DeleD Community Edition

[Jeroen]

This topic continues the topic on DeleD (re)design found here. Please feel free to join the discussion!
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[Starnick]

From the previous post:

[Starnick]

Also, on the topic of Cg:

Cg is a high level shading language much like GLSL and HLSL and Nvidia has runtimes that can be used with both OpenGL and DirectX, so it's a write-once deal. That is of course if your target application supports Cg shaders.

It's almost exactly identical to HLSL syntax wise (at least up to DX9, there's changes for DX10/11 but its more or less the same), and minor differences with standard library functions. This shouldn't be a surprise since Nvidia developed it in collaboration with Microsoft.

A nice feature of using Cg is using CgFX files (which are exactly like .fx files for HLSL). Effect files allow you to bundle the vertex/fragment shaders in a single file and define them in a set of techniques and passes, as well as specify what render states should be active for the pass.

The file format also has an annotation feature, where you annotate a shader variable for use by an editing tool. E.g. a variable may have a string identifier, a min, and max value that is used by a GUI. HLSL effect files also have the same feature.

I learned shader programming using Cg, and I personally prefer Cg/HLSL over GLSL

[Jeroen]

[Ewout]

Sounds like CG is quite cool. I personally program shaders in HLSL, because it was compatible with XNA. Alltough, CG seems better in this case to use.

I also checked yesterday SlimDX and for this case, I think it's indeed better to use that instead of XNA.

Anyway, I am going to install the mIRC client ^^ Didn't knew this forum had a irc channel

[chronozphere]

Ok, I'll give my opinion on some of the issues that have been discussed.

The C# language

I'm not a huge fan of C#, but you guys are giving good arguments so I believe its the way to goo. Alot of people around me said that C# was quite bloated because of the huge .NET framework dependancies people have to install in order to use the software. I'm curious about how you think about this? Is there a way to minimize dependancies for C# programs?

Graphics API's

I think plain OpenGL is the way to go. However, we absolutely need some kind of abstraction layer. It's main purpose is not to hide possible DirectX functionality, but to organize the render resources like textures, states etc...
It'd be great if we could quickly tell the renderer what to do through a high-level interface, instead of messing around with opengl states all over the place.

OpenGL also allows us to make DeleD cross-platform through MONO. I think having DeleD on linux would be very interesting (allthough it's a low priority thing).

Shaders

Personally, I'd prefer GLSL since we are using OpenGL. I haven't looked much into Cg so I don't know how good/fast it acutally is. If Cg tools allow us to make code conversions to HLSL/GLSL quickly, it would probably be a very good option.

Design

I'd opt for enough abstraction here. The current deled design is based around "Scenes being lists of meshes" (TBaseMesh class I believe it was). Everything in the scene is a mesh, even a light-source. This seems wrong to me, so I suggest we should introduce a very abstract SceneObject class from which we can derive Meshes, Lights, Gizmo's, Spline-paths, Animation-controllers and whatever we may need in the future. We should make a nice class diagram that includes all our scene objects and allows us to add new things in the future.

Also we should think about some of the core classes that we will use during complex geometry-operations. DeleD now uses a lot of List classes to store vertices, polygons and such. I think having a "Set" class would be good, since the order of elements in the container is often irrelevant. I'm pretty sure there are more usefull core classes to add.

DeleD has always used "Edit-modes". Each element of the scene could be changed by selecting the right mode. It would be good to anticipate on any future edit-modes we may need. Adding new types of objects to DeleD require new toolsets to be included aswell. Re-using edit modes for these new object-types will quickly become a maintainance nightmare.

What kind of plugins do we want in the future? Definitely import/export plugins, but also new tools having their own panel, or even new scene-objects like camera's, splines etc... It might be that a new plugin may also introduce a new viewport (like a texturing tool).

I'm a bit unsure what MeshParts is in your diagram. Do we need it? We may benefit from separating the actual geometry data from the Mesh-object, but don't know any good reasons now.

Name of DeleD

A new name is needed. I don't have any suggestions. We could just call it DeleD.Net. However, I think that DeleD originally came from the fact that the program was created using Delphi. If we rewrite it in C#, it would probably deserve a totally new name.

Programming-wise we should keep our focus narrow to make our goals realistic. However, design wise, we should think big and consider what DeleD may be able to do in the future.

[Jeroen]

About API's and Shaders: is a combination of OpenTK and Cg even possible?

[Ewout]

Well there are different ways to think: The light contains a position, color and contains a structure (the mesh in this case), but in some cases you can also say that it's a part of the scene, and then is inheritance handier I think.

Anyway, i will be on mIRC tonight

[chronozphere]

[AWM Mars]

I knew it, as soon as you guys got onto the IRC channels, you go off and all talk tech naughty stuff

Spare a thought for 'userability'. A good tool is a good as the way in which it interfaces with a user. My several comments about how DeleD had given me a good workflow, is true, not because it provided more or better tools, but just in the way it made them useable.
If I want more tools, I can load up Blender or some other programme... but, I get superior workflow with DeleD.. don't loose this, it is very very important.

I also see that there is a potential that DeleD is about to br rewritten. Not to make it different to the user pa sa, but under the hood. I would like you to consider annexing/branching a new addition to 'DeleD 3D Editor', and develop 'DeleD 3D Scene Manager' as a companion programme.

It has been said already, rewritting DeleD as it stands, using a different language, would only result in DeleD being at this point now in its evolution, some 5 years down the road, making it akin to a better working version of DOS.

You have had my 5 cents worth.
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[chronozphere]

[Starnick]

[Starnick]

[Ewout]

[chronozphere]