Tutorial: Deposit shader in MentalMill

Rigging
1

Hi everyone. :slight_smile:

I’ve just finished a tutorial about simulating deposits like snow, moss or dirt:
http://www.zspline.net/blogs/blog.php/2009/05/18/deposit-shader-in-mentalmill

I’d like you to criticize it, showing now mercy. Please point out anything that
could be improved, that you don’t like, what’s confusing, mistaken, hard to
read, unnecessary or missing.
This tutorial is not just a place where I can spread my wisdom :wink: but more
importantly an opportunity for me to learn new things, more efficient solutions
in a structured way. And for that I’d need your feedback.

Thanks in advance for your help.

2

I like it.
It is expensive, but cool :slight_smile:

Can’t wait to see you build it for ShaderFX, if you still plan to do that!

3

Kees, you have a point… I think I’m gonna make a performance chart to make
it clear what it would cost. Like full shader vs no shadows vs
no detail maps vs plain textured phong shader.

I still plan to do it in ShaderFX, but before that I leave it for a while so I can
get some feedback and revisit it a bit later with fresh eyes.

4

I’ve added performance measurements and extended the FAQ section of the tutorial.

The shader is ~37% slower than the run of the Mill :slight_smile: textured phong.

5

37% slower isn’t so bad for all the features you get.

I’m surprised that the merged textures make only a small difference.
I would have expected that to have more impact.

6

Yeah I wondered about that too. I think the analysis doesn’t (can’t) consider
texture management. Cache hits, stress on the texture pool, streaming mip
levels, etc all affect performance, but those aspects are shader independent.
What we see here is that less texture sampler helps a bit. (But please correct
me if I’m wrong. :slight_smile:

7

Can post pictures of your wigs here. They can be lace wigs, lace front wigs, synthetic wigs or custom lace wigs. Show us what your working with.