mental mill 1d Curve Function Shader Pack

[ruediger]

The latest shader pack for mental mill features new shaders that brings new functionality to your shader authoring and shader creation.

Overview

For a detailed description please see the .pdf file that comes with the shader pack. This shader pack features a set of 1d function curve nodes that can be mixed, combined and used to make interesting 2D patterns. However, there will be more example on what else can be done using those nodes.

The function curves work similarly to the article that I wrote about displaying function curves in a shader (http://mentalmill.blogspot.com/2010/11/displaying-2d-functions-in-metasl.html).

This shader pack comes with a large number of different nodes:


Function curves
Nodes that are able to combine and modify function curves
Nodes that remap values based on a function curve
Function curve controlled gradient generators


I will soon write an article on the mental mill blog how you can write custom shaders that take advantage of this shader pack.

Getting Started
Please read the included textfile README - Installation notes.txt
After you have copied your shaders and added them to mental mill's search paths, I recommend to open the .xmsl workspaces that are included with the .zip file. They show some use cases of how to use the curve nodes.

Please give us your feedback!
This shader pack has been thoroughly tested and ensured to work flawlessly - nevertheless you might have questions or ideas for improvements. Let us know what you think!

[kogi04]

Oooo... This looks interesting. Thanks for the shader pack and thurough PDF. Looking forward to seeing some nice examples on what this can used for :)

[ruediger]

I indent to show some examples how you can write your own custom shader that can be fed by these curve shaders. This is a very powerful mechanism and allows you to replace a fixed function whith what you could call a 'plug and play' function. By modifying your function curve, your see the changes propagate directly to your shader. This is quite pratical during the design phase of a shader. Once you know what you want, you can either hard-code your function or you can keep the curve shader as a flexible controller.

Cheers,
Ruediger