Finn / P1Extra | Advanced Graphics 2009 Web |

Extended Project

Source:

Description

The plan was to take what I had accomplished in project 1 and port it to the GPU.

Delivered

I ported what I had done in project 1 to the GPU.

Project Results and Evaluation

I think it looks pretty good. Also, since it's implemented with shaders I have more control over what parts of the scene are affected; only the loaded model in this case.
The interface isn't perfect (actually, the effect isn't either), but it's functional. To get the effect working:

Load a model with the "Load Model" button
(optional) Load a texture with "Load Texture" (requires a model with texture coordinates specified)
Load the "ao.vert" and "ao.frag" shaders using the "Load Shaders" button
Enable the shaders with the "Toggle Shaders" button
Enable the AO effect with the "Toggle GPU AO" button

Self-Evaluation

I think I did alright on this. Perhaps the most time consuming parts involved just getting everything setup and passed in correctly for the shaders; getting the settings correct for each the main texture and depth texture was a little tricky. The effect is too dark (as it was before) so I should probably change my algorithm; as in, I should do real SSAO.
I definitely learned a number of new, and relearned some old, things about multitexturing and shaders. Hurray.

Retrospeculation

It's hard to say what would have changed. Of course, the effect would have been faster. I'd like to think I would have gotten at least closer to having an implementation of SSDO; there is a surprisingly large pool of data available to the shaders by default. If I feel ambitious, I may keep up with this code on my own and see if I can get something put together. That's probably the only way I'll know if it is in fact easier to implement SSDO with shaders. Oh, and I might not have had the opportunity to make up the word retrospeculation. Well, I guess google disagrees with me; there are a few uses already, but it's still not a real word.