@elder kettle I finally drew some debug lines inspired by you to help figure what direction I was looking at when working on my cubemap :D
#Foundations - Learning Graphics Programming with the Zig Programming language
delicate delta
elder kettle
Nice
delicate delta
I had no idea what direction has been in all this time
elder kettle
Yeah very helpful
delicate delta
It’s pretty cool! I mistakenly had srgb enabled though. 
ivory verge
mistakenly? 🙂
delicate delta
I'm just a machine
time to keep going
those days that are gray were either really good days, like the day I went to Rome, or really bad days
like really bad days
that gray day in August was not a good day
elder kettle
Ah I don't use github for my job coding
that explains it
Is it possible it ignores branches or something?
queen hinge
I don't think it ignore branches
delicate delta
it doesn't consider unmerged PRs
until they're merged
so I think it does ignore branches
elder kettle
Maybe because I don't close the branches? Idk
I'm looking at several dozen commits from june right now
delicate delta
if you ever merge them it will backdate it
also
you can totally game that chart
people draw stuff on their charts
elder kettle
Lol
elder kettle
I can't pull up the statistics for the repo since it's private but it's definitely not accurate I've made thousands of lines of changes this year
queen hinge
it does branches
delicate delta
do you have a green square for that commit
I remember not seeing green squares appear until I merge
that list is orthogonal I think to the squares
queen hinge
it does branches
actually maybe not hold on
elder kettle
Yeah it also shows zero contributions in november when I wrote 5,000 lines of networking code so I must have just changed my workflow or something
queen hinge
ok yeah it does not do branches
queen hinge
it's not loc, it's commits I think
it's commits
queen hinge
do you have a green square for that commit
I thought that was a commit to a non-main branch, but it is a commit to a main branch
can't find any of my other contributions to SU from the surrounding time period 
elder kettle
Idk where you got that from but you can generate those in space engine so you can go wherever you want in the universe and tune the exposure and stuff to get just the skybox you want
delicate delta
Idk where you got that from but you can generate those in space engine so you ca...
that's really cool I will check that out thank you
ivory verge
if you dont want realism there is also spacescape
maiden gazelle
I was scratching my head trying to remember spacescape
I searched for skyscape and was "huh, wasn't there something like this"
ivory verge
hehe been there done that
delicate delta
I can remove my unnecessary stb dependency by just storing gzips of rgba values and do a bare bones simple noise algorithm
stb doesn’t feel good in zig tbh and I don’t need it
I want to remove glfw too and just work directly with windows api eventually
I think eventually I can just a single dependency on the vulkan sdk being available
Although vulkan has a window thing iirc
delicate delta
I think gzipped bmp
I just want to always deal with one image format and, yesterdays texture headache will be totally avoided and stb can go in the bin and I will always know what bytes I have
queen hinge
gz each individual entry, throw it into a cpio, then apply xz twice
very efficient for file size
queen hinge
I want to remove glfw too and just work directly with windows api eventually
What about linux?
delicate delta
proton should work?
queen hinge
Although vulkan has a window thing iirc
Win32Surface, iirc
delicate delta
I will get a linux laptop and figure it out
queen hinge
gz each individual entry, throw it into a cpio, then apply xz twice
(I brute forced compressing the minecraft jar’s contents; don’t remember if with or without assets; at some point to try to maximize compression. I actually used lzma for that, but I believe xz is the same thing without as many checksums, so xz ends up with a smaller file size)
delicate delta
I don’t want to deal with wayland/x windows so using windows apis and linking proton or however that works for linux is the thought I have, but maybe a vulkan specific thing exists
delicate delta
(I brute forced compressing the minecraft jar’s contents; don’t remember if with...
I care more about ease of the asset pipeline and am not trying to maximize compression or reduce disk space
queen hinge
queen hinge
I don’t want to deal with wayland/x windows so using windows apis and linking pr...
Vulkan does not have a windowing API of its own
delicate delta
There is a thing
queen hinge
Hm?
queen hinge
Why is that funny
I had figured out that you weren’t trying to maximize compression
I was just continuing my talk about compression
delicate delta
A nm
I will try the win32 thing
I just care about making progress on my goals and not about needling into specific tech tbh. I think it’s great for learning though you are building a wide base of knowledge
delicate delta
Nah I think i will use sdl
I can live with a sdl as a single dependency
Maybe vma
delicate delta
I return an error from my uniform now when it's not initialized, and added panics for everywhere I was creating uniforms if that error is encountered and I have found like 4 scenes that are crashing now
5
holyshit more things
my uniforms are a disaster
lol
queen hinge
I tend to go with -1 for uninitialized uniforms and just let the implementer decide if they want to panic or not
queen hinge
java too has proper errors… other than that they’re slow
queen hinge
Do you have stacktraces?
delicate delta
errors don't cause the program to exit
you're just forced to handle it
you can choose to crash
and then yes you have a stack trace
queen hinge
Java gets the stacktrace to then provide the error with the stacktrace to the handler 
Even if the handler doesn’t care about the error object at all 
delicate delta
you should give zig a try, unless you like a stable language with good editor tooling and an ecosystem of any kind
queen hinge
I somewhat rely on an ecosystem and rely almost entirely on editor tooling
delicate delta
I just make my own ecosystem
delicate delta
literally zero plans to ever write anything in java
java is a great language and platform
I just don't plan on using is all, that wasn't intended as a slight
queen hinge
lol
java’s currently playing catchup to modern languages tbf
When it comes to the modern era, java is currently not great
delicate delta
I guess I fix all these issues then
I can't believe I have so many broken uniforms
hrmm
delicate delta
cool cool my shadowmaps were creating uniforms for textures for the depth pass
which weren't used or needed
that's gone, and those scenes work again
delicate delta
I need to test my scenes so I don't cause regressions like this
even with this uniform fix, I have to actually run the scene still to know it broke and I have so many scenes now
maybe a test scenes that just runs through all the scenes quickly
that's horrid
zinc trail
java issues: why is using a logging library so painful
also -1 for a uniform location is perfectly valid, just means its unused or optimized away, i wouldn't consider that an error. and if you say lookup block locations youll find they report -1 for certain things. but is still valid to upload to them, they more or less just no-op.
if anything id say its a warning at most
zinc trail
JNI is not fun
jni isnt as bad as i thought it was going to be when i tried it, granted no it isnt the nicest way to deal with stuff but it definitly can be worse
queen hinge
also -1 for a uniform location is perfectly valid, just means its unused or opti...
