Shaders in realtime in 3dsmax viewports ? Any ideas ?

[Paul Oblomov]

Hi there.

Looking at nextgen games (like FarCry:Crysis , UT2007 etc) I feel like my PC can handle tons of refract/reflect effects, per pixel lighting and all that stuff, nextgen brings to us! At least, my videocard is DX 9 capable (R4xx) and recent games looked pretty much neat. But, when it comes to 3dsmax viewports - seems like I don't have dx9 powered card and it's still 20th century!
So I'm asking - maybe there's a way to enable GPU power in, at least, viewports ? For ex. to see refractions or glossy surfaces ?
I tried to write my own shaders via rendermonkey from ATI, but 3dsmax fails to render 'em

Any ideas ?

[RErender]

there is a new interactive renderer for max, haven't played with it yet http://www.redway3d.com/

[Paul Oblomov]

It requires NVIDIA graphic card . My card is ATI! Shame on me

But good news

We're currently developing the ATI version of the Redviewer. It should be available soon. We'll release it as fast as possible !

[jujubee]

Interesting... But I don't think it works with Vray!

[Paul Oblomov]

Ok. We found GPU renderer. But - max got *.fx (HLSL) shaders (DirectX material). He can read it and write (so the games will look just like in viewports). BUT every single shader, that were made outside max (smth really complicated) can't be read by 3dsmax Shader compiled, it works I know it! But...... Maybe you know the problem how to solve it ?

[jujubee]

Which GPU Renderer did you find?

[instinct]

The problem is that max isnt 100% .fx compatible afaik. You might wanna try joining the official autodesk webboard there is a section dedicated to just that if i recall right. Also you can actually write custom viewports with the current sdk (wich means you can have your actual target engine display your max scene in a max viewport)

Thorsten

[Paul Oblomov]

jujubee
It's not actually a GPU renderer or whatever! Just shaders, which max SHOULD parse in realtime!!!!

instinct
I knew that Damn autodesk . . .

[Tom B]

FX files are not neatly transferable. They are not a standardised file format like a 3d model they are a program. While the shader version determines which functions can be used on which card there are no rules regarding how the shader should interface with the myriad of 3d engines.They need to be addapted to whatever engine they are used in because every engine is different and has it's own semantics. So a shader produced in Render Monkey or CG compiler or wherever will not work straight out of the box in the 3d Max viewport.

[Paul Oblomov]

Strange... HLSL is standartized language. Engine to be able to support dx9 MUST parse whole the basic functions! Stupid autodesk . . . .

[Tom B]

Saying the HLSL is a standardised language, so shaders from here should work there is a bit like saying tools in max and maya are both written in c++ so they should be interchangable.