On 7/19/2015 2:47 AM, Nekar Xenos wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 22:43:39 +0200, Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom>
> wrote:
>
>> On 7/16/2015 6:24 AM, scott wrote:
>>>> I would like to be able to do real-time visualizations of my paint
>>>> scenes. I
>>>> don't know of any game engine does blobs or metaballs, but maybe
>>>> some-one here
>>>> knows of something that could do the job.
>>>
>>> I don't know of any game engine that does it, but you will find some
>>> examples of real-time metaballs on shadertoy.com eg:
>>>
>>> https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ld2GRz
>>>
>>> I don't know exactly what type of data you want to visualise, but you
>>> might be able to edit the script (that one is fairly straightforward to
>>> see how it's moving the blobs) to show your data instead.
>>>
>> Think the term that should be looked for is.. "voxel"? I know that
>> they opted to use them for the new Everquest Next. And a quick google
>> shows..
>>
>> Voxel Farm - not sure this is an engine, or a service.
>> http://www.atomontage.com/ - Think its an engine, from a quick look.
>> http://www.blackvoxel.com/ - definitely an engine, except, it looks
>> like its more minecraft (i.e., doesn't employ smoothing of geometry).
>>
>> Think that is the major issue with these engines. Some support
>> smoothing, which is to say, they function as metaballs, and others
>> just do blocks, like minecraft. :p The first two above look to be
>> "smoothed".
>>
>> Looking for "voxel engine smooth" tends to net just terrain, not
>> objects, sadly...
>>
>
> All voxels seem to be cubes. I came across this though. I'm still trying
> to wrap my head around it:
> http://www.geisswerks.com/ryan/BLOBS/blobs.html
>

Well, can't argue against the "cube" thing, but, like I said, EQ Next 
Landmark uses voxels, and every "except" the trees, and characters in 
these images is "voxel data". So, guess they worked out some way to do 
it. :p

https://www.google.com/search?q=everquest+next+landmark&rls={moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:official}&biw=1914&bih=929&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0CAgQ_AUoA2oVChMIw-22kYboxgIVTziICh3hUQpL&dpr=1

-- 
Commander Vimes: "You take a bunch of people who don't seem any 
different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get 
this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem."

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On 7/19/2015 2:47 AM, Nekar Xenos wrote:
> All voxels seem to be cubes. I came across this though. I'm still trying
> to wrap my head around it:
> http://www.geisswerks.com/ryan/BLOBS/blobs.html
>

Good example in fact, sort of "before and after" smoothing them:

http://www.allmystery.de/i/t79ed8d_voxawl4x.gif

-- 
Commander Vimes: "You take a bunch of people who don't seem any 
different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get 
this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem."

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>> https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ld2GRz
>>
> I just love it when shadertoy crashes my computer :(

Was it your video driver that crashed? That happened to mine (black 
screen for a second before desktop coming back with the "Windows has 
recovered from video card driver fault" or whatever message. I then 
updated the drivers and it's never crashed like that since.

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On 19/07/2015 10:47 AM, Nekar Xenos wrote:
> All voxels seem to be cubes. I came across this though.

Yeah, that's like saying "all pixels tend to be squares"...

(Still, when you resize a picture, you can apply various filtering to 
remove the square edges.)

> I'm still trying to wrap my head around it:
> http://www.geisswerks.com/ryan/BLOBS/blobs.html

Seems straight-forward enough...

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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> >> https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ld2GRz
> >>
> > I just love it when shadertoy crashes my computer :(
>
> Was it your video driver that crashed?

Yeah, probably.

> That happened to mine (black
> screen for a second before desktop coming back with the "Windows has
> recovered from video card driver fault" or whatever message. I then
> updated the drivers and it's never crashed like that since.

Always fun. That used to mess up my color settings every time it happened
(before I realized my GPU/driver wanted me to actually use the GLSL functions I
had written and left sitting around in the code).

I was able to update the driver today (wasn't sure I could, since it was
impossible before a recent major OS update). No crash when I tried the link this
time! But there was nothing to see once I got there, either. Of course, this
isn't the best GPU in the world, so it's not surprising :/

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>> That happened to mine (black
>> screen for a second before desktop coming back with the "Windows has
>> recovered from video card driver fault" or whatever message. I then
>> updated the drivers and it's never crashed like that since.
>
> Always fun. That used to mess up my color settings every time it happened
> (before I realized my GPU/driver wanted me to actually use the GLSL functions I
> had written and left sitting around in the code).

I find still though if you write a shader that is too long (eg more than 
a second or two run-time) then it won't get an error, just a black 
screen eventually. Windows recovers OK, but other apps sometimes get 
annoyed and stop redrawing their windows properly or just crash. Still, 
it's a million times better than previously, when a video driver crash 
would generate an instant BSOD.

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>>> https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ld2GRz
>>>
>>> I don't know exactly what type of data you want to visualise, but you
>>> might be able to edit the script (that one is fairly straightforward
>>> to see how it's moving the blobs) to show your data instead.
>>>
>>
>> IIRC shadertoy is only online.
>
> I'm not sure if you can just save the page and run it locally. It might
> need some tweaks. But in the end shadertoy is just a friendly front-end
> to webGL. The shader code should be copy&pastable into a local webGL page.

Actually, shadertoy only just does a small amount of variable renaming 
(and handles mouse input and textures etc), so if you can do without 
them it's simply a case of copying and pasting the shadertoy code into a 
simple webgl html page, renaming a couple of variables and removing the 
texture lookups. See attached - that should run standalone locally.

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On Wed, 22 Jul 2015 12:43:15 +0200, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:

>>>> https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ld2GRz
>>>>
>>>> I don't know exactly what type of data you want to visualise, but you
>>>> might be able to edit the script (that one is fairly straightforward
>>>> to see how it's moving the blobs) to show your data instead.
>>>>
>>>
>>> IIRC shadertoy is only online.
>>
>> I'm not sure if you can just save the page and run it locally. It might
>> need some tweaks. But in the end shadertoy is just a friendly front-end
>> to webGL. The shader code should be copy&pastable into a local webGL  
>> page.
>
> Actually, shadertoy only just does a small amount of variable renaming
> (and handles mouse input and textures etc), so if you can do without
> them it's simply a case of copying and pasting the shadertoy code into a
> simple webgl html page, renaming a couple of variables and removing the
> texture lookups. See attached - that should run standalone locally.
>

Thanks! Now I have something to work with.

-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

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"Samuel Benge" <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> I was able to update the driver today (wasn't sure I could, since it was
> impossible before a recent major OS update). No crash when I tried the link this
> time! But there was nothing to see once I got there, either. Of course, this
> isn't the best GPU in the world, so it's not surprising :/
>
As it turns out, Internet Explorer is my main problem when it comes to running
many WebGL shaders. Just tried Firefox, and it runs that shadertoy blob demo
just fine (albeit at a meager 27 fps on my setup).

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On Fri, 24 Jul 2015 21:31:27 +0200, Samuel Benge <stb### [at] hotmailcom>  
wrote:

> "Samuel Benge" <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> I was able to update the driver today (wasn't sure I could, since it was
>> impossible before a recent major OS update). No crash when I tried the  
>> link this
>> time! But there was nothing to see once I got there, either. Of course,  
>> this
>> isn't the best GPU in the world, so it's not surprising :/
>>
> As it turns out, Internet Explorer is my main problem when it comes to  
> running
> many WebGL shaders. Just tried Firefox, and it runs that shadertoy blob  
> demo
> just fine (albeit at a meager 27 fps on my setup).
>
>

IE, i.e. worst Internet browser ever.

-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

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