This
zinc trail
i will say there is something nice about cleaning up your shaders to not have unused stuff in it
delicate delta
it's not good for me I need those things to exist
i'm not making them to not exist
zinc trail
thats fair too, i just use introspection to dynamically get my uniform information so its sorta a non issue for my stuff
granite bolt
Is it possible it ignores branches or something?
Look if ur email in git config matches the one on thr github
delicate delta
I've just been fixing scenes since deccer pointed out my errors :(
found so much stuff that was broken I didn't know
nearly done
I'm never sharing my code ever again with anyone
that's the real lesson
delicate delta
@ivory verge there you go, here's why my cubemaps didn't work with bindless https://github.com/btipling/foundations/commit/eaaaf5c61b795a6b68086ccd82b2dad29b5eb0fc
thanks for looking at my code
I think I fixed all the shit
there was a lot of it
back to uh regular stuff I guess
ivory verge
<@194502965749350400> there you go, here's why my cubemaps didn't work with bind...
classic 😄
if you insist on using strings and have them map to the locations, you could setup shader reflection, ask the program (after linking it) to give you the list of active uniforms, which you then stuff in a dictionary of sorts, and whenever you .Uniform("typoedUniformHere", 3.14f); it checks whether that string exists in the dictionary or not and yells at you if it doesnt
delicate delta
Oh I can just declare the locations
In the shader
I am smort
No I don’t want to use strings
delicate delta
I am going to build a template tool in zig I am so over my shader mess
My own stb include
Just like go templates
for my asset pipeline
Compile time not run time
Straight to spirv sit in a compressed asset folder, one for each scene/level
With models, textures, materials etc
One file load instead of many, maybe bundle shared things
Hot reloading of assets
ivory verge
you could technically define a .h file
with #define SAMPLER_BASECOLOR_TEXTURE 0 etc
and share it in code and glsl
and use SAMPLER_BASECOLOR_TEXTURE in
layout(binding = SAMPLER_BASECOLOR_TEXTURE) uniform sampler2D u_base_color;
...
glBindTextureUnit(SAMPLER_BASECOLOR_TEXTURE, yourbaseColorTextureId);
Which is part of what I’m doing
My aut… fauderisms saved the day for once
ivory verge
i just use hard coded numbers, since i know which slot goes to what, and the bindings usually never change
queen hinge
mmm but that kills moddability
delicate delta
lol
what would anyone mod
there's nothing
0% percent anyone would want to mod anything I made
ivory verge
you would make it moddable by exposing a Renderer interface
and not just one tiny aspect of a specifically implemented - lets say - deferred renderer
and if you want to implement another deferred renderer for god knows reasons, just reimplement it the way you want
delicate delta
also all my projects and games are going to just be public on github with an MIT license so fully moddable if that was something people would ever want to do
wild ember
mmm but that kills moddability
just patch the binary 
. modern modders are lazy AF
elder kettle
As a compiled application moddability is dead anyways
Unless you have an extensive scripting API
E.g. the game code is written in script
delicate delta
Talented people will not taken open source game and steal it for profit, they will make their own game and people who want to play games will get it through steam unless the demand is high but your price is higher than the burden of going outside steam for non-technical players
So I like open source
elder kettle
Yeah the modularity is what makes modding something that becomes a big ecosystem though
So just making the game open source doesn't get you to that point
delicate delta
That’s fair, I don’t have any goals for it personally atm
elder kettle
Yeah just saying it's a more delicate thing than it might seem
If you want to do it natively you'd want to expose a dll interface so that people can load the mod code in a modular way
There's also the issue that native code mods are a security risk so makes partaking in a modding ecosystem more risky for users
delicate delta
Having said that if you want big publisher support or investment don’t open source
I don’t think it would help
Like if you’re pitching your game
They might have a license policy
I only know how this works in b2b saas not video game industry
ivory verge
adding mod capabilities is certainly a rabbit hole
elder kettle
I have a scheme to do it
Well just for certain things
Basically just a way for weapons to be added in DLLs
wild ember
My personal approach is just not to think about mods at all
ivory verge
yeah not for the first game anyway 🙂
zinc trail
i start with mod support that make my own life easier lmao
delicate delta
env mapping
delicate delta
that coordinate cross that shows the cardinal axes is so fucking helpful
idk why I waited so long to add it
delicate delta
what do you all think about SDL3's GPU API? https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL3/CategoryGPU It's like a new WebGPU
queen hinge
so much GPU
delicate delta
it's kind of like they made a better OpenGL/WebGPU, and you don't have to use wgsl
queen hinge
looks sorta like vulkan and directx to me
queen hinge
ok lemme correct myself: vulkan or directx if they were high level
delicate delta
right, I mean that sounds nice doesn't it?
queen hinge
(opengl to me is still opengl 3X and lower)
queen hinge
right, I mean that sounds nice doesn't it?
https://github.com/TheSpydog/SDL_gpu_examples/blob/979d6a6c9ecddea75ab80b07f61a826e6064e49b/Examples/TexturedQuad.c#L82-L83
so long as I don't have to keep my shaders as part of my pipeline
delicate delta
I don't really know how any of that works
queen hinge
a lot of my pipelines end up being the same thing but shader x instead of shader y and it's kinda annoying to deal with that
late jackal
what do you all think about SDL3's GPU API? https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL3/Catego...
it looks like it's kneecapped in the same way as webgpu
modern cross-platform API with limitations from the 2000s. no thanks
if you must ship a product on desktop and consoles, it might not be a bad choice
delicate delta
I would worry how to do more advanced techniques I'll read about using it, there would probably be a vulkan example
that I could find
probably not for this
delicate delta
The key to rendering photorealistic images is to properly account for light's behavior as it interacts with the objects in the scene.
