Hiding a Clingerman to Talk Natively
In Benchmarking C#/.Net Direct3D 11 APIs vs native C++ (a post from March 14, I wonder why I did not share this already…) Alexandre Mutel explores the cost of calling native APIs from managed code (AKA interop) via micro benchmarking various managed Direct3D 11 APIs. He does this because:
Hopefully, in SharpDX unlike any other DirectX .NET APIs, this code has been written to be consistent over the whole generated code, and was carefully designed to be quite efficient… but still, It has obviously a cost, and we need to know it!
Spoiler: The offerings Microsoft has in store are, by far, slower than SlimDX/SharpDX.
In other news: There is a thread over in the AppBuhAppHub forums praising the XNA MVPs. We here in the barracks fully support that effort – mostly due to the fact that Captain ZSquare has access to various arms here and we lost the keys to lock up the arsenal… – so you might head over to add to the +1 (none of the Google +1 stuff) choir.
Nuclex Framework, Community Character Voting and Morph Targets
Markus “Cygon4” Ewald announces the immediate availability of an intermediate release of his Nuclex Framework, adding: “There are still outstanding issues, but the previous release is already getting a beard and I'm getting reports for issues already solved
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Amit Ginni Patpatia of FatCow Games AS fame reminds the community to vote for a character for an upcoming game.
Last but not least Barnaby Smith pokes me about an XNA 3.1 Morph Target implementation he put online: “This example uses multiple vertex streams and blends between them using a vertex shader. This approach is a differing method to CPU or VTF based implementations and does not require the calculation of vertex textures, making it quite simple and straightforward.
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XNA 4.0 Light Pre-Pass
Jorge Coluna posted an article on his site about implementing the Light Pre-Pass technique for rendering in XNA 4.0
Read all about it here.
XNA 4.0 Light Pre-Pass
Jorge Coluna shares the code and an article of his Light Pre-Pass technique for XNA 4.0. Says the Jorge:
The discussion between pros and cons of different techniques for real-time lighting has been running for years. Forward rendering, deferred shading and light pre-pass are some of the most famous techniques nowadays. Their definitions and variations can be found with a simple search on internet, with all the most complex mathematics, notations and formulas possible. Therefore I will not focus on this.
Voxel Engine on Codeplex
Steve Marshall sent us a link to TechCraft, a 'minecraft-style terrain engine in XNA'. You can see a video of it below.
XNA Morphing Meshes Tutorial
The Cansin posted a new and interesting tutorial about morphing meshes in XNA
With documentation and source code available, the tutorial takes you through the steps of implementing morphing meshes.
Check it out here.
Article: Rolling World Tutorial
by Christian Schlager
When you look around the XBox Indie Games Channel, there aren't a lot of 3D games around. Most XNA games only feature 2D graphics. I hope to contribute with this tutorial to making 3D graphics a bit less intimidating. And maybe the little prototype we will create throughout the next pages will be the starting point of a great 3D indie game by one of you
We will make a prototype that features the kind of rolling world effect that you can see in games such as Animal Crossing or DeathSpank. We will also create the textures and 3D models that go along with the rolling effect and recreate the combination of 2D art with a 3D world you can see in the game DeathSpank.
Article: Simple 3D Camera in XNA
by Pete Street
How do I make a 3D camera?
This is the most common question I hear from people starting out with 3D game development.
There are many different types of possible cameras and various ways to achieve each of them. The amount of unique camera samples available online, while some are more complicated than others, can be daunting to those just beginning with 3D games.
Additionally, it’s frustrating and nearly impossible to combine two different samples without doing some serious hacking.
My goal for this tutorial is to remove that frustration from 3D-beginners by providing a back-to-basics approach to three of the most common types of cameras used in games:
- a free camera
- a chase camera
- a orbit camera
IcoModel Beta
A new interesting project popped-up on codeplex. Daniel Hoctor released the first beta version of IcoModel. The original announcement on the xna forums explains what IcoModel is all about:
What is IcoModel?
IcoModel is a free, open source terrain system that provides an easy way to create and manage dynamic terrain in the form of a globe. The IcoModelProcessor has been designed specifically to work with geodesic spheres; the mesh is broken down into sectors--the pentagons and hexagons that make up the sphere--which the IcoModel class uses to manage the terrain.How does it work?
You simply load a non-textured, UV Mapped, geodesic sphere mesh via the IcoModelProcessor. Then you create an effect key that represents the different terrain types in your project. From that point on, you can assign any sector an effect key index, at any time. When you call IcoModel's draw function, each sector will be drawn according to its current effect key index.
You can see a video of IcoModel at work below:
P.S. Thanks to Mike (Bob Taco Ind) for the tip!
Article : Sun- and Lens Flare as a Post Process
by Charles Humphrey
Now this sample has come from my current XNA toy which is the Blacksun engine I am currently writing in XNA 3.1. It uses deferred lighting, instancing and a post processing framework that I found on a great site here, all I had to do was make it engine ready.
If you want to have a look at the effect in the engine you can see it here.
This sample is just one of the elements from the post processing framework in the engine, there are none of the other goodies in this sample, just the Sun post process. This sample has also been created using the XNA 4.0 CTP, so I only had one render target to work with at the time. This means that you can't see the sun being culled behind objects in the scene as I can't create a depth map as well as the rendered scene, to be honest, I still don't have that bit of the shader 100% anyway 