Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 248 - August 14, 2022


NVIDIA Announces Full Open Source of Material Definition Language to Streamline Graphics Pipelines

  • Nvidia open-sources MDL distiller and the GLSL backend
  • MDL distiller is a system for automated shader simplifications
  • the GLSL backend enables the usage of MDL for Vulkan applications


Physically Based: a Database of PBR Values for Real-World Materials

  • A database of physically based values for CG artists (materials, Light Sources, Cameras)
  • contains material information of familiar materials in a unified interface
  • materialX, unity, and unreal shader graphs are available for the different materials


PIX 2208.10: SM 6.7 support, GPU and Timing Capture Improvements

  • new PIX release allows profiling to target different GPU clock rates (controlled by the hardware manufacturer)
  • added the ability to export metrics to CSV
  • additionally, added support trimming of captures


Using performance budgets in the Timing Capture metrics view

  • the post explains how to set up budgets for pix metrics
  • can be defined for the user or system metrics


Screen Post Processing Effects Chapter 1 – Basic Algorithm of Gaussian Blur and Its Implementation

  • the article explains the theory of a Gaussian blur algorithm
  • shows how the filter is defined, sample weights calculated
  • it additionally presents how to implement the technique using a Unity Pixel Shader


Descriptors are hard

  • the article presents a description of the texture/buffer/sampler binding model supported by different hardware manufacturers
  • discusses how Vulkan and D3D12 models map onto the hardware
  • additionally discusses problems arising from the differences


Real-Time Path Tracing and Beyond

  • the presentation provides a brief overview of the implementation details for the Nvidia path tracer and the level of optimizations required to archive the performance
  • presents open problems in data authoring, scene description, and material complexity
  • shows ideas on how techniques can be developed together to deliver improved results


SIGGRAPH 2022 Links

  • a growing collection of content from SIGGRAPH 2022
  • presentations, slides, videos, and posters


Beyond Linear Perspective: Art, Human Vision, and Computer Graphics

  • discusses the limitations of linear perspective and how classical artists rarely used it
  • present non-linear projection techniques and how they can be used
  • starts a discussion on how to computationally model and apply these methods


Explosion Decals

  • the article presents a technique to generate explosion decals aimed at a 3D topdown game
  • based around forward shading, a projected 3D sphere with procedural noise


[video] Bloom & Glow Post Process Effect - Shader Graph Basics - Episode 56

  • video tutorial shows how to implement a bloom effect using Unreal and Unity shader graphs
  • starts by showing visually how the effect works using photoshop before implementing the code
  • followed by presenting a walkthrough of the total effect


Thanks to Keith O’Conor for support of this series.


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