Recording my notes of chapter 11 of GEA after having read it. A great chapter. Kind of an obvious point, but I like it anyway
100 page chapter heh
Basically a broad overview of a rendering engine
I now have 58 markdown files of notes in my note book repo
maiden gazelle
idk why I waited so long to add it
I should add it too
maiden gazelle
I guess I always had the same objects and walls right from the start, so I know my way around 😅 But if I toggled those off, it would be problematic yeah
delicate delta
every one of my scenes is a totally independent rendering without any kind of real mechanism to know up from down, it can be really disorienting once I moved away from the original camera position
so it was super helpful in my case, and especially helpful with cubemaps to understand if I did those correctly
and it helped me debug my env map
I could see that I yet again had another LH x up related issue
I was lost until I looked at the cross and realized oh something isn't being transformed into x up
(the normals of the cubemap in camera space)
in this particular case
it's probably less of an urgent issue if you're just going with basic RH Y up as the GL gods intended
I also do not impose any kind of orientation restriction on my camera, like the LOGL one limits you iirc from being able to end up looking upside down, I don't want that
my camera orientation is unique and so is my look at, I am really proud of my camera tbh
I can easily have multiple cameras with different characteristics
I use quaternions instead of three axis vectors
the camera produces that effect that makes my shuttle not appear stuck in the center of the screen as it orients around space
delicate delta
I gotta stop trying to read these 100 page GEA chapters in 1 day
I got 4 left, and one of them is like 40 pages and the rest are all over 100 pages I just have to like not rush
granite bolt
You will be so godlike after a year
delicate delta
It’s just a one time fixed cost to do this and then I don’t ever have to do it again
There’s no way I could have built all this context I have now by just “doing”, books work.
delicate delta
I actually think I like GLSL not at all
like fuck globals
normal mapping, worked first try
first thing I did I didn't have a LH x-up issue
thank god for tangent space
queen hinge
or is your normal map inverted or something
delicate delta
also I knew to store the LH in the w for the tangent vector thanks to Lengyel even though the opengl book didnt' say to
why
how is it inverted
delicate delta
I am going to put the actual texture on it
it's correct the way I have it
that light is on the the side of the crater in which the light is coming from
I need a skybox on this
delicate delta
ok
the earth comes with a height map and a normal map
let me try that one
you know at some point I'm going to just be mostly spending time making animations, models and materials
and very little coding
I'm going to use Houdini + Marmoset for all of that
just get good at making animations at some point and using those tools
I'm not going to use blender
queen hinge
Why not blender?
queen hinge
looks good
delicate delta
because it's not as good
marmoset is amazing for making materials
and houdini is really amazing for making character animations
it's not that much for an individual
you can get Houdini from steam
marmoset is also really great for baking in textures
granite bolt
It’s just a one time fixed cost to do this and then I don’t ever have to do it a...
Literally my mindset 
delicate delta
houdini is just amazing
do you use it for your project? I just am going to need a lot of good animation
I was looking at the videos for animating
wise imp
houdini for animation is meh
the main thing with houdini, is that its a toolkit of 3d art tools/anims/sims/etc
delicate delta
yes
wise imp
but not a program, a toolkit
delicate delta
hrm
wise imp
you can animate in houdini, but blender is better at that
where houdini becomes better than blender is when you have completely cracked and complicated rig systems
because in houdini all the bones/constraints/etc are in the node view and you can connect them with formulas, math, etc. You can use it to have very complicated semi-simulated animations and fancy rigs
this is not normally useful for typical game animation
delicate delta
I just want really good character animations
delicate delta
for like the npcs in my game
wise imp
i know a few other indie devs using this, its kind of a cheat code for mediocre animators
its main gimmick is that it does physical simulation alongside the animations
so its much easier to animate characters that move naturally with inertia and stuff
the AI-assisted is just investors/seobait, its not really AI, it works through physics simulations and fancy iks
delicate delta
I see
wise imp
the reason to use houdini is because you can use it for simply an absolute shitload of stuff
want some fancypants smoke particle fx? its literally the AAA standard there
want some terrains with procedural forests/roads/etc? also the AAA standard there
it comes built-in with a fuckload of scripts/tools/nodes for stuff like automatically optimizing meshes for games, baking AO textures, and processing photoscanned assets
delicate delta
nice
wise imp
on my VR game i used it to create a set of automatic optimizer "scripts"
using those nodes from the game-tools
so for example one i had which was a win was this:
I had a cave level, the cave level was made out of massive amounts of rock meshes just placed to build the cave walls. This was a lot of objects, and a lot of tris
the auto-optimizer with houdini was conected to unreal through the houdini engine plugin, and it grabbed all those rock meshes, booleaned them all together (to remove internal faces), and then, for each of their faces, raytraced against some point of interests in the map. The faces that are found to not be visible from those points got deleted.
After that, i ran a polygon reducer, biased by distance to those point of interest (to remove some polycount), and then the final optimized mesh, wich covered the whole level, got clusterized to split it into sections so that i can still frustum-cull them in-engine
delicate delta
wow, how much work was that?
seems like a lot
but sounds amazing
do you have a video?
wise imp
that was made in 1 hour
it was like 10 nodes
its considered "simple" for what people use houdini for
i also had a system that automatically optimized zbrush rocks. My artist made like 20 super-high-res rocks, i then loaded the 20 of them in houdini, polyreduced them, UV-d them all into the same texture for the 20 rocks, and did the AO/normal bakes, then saved it out of houding as 20 separate fbx files
that was pretty simple too
the downside of houdini is that the UI in general is atrociously bad
and its insanely complex a software
delicate delta
it does a lot
wise imp
there is just so much to it, its basically a massive SDK for tech-art stuff, and it has five programming languages on it
delicate delta
there's a lot of videos and tutorials for houdini
wise imp
houdiuni is so insanely massive you need to restrict yourself to a small area or its impossible
i mostly focused on the mesh/bakes/procgen stuff
delicate delta
I want to build small space station interiors and animate characters
wise imp
for character animation i already mention you dont really want it
delicate delta
right
wise imp
for space station interiors its def useful
you can create some semi-procedural assets that do autopaneling with decals and other fun things
there is some videos around it, lemme see if i can find it
there is a lot but this is a small example
delicate delta
yes just like that, thank you
I was looking at this for the animation https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/animation-workshop/
it looks more capable than blender to me, but I don't have any experience with it and you do
wise imp
dont really recomend it vs blender and specially cascadeur
the ui is just kinda bad, its slow to use
when you are doing something like a movie, the houdini utilities become much more useful
but game anims are a very different thing
houdini still has cool things for rigs, weightpainting, and animation retargetting
but the anims themselves you are better making them in blender or cascadeur
one thing i used houdini for is on the weight painting of the vertices to the bones
blender systems there frankly are just utter garbage
its been unchanged for 20 years, literally, and it was never good to begin with
thats why you see the arms on my game characters be wonky and stuff. the weights are not set properly
delicate delta
I didn't notice
looking at cascadeur
looks good too
thank you for giving me all that context, I appreciate it 🙏
delicate delta
I had a brutal lesson in what -1 from a uniform location means today
and also I hate not being able to use bindless with renderdoc
I thought what -1 meant was that it couldn't find the uniform
and that's kind of what it means, but what it does is if you don't use uniform get rid of it, so me staring at my fucking shader, looking at the uniform
seeing it is there
and getting a -1
well
I learned to check if it was actually being used
after some misery
ready for vulkan
and validation layers
late jackal
vulkan man, take me by the hand
delicate delta
ok height map added
ivory verge
mf is really going for the actual "Foundation", building worlds 😛
ivory verge
ok height map added
this is super cool already
delicate delta
thanks!
