http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2009-10-1623-56-36-73.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2009-10-1623-56-51-11.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2009-10-1623-57-15-94-1.jpg

Three pics of my DoF shader in action. They aren't very clear, and the blur is overdone to make it more noticeable, but they are shots I took before I made a change to make the shader transition blurriness much smoother, so those were the best shots I could get then. It's all very much still WIP, but the groundwork is very much there. Not bad considering that 4 hours ago I didn't know half the stuff I needed to do this.

Now that I've learnt the basics of DoF shaders...

What next?

Great work...I say godrays, water wave caustics, and SSAO

You are a ridiculously quick learner, arent you??
Definitely should be implemented during character conversations. Toggling it off/on during game woudl be nice too -- so that we can occasionally get "inifinity" setting (ie without DOF)

Ok, found a good paper on how Starcraft 2 does depth of field: http://ati.amd.com/developer/siggraph08/chapter05-filion-starcraftii.pdf

Essentially you need to do a smart blur to get it to look better. The idea is that things should blur onto each other, but you'll need to use a smart blur because things will only blur onto other things behind them (I.E. farther away in the depth texture) while farther pixels shouldn't blur onto closer ones.

It's also got stuff on SSAO and ect.

Nice work though Wrinkly! Though a subtler effect might be better.

@ shoenberg3: I've found that generally when it comes to logical things I am a very quick learner compared to the norm, and this carries over to programming. I guess it must have something to do with me being an generally logical person. :shrug: I'm not complaining.

And yes, I agree that it should turn on and off in certain situations, which is perfectly doable but I'm not going to go there. I'd rather learn even more new stuff!

@ AmpolX: Thanks, though credit should majorly go to Scanti (for the OBGE rewrite), qzilla (for ScreenEffects, which got me writing my own effects in the first place) and IlmrynAkios for that last bit of help. Cheers guys. Here's your e-cookies: :cookie: :cookie: :cookie:

@ tombofsoldier: I agree, a more subtle approach would be better. I just did it as a learning experience, not for something to be used by heaps of people, I'd leave stuff like that to the experts, who can do it much better. Plus, I get a DoF effect while you all have to wait for the proper one.

We need a cheezeburger emoticon.

*gets cracking now that Oblivion worky*

(it was Bethesda's GotY DLC, ironically enough...)

Cool.

Have you seen http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=482962? It's pretty cool. It's just a pity he never released any source code.

Edit:



http://tubbypaws.blogspot.com/2008/03/meow-you-can-has-lolcats.html approves of your suggestion.

Cool looks like a nice place for a swim

If it's on GDNet, I've seen it On the other hand, http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/galleryimage.asp?topic_id=549700&image=5 technique does.

Ooh very nice.

Me wanty! :drool:

EDIT: @ IlmrynAkios: I trust that since we've got depth buffer access, you can finally do the 101 things on your list? The ones with 'pending view vector derivation' I mean. I would love to see even a fraction of that implemented.

Oh, and I'm looking forward to vtastek's godrays too.

A question for the pros: The vectors for the various things (camera, sun, objects), these have to be made available by the OBSE plugin before they can be used, right, and are separate from the depth buffer? I ask, because with what I know at the moment, I can do stuff to pixels, and get info on them, but can't actually interact with the stuff that makes those pixels, like objects in the game world. Or is that where this mystery known as the vertex shader comes in, because I just realised till now I've only been playing with the pixel shader.

I think I just answered my own question. :huh:

Wrinklyninja does your DOF is compatibe with AA ?

ahhh, I can feel the magic in the air. :woot:

I`m sitting here now, giggling like a schoolgirl over what ideas that can be achieved now ( I`m a big strong man though, okay maybe not big and strong)...

I would like to request an effect if possible: After you stare in to the sun your vision gets dark and blurry for a few seconds.
Like you see in this movie:

- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN0vYp9nabQ

What I look forward to the most : godrays, water wave caustics, and SSAO :shifty:

This already happens if you have HDR on in Oblivion? The effect may not be strong enough, though..

Something I would like to see happen is to have the DoF shader be configurable. I don't know if I'd like it in normal play, but the option to toggle it would be nice for screenshots. But aside from that, I'd also like a "mode" for when you're using a bow and arrow which has a more pronounced DoF, which gets (slightly) stronger the further you zoom in. (After you've leveled Marksman enough to do this) ... I know this doesn't correctly mimic actual optics, though... Because if I'm not mistaken focal length does not change DoF in any way. But it's a nice effect. I was playing the Uncharted 2 demo the other week and really liked the DoF while aiming...

