[SOLVED] Rendering Specular / Glow to texture

[Maikeru]

I think I might have missed something rudimentary.

If I’m using FilterManager.renderSceneInto to fill colour, depth, and normal textures to pass to a shader, how would I then also pass specular/material/glow information into the same shader?

self.depth = Texture()
self.albedo = Texture()
self.normal = Texture()

FilterManager.renderSceneInto(colortex = self.albedo, depthtex = self.depth, auxtex = self.normal,auxbits = AuxBitplaneAttrib.ABOAuxNormal)

light.setShaderInput("albedo", self.albedo)
light.setShaderInput("depth", self.depth)
light.setShaderInput("normal", self.normal)

Even if I got another texture, how would I fill that, since I’m currently using the COLOR0 and COLOR1 outputs in the shader I’ve applied my models?

Would it be correct in saying that I’d need to create a buffer at a lower level, like this:
panda3d.org/manual/index.php … nd_Buffers

This page seems to indicate I’d get 4 Aux outputs in my for my shaders?
panda3d.org/reference/1.7.2/ … Output.php

Am I on the right track? Or can the FilterManager support more then 1 Aux bitplane somehow? (Which might be easier)

[rdb]

You are allowed to use more than one auxiliary texture attachment.

You can also embed information into the alpha channel of another attachment. For instance, ABO_glow encodes the glow information into the alpha channel of the colour texture.

We don’t currently define an AuxBitplaneAttrib setting for gloss/specular, but I’d be happy to add this feature for you if you need it.

[Maikeru]

@rdb

By adding an extra argument into the renderSceneInto signature and passing that along to createBuffer it looks to be working pretty well. Although I’m not sure if that is a ‘correct’ thing to do, and if theres a better way to manage it.

You’re right, that should be fixed. It was probably done this way because the shader generator only supports one aux bitplane.

@rdb

But then I’d lose transparency?

I suppose, but you don’t need transparency for your normal vector.

[Maikeru]

Hmm, it seems your reply was somehow merged with mine - thats weird

@rdb

You’re right, that should be fixed. It was probably done this way because the shader generator only supports one aux bitplane.

Sweet, I can keep my edits in FilterManager.py, but happy for it to be added in if it doesn’t break other peoples code

@rdb

I suppose, but you don’t need transparency for your normal vector.

True, I could have put glow into the normals, but then I’d still need room for spec and gloss.

Heres the output with the extra aux channel being a combination of spec/gloss/emissive. The smileys I made very specular, but the ground matte.

Texture isn’t mine, but was a good way to test out the buffers.

Thanks for the pointers!

[rdb]

Ouch! I must have accidentally clicked the “edit” instead of the “quote” button on your post. My apologies! It’s sometimes hard to see the difference.

I’ve checked in a fix to FilterManager.py. You can now use the keys “aux0” and “aux1” in the “textures” dictionary passed to renderSceneInto.

The screenshot looks great!