delicate delta
hey that's super realistic I don't think you've been to space
delicate delta
yeah I think the moon is so tiny and far away from the earth
I mean in real life
I have to share some of these in the zig game dev channel so they don't think I'm a scrub
I mean I am
anyway, back to more GEA I guess lol
ivory verge
moon is 280kkm away, and the earth diameter is ~12kkm
23 times the earth diameter is the moon away from earf
maiden gazelle
ok height map added
wesome
ivory verge
crazy how those numbers explode when you goto mars or further
ivory verge
play in the sand
delicate delta
280K km
not a place you're gonna want to forget something important when you leave
ivory verge
hehe
yeah
to the moon and back is not THAT terrible
i believe its 2-3 days per trip
mars is 3 months or so if the planet is close to us
or 6 months?
delicate delta
I really like looking at trees
like seriously
looking at leaves blow in the wind
ivory verge
you could bring a bonsai 😛 and a fan
ivory verge
i know i know
delicate delta
it is a cool idea
but that's a one way trip, I'm sure of it
the first people going aren't coming back
late jackal
or 6 months?
I think that's with minimal fuel expenditure
ivory verge
ye and we wont be having cost effective travelling back and forth on big shipz
mankind will destroy itself before that is going to happen
maiden gazelle
fuck mars is what I'm saying
Maybe it'll be terraformed some day
New fauna etc.
Could be interesting
maiden gazelle
mankind will destroy itself before that is going to happen
Probably
delicate delta
Maybe it'll be terraformed some day
that would be cool
ivory verge
yeah
delicate delta
I should build a gltf importer
tired of not having one
maybe take a break from reading just to get this
the next GEA chapter is animation anyway
hard to do any animating without some kind of animation thing
this is just going to delay vulkan though
maybe I power through the CGPOC book
CGPOC, vulkan, gltf, finish GEA and the rest of the books
I got to get out of this GL hole
ivory verge
none of the things you mentioned are going to run away 🙂
delicate delta
right, it's more about making progress on original goals and not leaving sight of them
delicate delta
but I guess with learning comes new information which can result in different decisions being revisited
ivory verge
and i also liked the funny looking blocken game thing before with the funny enderman-like people 😄
delicate delta
man I had no idea what I was doing, amazing how much progress I made
ivory verge
thats unbelievable
delicate delta
I could probably build a lot of that now in much less time and it would be way better
I think literally everything was in its own coordinate system
ivory verge
hehe
i feel quite the opposite these days
when i saw the planes thing on those screenshots i shared the other day
i was like wtf, i made this
i dont feel as capable as i was, its weird
delicate delta
it's still all there!
my thing is, I have done the jump around project thing, it doesn't lead to anything, I want to have something to show for my spare time
ivory verge
perhaps a reboot of blocken
delicate delta
that's the real goal, just to have something to point to that I did that I'm proud of and is worth showing off
nah I am going to build my little robot escape game idea
ivory verge
when you land your ships from space on any planet hehe, you get that blocky world or so
ah
delicate delta
no more open world voxel engines for me
you got like three of these types of voxel game community threads active on this server
ivory verge
i will support any idea you have
delicate delta
vulpengine, horde engine and project ascendant
don't need a blockens engine lol
their tech is so amazing
ivory verge
: )
perhaps you can make the enderman like person live in the new game though, he/she was really cool 😄
delicate delta
oh yeah for sure
the game idea I have is an obsolete old worker robot on a space station trying to escape reclamation
the maps wil sort of be like original Doom maps, though without having any combat capabilities, just puzzle solving and trying to get away from traps and things chasing you
ivory verge
ah thats a cool idea
delicate delta
I really want to limit the scale to be achievable
just build one level at a time
focus on gameplay without making any of it look good at first
ivory verge
the robot needs to reach the emergency capsule of sorts?
delicate delta
I think the idea is that throughout the game the robot becomes to care about more than just their own survival
and that escaping the end result is not really possible
spoilers sorry
the end cannot be avoided, but perhaps it can be made more meaningful
ivory verge
i see
delicate delta
like side quests to help others, multiple story lines, but all in a small game that's easy to make
ivory verge
im looking forward to play : )
delicate delta
me too
the problems I had in the last week and yesterday with uniforms and textures has really pushed me more to try out Vulkan. I have to load so many textures now, with cubes, height maps, normal maps, shadows and multiple objects and with bindless it's trivial, they just work, with non-bindless holy shit. I think if I was just not doing bindless this would probably be less painful than trying to maintain bindless and keep renderdoc working, and my issues with uniforms, which cost me like 3-5 hours yesterday, mostly to learn how uniforms in GL actually work, was brutal. I'm not making an argument against GL I just want to try validation layers and live the bindless life fully
it's also just a problem with how I wrote some of the code to be generic which I am just not going to do that anymore
no more generic code, everything will be hand crafted to the scene. I will want some shader building templating tools though to avoid code duplication, but I rather have duplication than some kind of generic shader generator that just causes more work in the long run everytime I want to do something new and different
we'll see maybe I end up hating 
ok ok back to work
ivory verge
: )
a year ago or so
before that actually, because i got that rtx4070 a year ago pretty much
but before that i didnt have any bindless support, so i was forced to be a bit smort about my shit
and shedding a bike is always fun 🙂 i setup various texture2darrays for all my textures
and sorted all of them into buckets, one per resolution
and had an ivec2 pointing at and into the bucket
i think i used 8 texture2d arrays, to cover resolutions from 4096 down to whatever there was 32x32 or so
delicate delta
hrm so for one texture you had multiple resolutions? is that to save gpu memory?
