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Truform plugin ?

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Deleterious

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Is it possible ? Because I think it would be cool looking even if there were a few graphic glitches . And maybe if they threw in some Aniso while they're at it ...
 
K

Kritikal

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hmm, that's sounds like an interesting idea to me. From what I remember it measures angles and rounds them out if they are less than a certain amount. Zelda on n64 could look like zelda on gamecube!
 
RadeonUser

RadeonUser

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Yep, that would seem cool, but... If my understanding of Truform is right, then wouldn't, let's say... a Rupee look very weird them?

I don't think Jabo would end up doing something like this, it's WAY too close for a release... Maybe some other N64 emulation author? Unless our friendly neighborhood Jabo wants a challenge ;)


:pj64:
 
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Deleterious

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It takes the normals and tesselates them @ a given factor , anandtech had a nice writeup on it a while ago , I suggest reading it . From what I hear it only takes 1 or 2 lines of code so as long as it gets the normals it should work .
 
Moonlight

Moonlight

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If ATI's PR stuff wasn't just fiction, enabling TrueForm should only take a few lines that boil down to not much more than a copy&paste job.

It would definitely be interesting to see how much TrueForm would warp those flat polygons.
 
K

Kritikal

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Yeah, here is what I was thinking of from the anandtech article:

"Speaking of visual problems, ATI has found a way to get rid of some problems that originally had the potential to occur when using N-Patches. Since the edges are essentially smoothed out, image problems were experienced in smooth surfaces where the edge is supposed to be hard, for example a gun in the belt of a character. To prevent this problem, N-Patching will not occur in where two normals are at 90 degrees or one another, a situation that indicates that an edge should be sharp."

Also about the rupees... trueform doesn't change the textures, although it does change the lighting. So if the texture already has edges shaded in or drawn in(as is often done in low polygon models) then they may still appear to have edges. Err, I don't know. Someone else may want to discuss that.
 
pj64er

pj64er

PJ64 Lubba
yes TruForm should be easy to implement. however, code has to be added to individual games (roms) to prevent the balloon effect(if u dont know what i mean, check out screenies of 'Serious Sam' with truform on)
 
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Deleterious

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Moonlight I don't care if you don't like ATi so just shaddup if it is a fine technology , sheesh you remind me of all the people whining about gaps in the models when it was first talked about . See any of that ? I personally wouldn't really mind the ballooning , it would propably look pretty nice in any case , look what it did for quake 1 :) . Besides in the case of zelda I think it would look pretty cool (hehehe a round sword) Oh NO ! He has a butterknife ! . But would it really be much work to do ? It was even done with UT with just a plugin , sooooo ....
 
Moonlight

Moonlight

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Huh?

If you (Deleterious) read the post, you should have seen the answer to your question...

According to ATI's TruForm PR campaign, enabling TruForm requires only a few lines of code that don't involve much more than a Copy&Paste job.

(take TF-enabling code, paste after D3D setup code and compile to get a TF-enabling program)

Where's the ATI-bashing in that?

Of course, it would make a lot of sense for ATI to include an option to force TF on/off in the drivers - exactly something they said they weren't going to, which doesn't make much sense to me.
 
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Deleterious

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Well , I was having a pretty bad day yesterday so I guess the "If ATI's PR stuff wasn't just fiction" and "It would definitely be interesting to see how much TrueForm would warp those flat polygons". But now that I am sane again I can see it was just a passing comment . I don't know why they don't either , but I would still like to see it done in PJ64 :) .
 
pj64er

pj64er

PJ64 Lubba
ballooning does look cool the first few times, but thats not the point of TruForm. to actually put TruForm to good use, the programmer will hav to put the said one-two lines of code for their program and put in code to stop the ballooning in the inapropriate areas/objects.

r u asking our pj64 authors to put in a few codes for every object that ever existed in every existing n64 game/rom?
 
zeus

zeus

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Well, since this feat. is considered and suggested in the latest stages of development we shouldn´t really expect that someone should look into it. And it´s a vendor specific feat. that will only work on newer ATI cards. But this is def. a interesting thing for other emus to look into, in a couple of years when pixel shaders are a commonthing among users a lot of never thought of feat. could probaly be introduced. And I´m not sure but doesn´t "it´s just #2 lines of code argument" seem a little to good to be true. And the procedure for adding object specific code for every polygon is a endless task, it would take a lifetime to achieve perfect polygons.

And with antialising and antroscopic filtering giving us more eyecandy then the original does/did we really shouldn´t complain. And there are probaly a lot of other things that needs looking into to.
 
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Deleterious

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No , it doesn't really require specific code for every model , and It is possible on all ATi cards since the fury (albeit software) . And it leads to ballooning on very few objects , I mean can you imagine how awesome mario 64 would look with truform ? and the one-tow lines of code is often enough , just look at truform quake 1 ! It was ONLY those 2 lines of code and look at how much nicer it looked . Just think about that , in fact the only games that would look really bad would be FPS's and the gun models .
 
K

Kritikal

New member
Well, it would suck if roms had to be hacked to work with trueform. Maybe if somehow there is a distinction in hardware between polygons for characters and polygons for the environment, then maybe it could just be used on characters.

Anandtech also said that Trueform is not ATI specific. It is their implementation of N-patches which are part of directx8 and opengl. So if more software uses it then maybe nvidia will release drivers with trueform support.
 
K

Kritikal

New member
Oh, and Jabo has been away I think, so we'll have to wait and see what he has to say when he gets back. Apparently smiff is avoiding this thread.
 
pj64er

pj64er

PJ64 Lubba
Deleterious said:
No , it doesn't really require specific code for every model , and It is possible on all ATi cards since the fury (albeit software) . And it leads to ballooning on very few objects , I mean can you imagine how awesome mario 64 would look with truform ? and the one-tow lines of code is often enough , just look at truform quake 1 ! It was ONLY those 2 lines of code and look at how much nicer it looked . Just think about that , in fact the only games that would look really bad would be FPS's and the gun models .
Click to expand...

i too think/hope that TruForm has a bright future, but u've had too much of ATi's propaganda.
 
Moonlight

Moonlight

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Let's clarify the situation a bit...

Basic TruForm can be enabled by a few Copy&Paste lines of code.

Adding a checkbox in the R200 drivers could accomplish the same goal for any game as the customer wishes as long as it's a D3D or OGL title.

It's quite stupid from ATI's part to boost TruForm as a major feature of the R200 that did not require the rewrite of software yet require that software be patched to enable it.
 
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Deleterious

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pj64er said:


i too think/hope that TruForm has a bright future, but u've had too much of ATi's propaganda.
Click to expand...

And you have had too much of nvidia's . Now that the source is open , anybody want to try ?
 
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