Mental mill is Unified Shader Creative Solution?

[ranger0201]

Hi

My name is Yune.

I working at video game industry. (for XBOX 360)

My Job is making VFX to game.

Almost using a inhouse application. (Particle, ETC)

But making to DX9 Shader is Very important work

shader make job is very difficult, very hard.

our company is using NVIDIA's FX composer...

I hope learn to mental mill for make to DX Shaders

Mental Mill is very easy UI to working..

But have not easy guide.

Please post other guides for artist(not programmer, not engineer)

If afeel to artist, Mental Mill is Big hit at game industry....

i wating many variable guide & tutorial, and samples.....

good luck. :)

[David Marks]

Hello Yune,

Thank you for taking time to use mental mill.

Please keep checking our website for new information. As we continue to work on the software, we will be posting additional tutorials and examples.

Please keep in mind that even though mental mill has an easy-to-use graphical user interface, it is still a programming language that will require some technical understanding of shaders and rendering.

Please tell us what topics you would most like us to cover in future tutorials.

Also, please let us know where you are located and what is your primary language.

Thank you.

David Marks
mental mill - QA

[Vas]

Please tell us what topics you would most like us to cover in future tutorials.
David Marks
mental mill - QA

Hello David my name is Ron,
I come from the artist side much the same way Yune does. I mainly do props and environment work. Maya is my modeling package of choice and the majority of my shader setup experience comes from the Unreal3 engine, a node based shader program much like Mental Mill.
That said, first I want to congratulate Mental Images on the fine program they have created. Mental Mill really is a nice refuge for an artist without a coder’s background; although, as you express earlier it certainly helps if u do.
I have some possible suggestions that might make Mental Mill a little bit more artist friendly.
Could Mental Images produce a tutorial for a Glass and/or a Alpha Transparency shader that functions in a real-time game environment? As an example, a detailed glass vase or a simple plant model made with intersecting planes and an alpha mask.
The vase would require the use of a custom Normal, Reflection and Specular map, while the plant would require a custom Specular, Normal and Transparency map.
The shaders I describe above are common in video game applications and would be of great use to anybody developing games.
Another possible suggestion…
I don’t know if this exists since I haven’t found it; a list of the available Mental Mill shader nodes with a brief description of what they are and an example of what they can be used for. Now granted, I know there are 150+ nodes and each node can serve more than one purpose, but any description and example of use would help out an artist who is unfamiliar with a coding background of shaders.
That’s it for now, more as the next set of hurdles come.

[David Marks]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll add your request to our wishlist, so hopefully we can include your ideas in our next batch of tutorials.

There was previously some discussion about alpha masks in another thread that might help for now: http://forum.mentalimages.com/showthread.php?t=160

Regarding shader nodes, if you look in the "All" palette, you will see that there are actually over 500 available nodes. Many of these are math-related functions that repeat for each data type. The "Shader Library" document from the Help menu provides a good general description of most classes.

Shader basics are well covered by experts in other books like the GPU Gems series (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/gpu_gems_home.html), so we shouldn't try to duplicate what's already out there. However, I do agree that a good set of examples that demonstrate the most commonly used nodes would provide an excellent reference for new users of mental mill.

Please keep us posted on your success with the software. Thanks again for your suggestions.

[Vas]

Thank you for the reply David :)
I hope u guys get some masking and alpha nodes setup in the next build. They are invaluable to game shaders :D

On a slight change of topic:
Would you recommended GPU gems as a good starter book for an artist stating down the Hlsl programming path? Is it a good beginner guide or are there better books suited for such a task?

Let me give you a bit of background to help you understand my skill set and goals.
I’m working on an Xna title with a friend. He codes and I do the art. Neither one of us is familiar with the Hlsl Language or any shader language for that matter. I have experience using "completed shaders" the common shaders found in most art and game packages (Maya, Max and Unreal); sadly this knowledge is limited to only application use. I have never needed to write my own shaders…till now.
In Xna there is no readily available shader library. Everything has to be made from scratch. I volunteered to learn the language since I have a better grasp of shaders and the functions needed for games.
I welcome the challenge but have no real knowledge of how to tackle shaders from the ground level.
Simply put I need a foundation.

Enter Mental Mills!
When I found out about Mental Mill I flipped with excitement. Thanks to the program I have been able to string together some basic Shaders for our engine. Probably not the most efficient shaders mind you but for someone with no coding experience or real knowledge of shader construction…it’s something. Now I’m trying to write some more advanced shaders “shaders that use 2nd uv sets and such and can no longer rely on guess work. Any advice will be helpful for my long trek ahead.

Thank you for taking the time to read this :)

[ruediger]

Hi Vas,

if you want to get started with shader writing, I can recommend you
"The Cg Tutorial"
(ISBN 0-321-19496-9)
by Randima Fernando and Mark J. Kilgard

This book deals with the Cg shading language. HLSL and Cg are the same language but reflect the different names each company uses to identify the language and its underlying technology.
So if you want to learn the basics, 'The Cg Tutorial' is a good book to start with. It explains the functionality of Cg, the data types and how you achieve certain effects. Using it along with mental mill and FX Composer, you can take a look at generated shadercode and learn how to modify it to fit your needs. FX Composer comes very handy when you're about to tweak your shadercode and try out new shaders you authored (possibly by modifying existing ones).

If you want to learn more about HLSL FX, you better choose a different book (I don't have a book dealing with that topic, so I can't recommend you any. Amazon and its user ratings might help there a bit)
I found some promising titles on Amazon.com typing "shader programming directX" in the search box, so try that out too.

About the GPU Gems:
These books are not suitable for learning how to write shaders. They are rather a 'cookbook' for how to use (sometimes really advanced) techniques to use the graphics card for the fanciest effects. Also 'GPU Gems' are worth reading when you want to learn what currently is "state of the art" in graphics programming. Each book comes along with a CD which contains many practical examples. Just reading about all those techniques is inspiring and I guess that the articles and images might give you some new, fresh ideas.

An interesting website that I found (but which doesn't seem to be updated any more) is www.shadertech.com :
Nevertheless you can find there many interesting examples for both cg(FX) and HLSL (FX)

Finally, you might also want to check out the NVidia Developer Zone which also provides a huge amount of interesting documents.

That's it for the start, I'm sure that you'll find something suitable :cool:

Best Regards,
Ruediger

[Vas]

Wow what a mountain of information! Thank you Ruediger!

[Mill Worker]

Thanks for those reference books ^ and tutorials ruediger! I'll have to get my hands on those too!