I have just been loading the full resolution and mipmapping but these are just simple learning scenes and they don't exactly load fast when I load 8k textures
and big 3d models all blocking on the main thread
I got frames that last like a good few seconds atm :D
I'm just focused on learning the graphics techniques
delicate delta
ohh
ivory verge
some where 1024x1024 some were just 128x128
with their dimensions i knew into which bucket they go when i upload the pixel data
delicate delta
I was looking at some zig packing libraries a while back
ivory verge
with packing i dont mean packing textures into an atlas
but that would be yet another option
delicate delta
with packing i dont mean packing textures into an atlas
I understood it just made me think of packing though, packing probably doesn't always make sense
or reminded me of it
hrm
ivory verge
ah
packing is a tiny bit tricky
not the packing itself, thats somewhat solved
but whether you leave some space between the tiles or not
delicate delta
oh right
delicate delta
when i saw the planes thing on those screenshots i shared the other day
where did you share these btw? I didn't see this
ivory verge
where did you share these btw? I didn't see this
uh good question
i keep forgetting where i post shit
i think i abused Jake's post
ivory verge
or lofty lagoon 😄
late jackal
lofty lagoop
ivory verge
#1126099727621046332 message
apparently it was splitscreen 😄
2 people could fly around at the same time
using the keyboard hehe
delicate delta
the same keyboard?
that's really cool, this is with delphi?
are those mountains geometry?
how did you render those
I love this color scehme
ivory verge
are those mountains geometry?
haha no 😄 thats supposed to be a sky cube, but the cube was just a big ass box, not a proper skybox
ivory verge
i think that was the stock win2k colorscheme
ah but all the color gradients were custom
i was inspired by that other engine, i keep forgetting its name, not leadwerks but something similar, froyok will probably know 🙂
ivory verge
yes?
delicate delta
how do you install AOL on that
late jackal
Ahead of Linux
ivory verge
win95, win98, win98se, winme, win2k, winxp, winxp64, vista very very briefly, win7, win8, win81, win10
delicate delta
the full tour
ivory verge
ye, win11 only for work
ivory verge
ah no, my pc has a win11 partition too
ivory verge
win8 was not any badder, tbh, the only weird thing was winrt apps and the menu, but i didnt mind really, i hardly spend time in the menu to be upset about not being able to see the bloody wallpaper
delicate delta
I feel really old suddenly
delicate delta
I logged on to BBS
my dad had a work computer which was like a mac from Olympia where he worked, a german computer company
ivory verge
BBSes are so cool
ivory verge
uh thats cool
ivory verge
i miss the old green and amber phosphor CRTs
ah speaking of pcs
i was also exposed to apple hardware
not the first ones, but shit that existed in the 90s... i remember apple powerbook 150 something
and two or three different powermacs for desktop
256 colors and flat crt somehow
macos 4, till 8
and some cool games... Loom, Hellcats and Shufflepuck
ivory verge
yeah, like the BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRZZZZT degaussing sound when you switched them on 😄
delicate delta
the loudest thing I ever had was the zip disk
it had like a really loud physical clicking sound
ivory verge
i always wanted one 🙂
delicate delta
they were awful
ivory verge
yeah
i think i eventually got one right before nobody would use them anymore
and never used it for anything either
delicate delta
it's good, because you would have lost whatever you stored on them
ivory verge
unlike the CD and CD-R drives 😄 the early burner drives with special caddies
delicate delta
man I wish the minidisc had taken off
delicate delta
I saw minidisk players in japan when I was stationed in okinawa and wanted to get one, seemed like they flopped as soon as they arrived
ivory verge
yeah
i wanted one back then too, and much much later, like 10 years ago or so i tried to see if i can get some second hand or so
but they are too expensive 😄
delicate delta
I am not surprised, floppy disks are expensive too now
ivory verge
there is 1 guy left on the planet
who keeps buying all stock when possible
and from him you can still buy packs of floppies
delicate delta
:|
ivory verge
airlines buy from him too 😄
delicate delta
that's a cool business
ivory verge
i think its a german dude, old fart
delicate delta
I'm glad my flight's safety is in the hands of floppy disk technologies
ivory verge
and the subway in NYC too
wild ember
I am not surprised, floppy disks are expensive too now
I have a ton of em, you need some? 🤣
ivory verge
: )
delicate delta
I have a ton of em, you need some? 🤣
there's your retirement fund, pure gold
delicate delta
I'm making my own little stb_include I'm so over my awful shader situation I just want include and defines, it's going to start of being really basic, a new executable in my build.zig
even at a most basic level it will be 100x better than my current situation
zinc trail
Glsl supports defines already though. You don't need custom preprocessor for it
#include tho you'll want it. It's really nice
ivory verge
i suppose bjorn was saying that he will write his own because zig cant wrap headers only? or can it?
zinc trail
No clue but in glsl code you can happily define. ifdef if defined etc
That stuff works. There's also an extention for native #include but I wouldn't rely on that
ivory verge
yes thats out of ze question
zinc trail
I've tried it and it does work but mann
delicate delta
yeah I don't want those
I want to be able to see the compiled shader source as it will be linked
it's nice those are valid GLSL though because I don't want my template system to break the GLSL syntax highlighting
I'm basically going to overload define and include to mean what I want them to mean for me
I don't know what wrap header only means
zinc trail
The way I do it is I just have a section of defines dynamically generated for the stb include
delicate delta
yeah I am basically going to make my own stb include to avoid the Cisms of it
I mean it's already in progress
zinc trail
I probably will as well since stb include isn't actively worked on and doesn't support the features I want anyhow
delicate delta
I am going to get rid of stb_image also by just using gzipped bmps
and then stb_perlin I want to remove also with a simple noise function, I barely use it
I think my dependencies will just be vulkan sdk, vulkan memory allocator, and vulkan zig bindings and SDL
SDL has audio that's good enough if not something else, and idk how far I can get without something like jolt or bullet
I am going to write my own glft importer
zinc trail
Crazy
delicate delta
why?
it's a pretty straightforward spec
just json with some binary blobs at the end
zinc trail
Not actuslly crazy. I'm just losing my mind.
