Got a new demo out today. It’s something that some people (including me) call vector textures. A very interesting technique that uses the existing texture resizing methods implemented on the GPU. These days it’s hard to find graphics techniques that manage really makes use of everything the GPU provides us with. What’s even nicer is that this technique could improve existing methods of rendering things like text and could even be extended to rendering blades of grass or leaves on a tree where the possibility of zooming in to a leaf is very real.

Go ahead, read more about it and download the demo here

Demo is based on two chapters in the ShaderX book.
“Rendering Ocean Water”
by John Isidoro, Alex Vlachos, Chris Brennan
And
“Rippling Refractive and Reflective Water”
by Alex Vlachos, John Isidoro and Chris Oat

Features include

1. Realtime vertex displacement
2. Full control over speed, wave direction, amplitude and frequency
3. Additional detailing via two normal maps
4. Fake refractions that look real
5. Real time reflections or reflections via environment maps
6. Fully configurable water color via texture maps