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This week the heat upstairs has driven me away from my computer in the late afternoons, so development has been a weird mix of daytime and late nights.

The big news this week is FILTERS. I've finally gotten to the point where I could sit down and give them the attention they needed to make it into 512. It's been a rather big project as these things go, touching more of the server and client sides than usual, and I'm only partway through it. Lots of testing still to do, likely some nomenclature and syntax issues still to settle, and I have to figure out how in the world I'll handle animating the suckers. Also I think last night I encountered a weird bug in some of my early testing. But, I can report that a test case is working.

So here's the deal with filters: Appearances can have a filter stack, which is basically just a simple set of filters applied one on top of the other. So far I have a very basic set of filters, only two of which are implemented yet: blur and outline. Drop shadow is coming, and I'll probably add a separate color matrix filter. I may decide on a few more, and welcome suggestions. Motion blur is probably going to be on my list, as it falls neatly out of the 2D blur shader.

The method for interacting with filters that I decided on was to create a special object, which references the source object and specifies whether it refers to the list of its filters or to the Nth filter. If it's the Nth filter, you can read and write vars on it that pertain to the filter, and that will alter the appearance. If it's the list, you can add and remove filters (in theory) and work with it similarly to other lists. And there's also a mutable filter available for certain cases, basically for working with filters before setting them on an appearance.

The blur filter needed some adjustments last night but it's now working, although I'm not entirely happy with the look and want to improve it. What I'm probably going to do is run some outputs from Photoshop Elements that I can use for visual comparison, and then redo the filter mechanics to get a better result closer to what I would expect. The outline filter is probably okay; I gave it the same adjustments I did to the blur filter, and so it should have the same result as much older tests I did at one time, but I'll revisit it to be sure.

At some point, I'd like for maptext to be able to benefit from these filters too, since they'll be baked into the rendering code. Particularly, outlines and drop shadows are hugely important to maptext, and would solve some current rendering conundrums.

I discovered while working on this that the renderer is also applying a color matrix in some cases when it doesn't necessarily have to, so I'm gonna have to put a stop to that for better performance.

Lots of stuff is still left to do: garbage scanning, taking mutable appearances into account, savefiles (that part should be surprisingly straightforward, I think), setting filters at compile time, animation, etc. But this is taking shape a lot better than I expected, even with the necessity of making revisions as ideas changed and came together in a more coherent form.

That's what's happening this week. Big thanks to everyone who's been supporting BYOND through their Memberships and donations. I'm hoping to make this release a good one for you.

And now the time has come to shift my dietary habits in preparation for two huge events: the return of football, and the Great New York State Fair, the latter of which is a day longer this year and the former hopefully free of politics this time around. (But sadly, Thursday Night Football is apparently still a thing.) Is this the Bills' year? No. No it is not, but bless their hearts for trying.
Filters are sounding really cool! :D
Outlines and blurs!! OUTLINES AND BLURS!!
In response to Kumorii
Kumorii wrote:
Outlines and blurs!! OUTLINES AND BLURS!!


I'm hoping to make this release a good one

It's sounding far better than good.
In response to Kumorii
Kumorii wrote:
Outlines and blurs!! OUTLINES AND BLURS!!

Filters sound stellar, keep up the good work Lummox. =)
Filters... I've been waiting a loooong time for Filters. Really excited. Keep up the good work.
In response to Syxoul
Syxoul wrote:
Kumorii wrote:
Outlines and blurs!! OUTLINES AND BLURS!!


This truly sounds like awesome news. Thank you, Lummox.
I finally figured out what was going wrong with the blur filter. Blurs, outlines, and drop shadows are all implemented.
Yut Put wrote:
release so i can use them in giad :o



I will be so salty lmao
10/10 !! Thank You Lummox JR !
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
I finally figured out what was going wrong with the blur filter. Blurs, outlines, and drop shadows are all implemented.

outlines and blurs!! OUTLINES AND BLURS!!!!
Falcon lazorz wrote:
Kumorii wrote:
Lummox JR wrote:
I finally figured out what was going wrong with the blur filter. Blurs, outlines, and drop shadows are all implemented.

outlines and blurs!! OUTLINES AND BLURS!!!!

underline and italics

UNDERLINES AND ITALICS!!!!
In response to GreatPirateEra
GreatPirateEra wrote:
Falcon lazorz wrote:
Kumorii wrote:
Lummox JR wrote:
I finally figured out what was going wrong with the blur filter. Blurs, outlines, and drop shadows are all implemented.

outlines and blurs!! OUTLINES AND BLURS!!!!

underline and italics

UNDERLINES AND ITALICS!!!!

A bold statement.
Addendum: The drop shadow filter now supports inset shadows.
Yut Put wrote:
is a bloom filter possible

edit: also what about something like 2xsai

+1
Lummox JR wrote:
the return of football, and the Great New York State Fair, the latter of which is a day longer this year ... Is this the Bills' year? No. No it is not, but bless their hearts for trying.

Let's be honest, the Bills will never have a year. Also, which fair did you go to? I've gone to the Genesee and Niagara county. I'm avoiding Erie county for a while since that whole tornado.
Yut Put wrote:
is a bloom filter possible

edit: also what about something like 2xsai

2xsai isn't really a filter; it's a drawing mode.

Blooming should be doable. I'd have to find a bloom filter example and play with it to see what looks good. Performance I'm not sure of. The sources I've seen so far suggest that unlike Gaussian blur, true bloom filters are not separable. However, simply extracting out the brightest parts of an image and applying a blur to that as a method of blooming (and then adding it back into the original) might work fine. I welcome any input you can provide if you know of performant bloom filters I could adapt.
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