Roddeh

An example using papervision shaders with all source code provided.

I was recently required to investigate the shaders now supported in Papervision 2.0. Usually I would start with the documentation when trying out something new but it seems the folk at PV are so flat out with new features, stringent documentation is on the backburner. I ain’t complaining though, if it was a choice between improvements and thorough documentation gimme improvements all the way.

So, when documentation doesn’t paint the full picture google is the next stop for me. Googling “papervision shaders” produced no shortage of hits, surprise surprise. Unfortunately most hits were sweet demos of what I needed to achieve but no code Those hits that promised to be tutorials all pointed back to a single tutorial posted on brighthub. The content of the tutorial looked promising and the demo swf showed exactly what I needed to achieve. The author of the tutorial was also kind enough to share all the code and related media files required to produce the demo.

I downloaded the sample files and was able to get it all compiling without much trouble at all. Sweet, I was making progress. However, upon looking at the code my progress came to a halt, wow was the code obtuse. Sure, once I understood what was going on I admired the elegant solution that was provided but the purpose of downloading the code was to learn how to use shaders, not how to write a beautifully OO demo.

Now, having never provided any demos of my own I feel rather hypocritical dissing the hard and contributive work of others in the flash community. It is not my intention to discredit the work of others but rather encourage those pioneers who are able to consume the latest in tech advances faster than us noobs to feed it back to us in as palatable format as possible.

That, said I have written my own demo on using shaders in Papervision and tried to keep it as plain and stupid as possible. So, without further adieu here is the code and you can click the image below to launch the demo.

I have decided that instead of providing a lengthy explanation of how it works I would just comment the code and hope that it explains itself.

Being my first demo post I am eager for feedback, please keep it constructive

Welcome, and thanks for taking the time to check out my blog/portfolio/personal website.

About Me
I grew up and continue to live in Sydney where I enjoy the toasty summers and bear the rather average winters.

I would like to say I am a self-taught programmer but really I owe much to the peers I have worked with over the years. That said, I fancy myself a pretty good mentor and have certainly passed on my knowledge to others too.

Nerdy Stuff
I have been working in IT since 2002. Starting as an HTML monkey, I gradually made my way through XSL/XML, Javascript, Php etc before finding myself seduced by the fancy effects of Flash/Actionscript. Since then I have been working primarily in AS, producing sophisticated web apps (RIAs if you like your buzzwords). More recently I have been dabbling in Ruby to both compliment my professional skill-set and to support some of the more ambitious ideas I have that can not be done in Flash alone.

And the rest…
Outside of work I like to keep myself busy with plenty of activities including surfing, yoga, pottery, snowboarding and cooking. Don’t worry, I balance all the healthy stuff with the odd Friday night on the town I also speak pretty reasonable Japanese and know enough Mandarin to order my favourite dishes and cop a smile from the waitress.