Other Michael

The tricky thing about making a mesh editor is the discrepancy between how the artist and the GPU think about vertices.

For example an artist sees a cube with 8 verts. But if that cube is flat shaded the GPU actually sees 24.

I thought making a mesh editor would be easy.
Turns out it's this interwoven web of operations, input state, and undo/redo. Not to mention any of the math / geometry.

The one bright side is that I have a really solid north star in the form of Blender.

Think I may write a blog or something about it

Reposting mostly for my own reference, but also in case others find this list useful!

Collection of cover images from the books included on the list

I often get asked about my book recommendations for graphics programming and game development. I updated my old list and made it easier to find on my website. With Black Friday/Cyber Monday, many are on sale right now (at least in Canada/US)
www.jendrikillner.com/books/

Finally got around to trying this whole 2D GI thing.
Followed this great tutorial: jason.today/gi

I was recently working on a flight-based game (physics / lift/drag based).
If this is at all similar to what you're looking for, lmk. I'd be happy to talk shop.
rithmgaming.itch.io/lob3d
password: flywithme

Followed Sugu Lee's excellent tutorial on TAA: sugulee.wordpress.com/2021/06/21/t...
My implementation: github.com/maftkd/TAA/t...

Why? Is it hard to tune?

Made a screen-space reflections demo
Used lettier.github.io/3d-game-shad... for reference but deviated a little bit in favor of something a little simpler.

Implemented an old school SSAO technique
Lil' demo @ rithmgaming.itch.io/ambient-occl...

Wrapping up the path tracer project.
I enjoyed seeing the shadows and color bleeding, but when it came time to implementing actual material models (brdf, pdf), things got a little too mathematical for me... Will have to revisit another day.

Added emissive materials to the path tracer

Added Depth of Field and progressive rendering to the path tracer

Starting work on a path tracer. Goal is to eventually implement a cook-torrance brdf

Pbr = Physically based rendering

I made a Pbr renderer.
(Taking a detour to learn more about gfx programming)
rithmgaming.itch.io/pbr-demo

New prototype: rain-maker
Use rain-power to moisten soil so plants can grow. Recharge by flying near bodies of water.

New prototype: poop
Actually though...
The mechanic allows plants to spread over a map via their fruit & seed.

It's hard to answer without knowing more about core pillars.

Is this game largely about upgrading cars & the vehicles themselves? Or is it more about maneuvering & velocity control? Is the game largely about physics and making things explode?

The interaction will show players your pillars.

Thanks for sharing This inspired me to scratch the surface of Spherical Harmonics bsky.app/profile/othe...
My implementation is pretty janky, but I still learned a lot!

That rapidly moving orb at the beginning is a probe that measures lighting at each point.

The lighting information is compressed and stored in a 3D grid...

Objects like the sphere can then sample that grid to obtain indirect lighting info at runtime.

Took a sabbatical from my sabbatical to have a go at "indirect lighting"
Inspired by Mikkel Svendsen's talk on Cocoon:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kS1...

New prototype:
Spread the love - fly nearby flowers to make more flowers.

New Prototype: You play as mama bird, and you gotta feed baby bird.

Tree: meet Bird.

Added a depth-based shader to help visualize ...well... depth., and help reveal the form of the tree.

Wow this is a long-standing thread.

My name is Michael. I'm a developer and designer, currently working independently on a bird flight sim while in between jobs.

I try to do at least one jam a year, and am looking forward to GGJ 2025!

Working on tree generators currently. Finally bringing things into 3D.
Using Longay's 2014 paper: "Interactive Procedural Modelling of Trees and Landscapes" for the algorithms.