I honestly couldn't care that much about SSAO... It's a flawed solution at best. It's really only part of a solution (Global Illumination) and thus doesn't carry much realism by itself. Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bRkyG3R-eI&fmt=18 for an awesome "SSGI" solution. You'll notice it takes into account the light direction, and does a light bounce to approximate GI. The effect is pretty amazing. Especially looking at the models where part of the shadow gets filled in by the sky dome (the blue tinge).

But I would of course always welcome SSAO, I just think it's low on a very long list.

@ UK47Howard: I don't know. I've never managed to get it working with this card (it's an ATI Radeon HD 4xxx). Anyone have any ideas on how to get it to work?

Oh. My. God. Excuse the pun, but that is amazing.

Right chaps... I've been following OVEP and now this for a looong time, and am very excited about the prospect of godrays.

However, the recent developments with DoF have left me a little confused.

MrMuh & RPG Blackdragon have had a dynamic depth of field mod for over a year now (http://oblivionmodgods.de/mrmuhs-rpg-blackdragons-dynamic-depth-of-field-t459.html)*.

a) does this mean they had access to the Z-buffer already?

B) If not, can the method they use to calculate depth be used here (probably not, I imagine it only gets the value for the centre pixel)

c) Whilst I don't want to take anything away from the wonderful accomplishments here, is the work on dynamic DoF not re-inventing the wheel? Or is this simply for practice inn using the Z-buffer?


Cheers.


*Note, their screen shots have the blur vastly exaggerated, in game it looks excellent.

Those mods put a large sphere around the player with a modified "Chameleon" effect. The one which is dynamic in nature changes the size of the sphere based on where you're focusing (I believe, or it's something similar). It was the best solution without access to the depth buffer, but it is in no way true DoF. Not in the slightest. In fact I don't even like the way the effect looks, due to the chameleon shader causing strange "bokeh" (the term for blurriness in a picture).

Now with the depth buffer we can have a true DoF.

My DoF shader was just made to help me learn how to write HLSL shaders. I don't intend on releasing it, seeing as the pro coders here can most certainly whip up something better. Now that I've learnt the HLSL needed to make DoF, I'll go onto some other shader that'll teach me new stuff.

As for MrMuh & RPG Blackdragon's work, I've never come across it. I don't know if they had z-buffer access, though if they did, they didn't share. I don't think they did though, because I believe the method used was a large 'blur sphere' placed around the player.

So it's not a case of re-inventing the wheel, since this is the first DoF to use Scanti's z-buffer access, which is the only method widely available, and it's not going to be released anyway. It's more of a private mod + tech demo to thread readers than anything.

On the subject of me going on to learn more stuff, what would be the best shader to try to make that would help me learn about the vertex shader/position vectors of stuff?

Ok, well, that excites me greatly then . Now It's mentioned, I did know it was a big sphere, I'd just forgotten.

Nevertheless, in order to gauge the size of the sphere, that mod requires distance to centre pixel. I assume that's something thats easy to grab from oblivion, rather than full screen.

Thanks guys, I'll slink off into the shadows again now

I actually thought of a much better way to approach the different "switches" in the DoF shader that I mentioned (of course this will probably be no revelation to those like Scanti and Ilmryn ):

At its core the shader can simply await commands for how shallow/deep to make the DoF, or turn it off/on at all. But at the same time have no defaults or effect itself, and instead leave that to other mods to control. Thus mods can script DoF events through OBGE by sending the necessary data to OBGE, so OBGE can send it to the shader.

Thus if someone wrote the DoF like that, any number of mods could utilize DoF in fun ways. Aside from a "bow & arrow" script for DoF, I was thinking things like conversations could introduce a shallower DoF to emphasize focus, and so forth. So instead of discussing to death the ways in which DoF could be utilized, we could instead leave it a blank slate for any number of mods to use.

Like I said, this is probably the way the smart guys doing this would actually do it... So no big revelation or anything. This would be anologous to the way ScreenEffects works.

Perfectly doable, that is. I've actually got it set up so it can be done like that, with external variables controlling the strength of the DoF and the gradient of its blur, and you can turn it on and off using an OBGE function too. All it needs is some Oblivion-side scripting to get an interface through which you can make the changes, since OBGE already lets you pass variables to shaders.

Not sure I mentioned yet how awesome much of this stuff is. I have to confess that the DOF shader doesn't hold so much interest for me. Godrays, fog effects, and localised weather patterns would all be very cool, but decent water shaders... well, that's probably the one thing I really, really, really want. Even if nothing else was made I would be extremely happy with that, as the water in Oblivion is so... err, well, we've all seen it and I'm sure we all know what I'm talking about.
Good work and now I'll stop spamming the thread with unhelpful stuff.

All the best,

Vac

Agreed. I'm not drooling over DoF, but I certainly would do so over new water. I can hardly wait to see what they come up with.