Topic awaiting preservation: X-rays, fresnel, laplace.. shaders!

'lo.

For a starter, here is what looks like a cool resource about 3ds max.
http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_details.aspx?id_product=137
I am through with my first ever OpenGL assignment, which earned me a 6/6 mark and to become the teacher's assistant,
and collaborate to a book for unis in Switzerland.

There is a past and buggy version somewhere in the forums (a couple of posts from here), I'll post the final when I get to finally
revamp and revive my website, which hasn't really happened in a looooong time.

Anyway, I am toying around with the fabulous GLSL, OpenGL shading language.
And I have come to the obvious: it is all about one's understanding of 3d, optics and physics.
Just as paiting is the soul of all kinds of 2d works, digital or not.

So, basically, I can transpose whatever I could do (except the raytracing itself) in 3ds max to OpenGL: especially materials...
whatever makes them look good in Max can make them look the same in OGL.

(Aw, Grumble, please keep away from trying to look smart and correct me on this one because you once made a gooch shader,
I don't care about your academic/restrictive perception of GLSL, and I don't care about educating people about GLSL, I care
about concise answers to my questions)

So, I am looking for recipes for good, and I mean good:
- x ray materials in Max
- Laplace filtering (embossing) in Max, possibly as a post-processing filter. I already know how to do it in OGL, just want to use it in Max for some snapshots and laying out ideas.

Or better yet, isolating "silouhette lines" in a Max model, in max.
Silhouette lines are the lines that separate front-facing and back-facing polygons, I can compute that easilly when I have the model
as a data structure, in OGL, but how do I do that in Max?

ok first off a few q's

x-ray material? i had a look at that tutorial on the page u were talking about... but as that probably doesnt match your requuirements what exactly are u looking for... a transparent material to show the insides of something like in a real xray???

give me a bit more of a clue what ya mean...

embossing?

i had a good look through max most of the alternatives even in max 8 are based on direct x 8 rather than Open GL.. anything from the normal methods upto using displacement maps.

in max u can add material effects channels in post processing

For example, you might want a material to glow wherever it appears in the scene. The material is in the Material Editor and the glow comes from a rendering effect. First, you add a Glow rendering effect and set it up so that it operates on effects ID 1. Use Material Effects Channel to give the material an ID number of 1, then apply the material to objects in the scene in the usual way.

To save the channel data with the rendering, use the .rla or .rpf format. ok so in this way you could use a displacement map on the fly if this is what you are trying to achieve

another dx option is bake to texture unfortunately i cant see a way to do this in ogl
as for sillouhette lines got a screen shot of what ya mean?

anyway some food for thought maybe... maybe its no use at all but its much as my brain can offer after 24 hours with no sleep...

you have my msn and icq

(Edited by tomeaglescz on 02-07-2006 22:49)

Thanks Tom.
I've just typed a detailed answer which went toast (probably because the Asylum if a flawless software... ~cough).

My fingers hurt.
So, to make a long story short:
X-ray: exactly, I have turned ambient to 0, diffuse, self-illum and transp to a fresnel texture, and it does look a bit like the above, but... something's missing. Something is also missing from the above, some glow, some... dunno, can't nail it exactly.

Laplace = emboss in Photoshop, minus the average grey that is added by Photoshop. It's a filter that is easy peasy to apply in OGL (render to texture, then filter texture, and display texture).

I want to be able to apply such a filter to the whole scene everytime I render it, and if possible, automatically (streamlined post-processing).
Will check your recommendations about this...

Other than that, I am wondering about the possible uses of Fresnel in Max, and Chromatic aberration, aka "little rainbows that appear in some transparent objects at times".