wooo, fonts! and materials! and manga?

FONTS ARE FINALLY WORKING IN DIRECT3D!!!

They are!  There’s kind of a texture sampling issue with it, but that’s insignifigant, and they look fine.  It might just be shitty Direct3D texture coordinate precision I can’t do a damn thing about.  So here’s the screenies:

Direct3D 9 Test (fonts aren’t quite pixel perfect):

OpenGL Test (fonts are pixel perfect):

It may be a fencepost error on pixel ratio calculation that causes the font pixel precision problem in Direct3D.  I’ll fix that.  But hey, I can now finally get rendertargets working in Direct3D.  Then I’ll implement HLSL support with the same shader object class interface, and I’ll be up to snuff.  I’ll finally be able to start expanding the functionality again.  One thing I want to do is to add a streaming mode for vertex buffers so I can do dynamic vertex stuff.

Hey, did you notice the tasty per vertex alpha there?  The backface culling is disabled for this test, as it would keep us from getting this cool semi-transparent cube effect.  I have a boolean material setting in the material class that lets you switch between using material and vertex colors.  This is clearly vertex colors.

As you can see, I’ve also separated the specular component in OpenGL (using the extension, no multiple pass techniques unless it’s REALLY neccesary) in order to mimic the behavior which is default and usually used for 3D games in Direct3D.  The applications I develop for this should have as consistent and standard an appearance across platforms as much as possible, and this is really the best specular look (fixed pipeline wise anyway) for most surfaces.  If it’s otherwise, there’s always a shader for that.

I’ll have it all caught up on the Direct3D end soon.  At which point, further feature development begins.  Here’s something I want to add: Windows builds will use DirectInput for input.  This will allow me to code for my gamepad, yay!   GNU/Linux will use xorg devices for gamepads, same as all devices on GNU/Linux.  I may need to borrow a friend’s joystick to code for that.  We’ll see.

But hey!  I just recently started drawing manga again, which was my original art style.  I used to only draw manga, which I shifted out of at one point.  But I thought I’d make  another crack at it, and let me tell you.  NOT like riding a bicycle.  I’m just getting back in to it, this is a doodle I did just  a while ago:

I made this in The GIMP.  All tablet, no paper.

Yeah, I know.   Her shoulders are a bit too broad.  I don’t mind it though, the super feminized look is kind of rediculous to see in EVERY female character.  It starts to get redundant and unrealistic if overidealized.  Just saying.  But cool, no?

That’s about it.

RAVEN materials + inhuman art + freaky art

I have to say it’s quite awesome that my Grey fanart wound up on the Inhuman site’s fanart page.  I did a thing with grey killing people/trees with a menorah.  That’s because he loves the slaughter portion of the holiday season.  heah yo go my buddayo…

Okay then.  Now that that’s over with, let me tell you about a sweetass development with the engine.

I got simple materials and lighting to work in Direct3D and OpenGL!  Transparent in terms of which API of course.

This next screenshot is simple proof you can choose which:

u can choose d3d or gl zomg

NOW.  Direct3D:

Direct3D 9 HW L&T in RAVEN

And in OpenGL.  OpenGL’s glColorMaterial(GL_AMBIENT_AND_DIFFUSE) appears to give me a slightly brighter ambiance than Direct3D’s D3DRS_COLORVERTEX and D3DRS_AMBIENTMATERIALSOURCE / D3DRS_DIFFUSEMATERIALSOURCE set to the first vertex color FVF.  Not sure why, maybe it has to do with how D3D mixes the ambient color?  Or is that part of the HW L&T pipeline?  I can’t remember T_T.  Whatever, I’ll get this figured out.

OpenGL HW L&T

Oh hey.  I made another art picture yay!

Gynophobia by ~ninjarat1 on deviantART

new artwork – Anima Supremacist

I have slaved for…time…or something like that, to bring you all a new piece of artwork! I haven’t been in a terribly artistic mood for quite a long while, probably not since before I started this blog! Well. I am now officially done with a new piece. The first piece to be posted on the intarwebs really. Be kind.

It is called Anima Supremacist. I was thinking about Jungian psychology again, and I do that quite often as the crazy parts tend to apply to me, (PTSD here yay,) when I had an idea for a picture. Basically it would be kind of an archetypal breakdown of the concept of the Anima or Animus destroying the mask of our selves, the False Self. The self is basically characterized by Jung as the Anima (masculine) or Animus (feminine) and each of us have both, a man’s feminine side and a woman’s masculine side.  The False Self is quite simply an impostor Anima generated for the purpose of politics, left hemisphere communication which mostly involves language skills, fabrication, and parroting. The False Self is especially necessary in a closed in and unkind society wherein conformity is required, and even to a small extent in simple social exchanges such as the common:

Dude 1: How are you?

Dude 2: Fine.

Dude 2 may have been miserable, but more important than the communique of the Anima is the socially conformant dialogue, so there is no social faux paw.  I must admit, I DETEST this kind of cheap talk with no meaning or content that is required to exist in a society.  My perfect world is one where we are all wetwired in to a server hub which can relay pure data untranslated from one brain to the next, moving only concepts as data packets, and the need for language is diminished entirely.

But psychologists agree that there is such a thing as an unhealthy False Self.  I think it is a spectrum, where the mental health damage caused by the False Self is directly proportional to it’s size and control over the Anima.  Therefore I have worked long and hard to kill my False Self, and I think I am finally gaining some ground.  The phrase “be your self” is quite profound, and it kills me inside to hear it used by all these rediculous pop icons and teeny boppers when they really mean “be your self by asserting your independent ability to act like everyone else or you’re not cool.”  Of course this is THE EXACT OPPOSITE of being your self.  *spits*  I actually just spat right then.

But on to the artwork.  It’s this awesome eye thing consuming a comm tower. And before anyone asks me, yes, the tower was somewhat influenced by the Citadel from HL2.  Now, without further ado, the image.

Anima Supremacist by ~ninjarat1 on deviantART

I hope you enjoy it.