Basic HLSL Lighting Techniques - Episode 8

In this clip you can see my multi pass planet shader in action, rendering the color, bump, glow and reflection maps first, then waves, then clouds followed by 2 atmosphere passes.

I got the music from here:www.myspace.com/iamthismusic after finding this YouTube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr388NFVxaM&feature=channel_page

As ever you can check out all the code for this on my blog here: http://www.xna-uk.net/blogs/randomchaos

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• XNA
• RandomChaos
• XNA-UK UG
• HLSL

[zer0sumGames]

I got this code semi-working in my game but the snag is that the upper outer atmosphere has a very hard edge to it as opposed to the dithered edge in your video. Any thoughts about why that might happen?

[NemoKradXNA]

@zer0sumGames hmmm, not without seeing your implementation really, the original sample was double rendering, if you are still doing that, try removing it, but you will then have to play about with the intensity of the out put...

[defragen1]

x-com

[NemoKradXNA]

@defragen1 lol, yes, I loved that game..

[pandora2043]

dude... that looks great!!

all the fine details like lit cities and moving atmosphere!

one thing you could add to make look even better: auroras on the north and southpole!!

[NemoKradXNA]

Sure, use it wherever you like, as long as you credit the source I don't have a problem.

Yes, the specular is way to high, but you can adjust that too, or as you did, remove it :)

I have like a million and one things on at the moment, but if I do create another planet shader, like all my stuff I will post it :)

[Nyphur]

Yeah, I made the same adjustments and it looks a lot better. I also removed the specular as it seems to look bad on planets. Do you mind if I use this shader in a project I'm working on? I may write my own eventually but yours is good for my purposes and runs pretty fast. If you do write a new one, post a video! I'd be very interested to see it.

[NemoKradXNA]

Yes, took the loop from another shunk of code. Remove the loop. You can raise the brightness on the clouds by doing this in the shader output.Color = (clouds + cloudsN) * 2;

Having ran it now, I really don't like this shader now lol, must do better in future..

[NemoKradXNA]

I am downloading the sample now. In the shader I recall making a few adjustments for brightness. As I say, I'll take a look.. :)