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Submitted by , posted on 16 October 2003
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Image Description, by
Here are some screen captures using SMARTSHADER effects on Id's Quake 3.
SMARTSHADER effects are a new feature added in ATI's CATALYST 3.8 software
suite. These effects perform post processing on any double buffered OpenGL
or D3D application with the programmable fragment shader hardware found
RADEON 9500 and higher graphics cards (RADEON 8500-9200 have a limited
number of effects exposed in OpenGL).
Internally I refer to these special effects with the more descriptive term
specialSwap. I say more descriptive because these effects apply the special
fragment shaders to the back buffer just as it is swapped to the front
buffer. Since most people here are application/game developers and not
driver developers it's worth noting all of these effects can be done on
graphics cards by using pBuffers and the ARB_fragment_program OpenGL
extension.
The top left picture uses the Classic effect. Here fragment shaders are
used to convert an image into a sepia tone color space. The top right
picture uses is the Stylize effect. This effect uses fragment shaders to
convert low intensity pixels to gray scale. The bottom left picture is the
Sketch effect. This effect uses fragment shaders to perform a Sobel edge
detection algorithm. The last picture is the ASCII effect. To really be
impressed with this effect you need to see it at high resolution and in
motion. The basic idea behind this effect is to find the average value of
block of pixels and then use a texture lookup to access the corresponding
ASCII character for that block's intensity.
SMARTSHADER currently has 10 effects with plans to add more. The fragment
shaders used for the Classic, Sketch, and ASCII effects are described in the
book "ShaderX2 - Shader Tips & Tricks".
Maurice Ribble
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