11 replies to this topic

[bladder]

The D3DXEffectFile format comes in really handy and I use it as much as possible, but I want to make sure Platform + API independance is maintained, so before I go out and implement my own effect format based on the engine's graphics api, does anyone know if someone has already made an implementation of the d3d effect file (or somehting similar) available as an add on library that works with any graphics api?

[Dia]

I'm not sure, but if there aren't any implementations of it, then it would make an excellent idea for a unique project

[Reedbeta]

I think nVidia's Cg includes something similiar to that.

[bladder]

yeah it would make a unique project if there weren't any implementations. I've been trying to look at cg for the past 2 days but my internet has been giving a lot of toruble. From what I remember of cg (from teh 1.0 toolkit days) I dont think it was anything like the effect file, but it's at 1.4 now and i get get the friggen manual to download. But I will be checking it out as soon as this connection is fixed - thanks for mentioning cg Reed.

[anubis]

don't nail me on this but cg and hlsl are nearly identical afaik, so they might share some of the effect file format, too. i know for certain that cg has an .fx format. i've never used it though

[bladder]

.fx files have the same format from looking at fx composer, but unfortuanetly I cant find any api or library that allows you to parse fx files or use them from within an engine.

[anubis]

is the syntax that complex ? i mean... would it be feasible to parse it on your own :)

[bladder]

oh it's very doable alright, but if there's already one out there then I'd rather not. But looks like I'm going to have to, unless I end up finding something (which I probably would've found by now). Or I can just decide to scrap API independance and stick to dx as I usually do...

[kusma]

atleast Cg 1.3 and 1.4RC contain CgFX, basicly an implementation of ID3DXEffect on top of Cg.

[bladder]

great, downloading it now. I always thought that CgFX was just a tool like EffectEdit that comes with the dx sdk. Didn't know that it's interfaces were exposed from cg.

[Rofar]

This is exactly why I decided to forego Platform independence and just decided to plow ahead with dependency on DX.

[bladder]

True, I'm considering that as well, but Im going to see what I can do wth gdfx first. If it's just like the effect format then all's well again, otherwise I'll most probably just wrap d3d really nicely so that if I need to port - then I can think about implementing the effect file format from scratch.