Texture Shader

[Anastasiy]

Does it support HDR images and textures?

[MJW]

I'm not sure I understand you mean. Like everything else in Paint.Net, it uses 8 bits per color channel to represent colors. As far as I know (which isn't very far), that isn't compatible with HDR; and if it is compatible, I don't know what features of Texture Shader would make it support HDR more or less than the rest of PDN.

 

One feature that does have to do with increased precision, which is probably completely unrelated to what you're talking about, is that the height maps have 24 bits of precision; although in most cases only 8 bit precision is used because it's difficult to generate and manipulate full-precision height maps. In my initial comment, I show a 24-bit height map for a sphere. I've been working on some ideas related to this.

[dipstick]

I just just tried this plugin out. Very nice, I like all the user control functions. I will find some uses for it, thanks...

 

[MJW]

[MJW]

I've released a new version of Texture Shader. As I say in the lead comment:

 

Release version 2.0.*.

Now a Visual Studio project instead of CodeLab.

Moved from Distort submenu into new Height Map submenu.

Made various cosmetic and functional modifications to user interface, such as using the Angle Control, and changing the number of decimal places.

Made White instead of Clipboard the default Image.

Added Texture Height Curvature control.

Removed option of offsetting relative to selection instead of window.

Added option of reversing Directional Light direction.

Added Help menu.

 

Functionally it isn't that different from the previous version. It may be slightly faster, since it does the (somewhat complex) initialization once per pass instead of for each ROI. It's a bit fancier and less confusing, since I disable the controls that don't apply when using a constant color.

 

One of the main changes is I moved it to a new Height Map submenu. It's pretty lonely there now, but I intend to give it some company soon. Anyone else who writes a plugin which uses the image as a height map is, of course, welcome to join me.

 

I decided to make the default image White, so that it works as-is, when there's no image in the Clipboard.

 

The Texture Height Curvature Control is often quite useful for tweaking the appearance of the texture.

 

The previous version normally offset the image relative to the selection, but optionally offset it relative to the window. I can't remember why I did that, and it doesn't seem especially useful, so now I always offset relative to the window. I made the offset have four decimal places. so it should be quite precise.

 

Because the outer ring of the Directional Light Direction control was unused, I made it so that if it's on the left side, the light direction is reversed. That can occasionally be useful. (I'd rather have a control with no outer ring, and use a checkbox.)

 

I'll build a 3.5 version if I can.

 

Please let me know if there are any problems or suggestions.

 

[lynxster4]

Thank you, MJW!  I'll give the 'improved' version a go. I use it quite often.   

[Red ochre]

Downloading, Thanks for the update!

 

[Shochi]

I got this after 2 hours:

 

 

Edited September 9, 2016 by Shochi

[Shochi]

dear @MJW

i hope you will like this colors

[Shochi]

Another pic from this great great effect/plugin.

 

size:5000x3750.jpg

[Eli]

I can only say :...

[Seerose]

[MJW]

That's a very nice effect, Seerose!

[MJW]

I released version 2.1.

 

The changes are almost entirely cosmetic. I made the UI more like the Texture Merger UI, which I thought was better. I added colors to the sliders. I also increased the range of the Texture Height Scale.

 

If there are any problems, are if there are any suggestions for improvements, please let me know!

[Red ochre]

Congratulations on the Galleria award and well done Pixey for nominating.
It's high time you started a gallery too!

 

Really good suite of height map effects. Thanks.
(Just realised I'm using the original version of texture shader.)
Some of my experiments:

 

 

[MJW]

Excellent work, Red ochre!

 

[Ego Eram Reputo]

I've finally found some time to play with Texture Shader. It's AWESOME!!

 

I've ran a vegetation map over a height map of a set of islands in a corner of my RPG world. I think it's created a very realistic map.

 

 

Thanks a lot for this MJW

 

[lynxster4]

Thanks for the update @MJW.  I'll give it a go!   

[Seerose]

 Oh @Red ochre! Wonderful creative work. It looks so great. Thank you so much. 

Edited December 14, 2017 by Seerose

[Seerose]

 WOW! @Ego Eram Reputo! That is really a great picture. Thank you very much.   

Edited December 14, 2017 by Seerose

[MJW]

Welshblue, that's a good suggestion. The problem is that it's a IndirectUI plugin, and there's no way for IndirectUI plugins to modify the control values. Converting the plugin to use non-IndirectUI controls would be difficult, and something I don't want to do.  I'll see if I can come up with a solution. I certainly agree that restoring previous settings (since there are so many)  would be very useful.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

If you want help changing it to a WinForm project, let me know. Loading & saving are a breeze to implement once you have access to the tokens. You could also rearrange the UI. Not that there is anything wrong with a really tall UI

 

[MJW]

The difficulty is that I'd want the controls to have all the features they have in IndirectUI. I've rarely seen non-IndirectUI interfaces whose controls I've been happy with. They almost always seem clunky to me. Often they are missing even the reset buttons.

 

I certainly agree that the height of the Texture Shader UI makes it difficult to use. I'll give some thought to converting to a non-IndirectUI interface, but it seems like an intimidatingly large project.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

8 hours ago, MJW said:

it seems like an intimidatingly large project.

 

You've already written the code I put together Planetoid - it has a large number of controls so a project of this size wouldn't intimidate.

[MJW]

The Planetoid controls are very well done. I'll give it some serious consideration.

 

Not that it really matters much, but does Planeload use a separate DLL for the controls or are they all in one DLL? Does it use ILMerge in the build process? Also, are the controls added to the forms with programmer-written code, or are they done using the VS Designer?