Like all of what you said there is reasonable
delicate delta
taking me a bit, my actual day job is basically a 24 hour a day job at this point constantly interrupting my life, weekends, nights and evenings, every day
I got this far today
$ zig build fssc -- --source .\src\foundations\scenes\cgpoc\chapter10\surface_detail\earth_frag.glsl --name earth_frag_improved --output .\src\foundations\scenes\cgpoc\chapter10\surface_detail\
Starting compiler.
args:
--source .\src\foundations\scenes\cgpoc\chapter10\surface_detail\earth_frag.glsl
--output .\src\foundations\scenes\cgpoc\chapter10\surface_detail\
--name: earth_frag_improved
file path C:\Users\swart\projects\foundations\.\src\foundations\scenes\cgpoc\chapter10\surface_detail\earth_frag.glsl
numbytes: 836
Found 1 includes.
src/foundations/shaders/f_calc_new_normal.glsl
Compiler finished.
so close
wild ember
What is your day job btw?
ivory verge
inb4 keeping frogs out of nuclear launch sites
delicate delta
I am a tech lead for an engineering team at a security/identity/access management startup
delicate delta
well we don't provide single sign on as a service, we just help you manage access to your employees and review that access
like automatic onboarding
and compliance stuff
ivory verge
ah so more like HCIM/HRIS
ivory verge
human capital/human resources stuff
delicate delta
it's more security and compliance, it's super cross team stuff
like IT, HR, security
ivory verge
i see
delicate delta
so we have customers who operate at IST time
ivory verge
good, its not workday or icims 🙂
delicate delta
and that's been keeping me up
well we have a workday connector
and also we have potential customers we're trying to make successful and convert to paying customers and that requires being super responsive at any hour
ivory verge
oof
wild ember
Rough
wild ember
There's pros and cons to working for a giant corporation
But at least my schedule is pretty stable
delicate delta
yes, I have been working at startups my entire career except when the startup was acquired so had a couple of times I ended up at a large corp before going to the next startup
I really don't like working at big corps
it's hard work at startup, but everything you do matters
there's no working a year on something that never sees the light of day
delicate delta
my compiler works
I can't use it yet, because I need it to generate both a bindless and non-bindless version for when textures are present and I am so over this
having to worry about both bindless and not
you know
I'll just have two source files for now I don't care
I am going to go vulkan soon
merry surge
I am going to go vulkan soon
delicate delta
I am going to just add my shader compiler to my zig build as a build step command and it will build my shaders automatically
So I have both an executable i can run at will or just import the code the binary uses as part of the build
Just zig things. When your build system is the same language at your application source code
I haven’t built a non-zig target build step before so will have to look that up
delicate delta
Or maybe run it as a comptime tool?
I can just string replace the bindless layout with a texture unit number thst increments and not actually write the output
Embed both versions
delicate delta
I hate non-bindless
const needle: []const u8 = "layout(bindless_sampler)";
const needle_len: usize = needle.len;
pub fn replaceBindless(
bytes: []const u8,
locations: []const usize,
) !struct { bytes: []const u8, loc: usize } {
var buf: [50]u8 = undefined;
var linesIterator = std.mem.splitScalar(u8, bytes, '\n');
var loc: usize = 0;
while (linesIterator.next()) |line| {
const replacement_buf = " " ** needle_len;
if (line.len < needle_len) continue;
if (!std.mem.eql(line[0..needle_len], needle)) continue;
const replacement = try std.fmt.bufPrint(
&buf,
"layout(binding={d})",
.{locations[loc]},
);
@memcpy(replacement_buf[0..replacement.len], replacement);
@memcpy(line[0..needle_len], replacement_buf[0..needle_len]);
loc += 1;
if (loc == locations.len) return;
}
}
for making me write code like that
I think this will work
it's close to something that will work
once this works I don't have to worry about non-bindless too much anymore though
delicate delta
this has to be the worst code I have ever written
anyway
back to rendering stuff
zinc trail
the code isnt bad if it works 
delicate delta
you know what I was thinking was
what if I wanted to update one of my structs, that's in like every shader, my camera struct
I would have to update every shader
this situation is better now mostly
I am doing the compile still at runtime because I wanted to see how that worked it worked well, it is slower though, but I can actually update my shader code now without rebuilding
elder kettle
Ah I thought you were referring to the interface structs
like the data you pass into the program
delicate delta
the thing I built is both an executable and something I load in as run time
I meant the ubo ssbo structs
delicate delta
not yet
elder kettle
Don't the inputs have fixed layouts
delicate delta
yeah those I couldn't update without rebuilding
I want to get to hot reloading
zig doesn't have translation units like C++ or C
you have to like intentionally create a translation unit
I mean there are TUs, but it's not at all the same
delicate delta
so excited about how nice it will be now to write lots of good shader code, reusable and everything, no more worrying about bindless or application code getting in the way
I'm going to write some right now
elder kettle
I am tempted to try Vcc or some of those new fancy shader things but I think they're not ready yet
delicate delta
what's a Vcc let me look hrmm
elder kettle
gob's experimental C++-to-SPIR-V compiler
delicate delta
ohh I see
yeah zig has zig to spirv
I can't use it with gl as I understand it, it mostly just works in compute atm iirc
elder kettle
I started using stb_include as of a couple months ago for my more complex foliage pipeline stuff and yeah shader includes are very handy
delicate delta
it's also experimental
yeah if I were writing C or C++ I would use stb but I'm trying to get rid of it in my zig
it's too unzig like
elder kettle
ah
delicate delta
I got all these tools now, I make a new scene, I add a camera, I add my little axis cross, boom stuff shows up, it's nice
a lot of work already put into this
a little bit of boiler plate for each object I add, I'll have to make that better
I need more of a callback thing
define callbacks on my objects instead of dropping the functions in my scenes or something
merry surge
```rs
const needle: []const u8 = "layout(bindless_sampler)";
const needle_len: ...
and people say C++ is unreadable
delicate delta
it's pretty readable, you're just not used to it!
