Hi, i am a noob but i am trying hard and reading a lot to diminish the noobines.

I would like to have a result in the rendered images where the edges of my geometry are catching highlights.
Instead of edge beveling and adding more geometry is there a shader that
can do that during rendering?

i am looking for ab effect similar to TB's Edge Bevel Shader in LW

http://home.att.ne.jp/omega/tabo/3dlabo/p_lwp.html [home.att.ne.jp]

J.B.

no one ? :-(

at least any ideas where to start creating a shader that does that :-)
(apart from emailing TB and begging him to help :-) )

it is not so important for me just to start swimming in deep waters of
shader writing …

JB

I can't read Japanese, so if you can describe what the shader is doing, in simple math terms, I can probably make some suggestions. It's not obvious to me from the visuals.

Cheers,

Peter B

ok here is a babelfish translation
(for those who dont know check this http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr [babelfish.altavista.com] )


“The edge part of object is detected at the time in rendering, in order the object which is not bevelled by the fact that normal line around fluctuates, to be properly bevelled just, it is the plug in which rendering is done.”

i dont understand much since Japanese linguistic structure eludes me as well :-) but i suppose roughly what i get is

during rendertime :
1)detect edges
2)detect normal of each edge
3)“fluctuate” normal of edge ?probably according the axis of the edge itself?
4)or (if this can be done) “fluctate” the edge it self (back and forth?_ for some
degrees in order to sweep 1 of a quarter of a tube with the edge…

:-) plese dont laugh a lot at my explanation i may be a mathematician but dont have much practical experience in CG
(Advanced Algebra and Diff Geometry was my main field back then…)

keeping in mind that this plugin is for lightwave where no edges exist in the front end at least …

JB

I think he is talking about a shader that simulates edge beveling.

There is a shader like that for 3dstudio called f-Edge . I have attached a picture to better explane it.

You can take a look at the html help that comes with it to understand how it works.

http://www.ddag.org/f-Edge/f-Edge103.zip [ddag.org]

http://www.happy-digital.com/edgefx.asp [happy-digital.com]

Here is another similar plugin/shader for LW that is commercial tho…

my main “quest” with this is merely an excuse to get deep in shader creation
or at least scratch the surface that is on top of the surface that is on top of the surface….(kind like sss) .

that japanese guy TB has also some projects with renderman but i cannot find a contact or an email ….

..JB..

http://www.highend3d.com/xsi/tutorials/rendering/240-2.html [highend3d.com]

this is a tutorial for XSI's render tree how to fake this beveling stuff …
i guess it is a good place since one can study the network and try to mimic it…


J.

ok…does this mean anything to u ? :-)

http://www.renderman.org/RMR/Shaders/RCShaders/round.sl [renderman.org]

iam trying to decypher it all along


J.

That's hilarious, I was _just_ about to post the link to the round() shader, but you beat me to it )

That's very close though not ideal. Too sleepy to think more about it.

I got the XSI hack one working in about 10 minutes in VOPs (it's even easier in Houdini, you don't need to use the compositor to process the image and you can save the UVs out with the Save Texture UV command on the RMB of the UV Unwrap SOP) but it's a hack IMHO since you need to make a texture map for each object, it's really no better than actually beveling the model…

However, it does look pretty good and should be usable as displacement or just “bump” mapping. I'll try to post it up sometime when I'm awake )

Cheers,

Peter B

http://www.eovia3d.net/showthread.php?t=4477 [eovia3d.net]

cheers peter i beter get some sleep too :-)
Have an early call to go to IKEA and buy some furniture ….
lots of bevelled edges there….


nite

JB.

Greetings, I recently finished creating such shader for Unity. The thing is that it will not work with a regular mesh: it needs to have 3 more normal vectors added to each vertex, so I had to make a custom mesh editor.

I wrote a small article about it. [www.quizcanners.com]