



http://www.lumonix.net/ShaderFX_BasicShaderCreation.avi


http://www.lumonix.net/ShaderFX_TextureBlend.avi

What Daniel did in his first couple of days, after giving up with rendermonkey and CG Composer.




OOps, forgot to post the Lumonix URL for shader fx:

http://lumonixsoftware.com/frames_shaderfx.html

I'd really love to be able to use this tool with Ofusion Pro. That would really clean up the art pipeline and make it easier to move away from fixed function materials.

Evak

17-12-2006 16:13:40

I think the biggest problem with shaders though, is that there are several different ways to format the source. and often they aren't all compatible with your engine.

It's a real problem if you have limited programming knowledge and don't really understand anything about the syntax being used and the basic structure of the code.

Some shaders from the tool are parsed properly in FXogretool but not all, it often chokes on certain lighting functions.

I did contact the author at one point, and he did suggest that he would be interested in helping someone work out an art pipeline to Ogre somehow. And that he had contacted the Ogre Authors to see whether there was any interest. My guess is that 3dsmax is too much of a niche for the ogre team to want to support it though :(

Lioric

20-12-2006 00:51:28

We are reviewing the integration and support of this tool, we are in contact with the ShaderFX author

Evak

20-12-2006 00:57:34

hey :) fantastic, I hope something can be worked out :)