I think C++ is readable though 🤔
merry surge
yeah I was just joking I can read it if I go through it carefully
delicate delta
I think ruby and lisp is unreadable
merry surge
after all this time I can just look at C++ and basically instantly see what's going on
delicate delta
give me curly braces or give me death
my zig is not good zig, also that code doesn't work, I just wrote it thinking it would work
the gist shows what actually worked
and it's nothing like what I initially wrote
I was not close :/
the gist is much worse
merry surge
I like being able to return anonymous structs
delicate delta
all these splits and shit in std.mem are immutable and I'm trying to write to these things so I don't have to allocate memory weirdly
merry surge
man what if we just had a C++ 2 that ditched a lot of the compatibility with C and older versions to just fix up some things and make it a better lang
merry surge
no D has a completely different syntax
delicate delta
I'm sure someone uses it
wise imp
Circle with some of the features enabled that fix old cpp shit is kinda that
delicate delta
trying out a hardware tessellator thingy
oh I wonder what it looks like in renderdoc
ivory verge
you dont need all that layout(bindless_sampler) bs
i suppose you usually dont pass individual bindless handles via programuniform64nv
you stuff texturehandles into a boofer and make use of the int64_t extension, which you can just enable
and then texture(sampler2D(material.base_color_texture), v_uv)...
delicate delta
yeah
cool the mesh viewer is useless
maybe I need a more complex tessallation thingy
texture(sampler2D(material.base_color_texture), v_uv)...
I like this
I already have a materials buffer
so that makes sense
that ain't going to work with uh renderdoc though I think?
ok checking nsight then going to bed
ivory verge
it will work in renderdoc
but
not for bindless handles, remember
the "good" thing is
64bit texture handles can be represented by a i or uvec2
and a i/uvec2 you can use to address texture atlasses as i described ages ago
delicate delta
ah
ivory verge
you have resolution based texture2Darrays, lets say 8 of them
where each represents a fixed resolution, from 32x32 up to 4096x4096, that should cover most if not all texture needs
delicate delta
right I remember you saying this
ivory verge
and then you use the uvec2 to texture(u_textures[uvec2.x], uvec2.y, v_uv)...
the only caveat is the spooky nonuniform access bs, where you would need to employ a bit of shader magic, if you searchbox-text for NonUniformIndex
hmm actually im not sure on the stuff i just removed
ivory verge
its pretty much the same
you get another parameter you have to pass into the sampling function, for texture2Darrays its just the layer
delicate delta
yeah they seem like a nice way to just send a whole bunch of textures in one buffer and then you only need one sampler? that's cool
I think I get it
so you don't run out of texture units and have to manage them
ivory verge
potentially there could be a problem, now that i think about it
SAMPLER being the key here 😄
delicate delta
oh is it doing like bilinear sampling across the textures
ivory verge
perhaps your scene requires more than one specific sampler (min/mag/warpR/warpS)
then you need a bit of permutation galore, or you split your draws across those
but even finking further, perhaps the idea of encoding textures like i just described makes no sense at all for that sort of thing, and you are perhaps fucked when you need more than 1 sampler
samplers can be "embedded" into texture objects directly, thats what the whole glGenTextures+glTexParameterx... does... or you can have them separated... texture objects (glcreatetextures+glTextureStorage) and sampler objects glCreateSamplers+glSamplerParameter... and setup min/mag/warpr/warps there
delicate delta
so much I don't know :\
I am going to bed gn some more tessallation tomorrow I think
ivory verge
oki 🙂 🇬🇳
i keep thinking out loud for another minute
you still do glBindTextureUnit... as usual with texture2darrays
and if you split your draws across different samplers because you need one cube nearest filtered for some reason, you can just draw that cube then with glBindSampler(...the_sampler_with_nearest_filtereing) and keep the rest as is
materialindex is encoded into your instancedata ubo/ssbo perhaps
// vs
layout(index = ...) flat out int v_material_index;
...
layout (binding = 0) uniform GlobalUniforms
{
mat4 ProjectionMatrix;
mat4 ViewMatrix;
...
};
layout (binding = 1) buffer readonly InstanceBuffer
{
mat4 WorldMatrix;
ivec4 InstanceData;
};
void main()
{
GpuInstance instance = InstanceBuffer.Instances[gl_DrawID];
v_material_index = instance.Material.x;
gl_Position = p * v * instance.WorldMatrix * vec4(i_position, 1.0);
}
// fs
uint NonUniformIndex(...) {
// searchbox find that function... look for BayBoyKiller's thing
}
...
layout(index = ...) flat int in v_material_index;
...
struct GpuMaterial
{
vec4 BaseColor;
vec4 BaseFactors; // xyzw = normal strength, metalness/roughness factor, emissive strength
uvec2 BaseColorTextureIndex;
uvec2 NormalTextureIndex;
uvec2 ArmTextureIndex; // arm = ambientocclusion/roughness/metalness
uvec2 EmissiveTextureIndex;
};
layout(binding = 0) buffer readonly MaterialBuffer
{
GpuMaterial Materials[];
};
layout(binding = 8) sampler2Darray u_textures[8];
void main()
{
GpuMaterial material = MaterialBuffer.Materials[v_material_index];
o_color = texture2D(u_textures[NonUniformIndex(material.BaseColorTextureIndex.x)], material.BaseColorTextureIndex.y, v_uv);
}
for the bindless path you can reuse the texture indices as handles and just sampler2D(...) them
i think i would also have 2 physical fragment shaders then, one for bindless and one for nonbindless and not do #ifdef magic, since im controlling that from my cpp code anyway whether i support bindless or not
delicate delta
I like that setup, a lot. I don’t have anything that fancy. That’s a nice structure.
ivory verge
i just noticed the instancebuffer thing is wrong up there
struct GpuInstance
{
mat4 WorldMatrix;
ivec4 InstanceData;
};
layout(..., std430) buffer readonly InstanceBuffer
{
GpuInstance Instances[];
}
Hey bjorn, what brands do you test on?
delicate delta
What type of brands do you mean?
queen hinge
AMD and NVIDIA are the most important ones to test on tbh
Not testing on AMD, especially with vulkan, is signing up for disaster
ivory verge
that applies to OpenGL as well
there is a lot of shit nvidia silently will just accept, which intel/amd dont
delicate delta
As long as it works for me I am good
In the off chance someone would want to run something I make it will always be MIT licensed and on GitHub but I am not supporting that use case
delicate delta
I don't want it to be broken on amd though tbh, I just don't have the hardware to test it on right now
yall if I get a linux machine will it actually work, or is linux still a meme
like will I be able to print stuff on a printer out of the box, can I copy text from one app to another, can I like install vs code and run my sdl vulkan app and it just works
ivory verge
we are all here to help 🙂 and we have different hardware too
i dont use printers anymore, so i cant tell, but everything else you said works
delicate delta
that's good, that's all I need then
ivory verge
printers are supposed to also work, especially older models
delicate delta
all I will do is use a browser, a pdf reader, and vs code
I am going to use DCC apps on windows, like Houdini, Blender Marmoset Maya whatever
ivory verge
blender works on lunix just fine too
linux distros can be daunting though
perhaps get a spare sata3 ssd, plug it in and install 2 or 3 different ones - at a time - on that one and then boot menu into that one, dont dual boot
delicate delta
I use linux for my dev server at work, a mac for where I code, all because I have to
yeah I don't want to dual boot
I will have a windows desktop and laptop still, this is just an extra linux amd laptop
ivory verge
i have windows on a dedicated ssd, linux too and games on a shared nvme
i use the bios boot menu to chose what to boot
ivory verge
yea
ivory verge
i stay away from wayland, its not ready yet, i think
delicate delta
getting back to writing some code
going to make this more interesting
it's just so much easier to write shaders now, man that include thing was worth the time I spent on it jfc
I was so miserable with my app shader abstraction
delicate delta
ivory verge
NURBS generator 2024
delicate delta
what's a nurbs
delicate delta
I'm just following the example in the book, this is a bezier surface
ivory verge
its splines spanned across a surface, with control points
elder kettle
It's like bezier surfaces but more general
delicate delta
yeah this has control points, and it's a tessellation shader ya
ivory verge
hehe
it was gluNurb back in the dark ages not just glunurb, also glMap/glMapGrid, glEvalCoord/glEvalMesh and friends
delicate delta
gonna put a texture on this 😅
ivory verge
crazy how much fixed pipeline crap is in opengl 😄
delicate delta
they had to do all that before stages were programmable yeah, and they're like lets stop adding more and let people just write these things themselves
ivory verge
yeah
delicate delta
what's a good place to find free textures?
delicate delta
my notes are terrible I remember Jake shared something and I wrote it down but I can't find it now
delicate delta
thank you!
wild ember
the first one requires a license for commercial use, but he sells them for very cheap
free for non commercial uses tho
delicate delta
yeah this is just for my little learning scene here
the texture in the book is too low res
wild ember
yeah you can get pretty good resolutions stuff at all these places
delicate delta
thank you so much!
delicate delta
ezpz
and works in renderdoc pretty much automatically with no extra shader or heartaches 
ivory verge
when you inspect stuff in renderdoc (or any other api debugger)
keep the events on draw/dispatch/clear/blit focused
everything else in between is somehow in between and might not show the ackchual state
ivory verge
opengl is a state machine, and you prepare state for actual draw/dispatch commands
with glEnable(GL_THISORTHAT), glCullFace, glWhatever, glBindThisAndWhatnot
delicate delta
it's np
right, I do when I'm debugging the data, I just wanted to see the texture load
ivory verge
i also seem to be typing words which i didnt mean to type sometimes, idk whats wrong with me
delicate delta
I understood
ivory verge
to see if the texture loaded there is another simple trick
label your shit, with glObjectLabel
ivory verge
and then when capturing make sure to select "Ref All Resources" or something, and then you can just go into View -> Resources, and find it there, you will also see then where its being used
delicate delta
thanks
ivory verge
debug groups is another thing, yeah, handy for grouping your commands as a visual aid in the debugger
delicate delta
I don't render a lot in these small scenes
ivory verge
thats ok
delicate delta
but I should use them to get used to it
ivory verge
but if you have stuff like "depth prepass", "geometry pass", "resolve geometry pass", "ao", "idkwhatelse"
delicate delta
right
ivory verge
not a must ofc, but its handy 🙂
delicate delta
this is a great video
instruction cache misses are an interesting topic
anyway
back to tessellation
that's an unfortunate thumbnail though
late jackal
#1147711082702589973 has competition
elder kettle
Moon level DLC
delicate delta
elder kettle
Are the colors from normals or purely from a texture
elder kettle
Yeah something is strange
wait a minute
do you have an actual heightmap or are you just using the color map as the height
that would explain why both look wrong, it's making one side of the crater a ridge and the other side a valley
Go grab a proper displacement map
delicate delta
oh for this example the book has just the color map
but for the next it has a proper height map
I'm just following along in the book
that nasa site is great
elder kettle
delicate delta
let me try this next example in the book
delicate delta
this example only has the one texture, the next has a height map, a normals map and a texture
elder kettle
cool
delicate delta
your moon looks fantastic though
elder kettle
Yeah ignore me then you'll get the correct results later
that's the heightmap
Actually maybe it's a normal map I forget
yeah it's a normal map
I differentiated the heightmap to get that
Or rather calculated the normal on it
Because it wasn't a very subdivided sphere it was rather coarse actually
no tesellation
delicate delta
ah
it looks just amazing though
the moon is pretty
Rosy wants me to pay attention to her instead of the moon though
queen hinge
Looks more like volumetrics to me
elder kettle
It's literally just a sprite on the screen lol
delicate delta
looks super
elder kettle
simple and effective
queen hinge
Looks more like volumetrics to me
(Godrays are technically volumetrics)
elder kettle
opened gimp > 2048x2048 black image, filters > supernova and then played with it and added a bit of dithering until it looked good
The magic part was using a GPU query of the number of passed samples of the sun disk to decide whether or not to draw the sprite
that's why it hides when the sun is occluded
One of those outrageously simple and effective smoke and mirror hacks that can make some sweet looking graphics
delicate delta
it works really well here
delicate delta
alright back to moon stuff