Truespace 7: Nvidia 5000/6000 vs. 9000 series from ATI 2005-05-30 - By Jason Lechak
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Hi folks. Does anyone have any opinions on Nvidia cards such as the 6000/6000
series versus the ATI 9000 / X series of cards? The one thing I notice is the
ATI cards are more expensive. I have an older GeForce2 and would really like to
upgrade in order to take advantage of the benefits of TS7.
Also, I need to determine the best upgrade path based on cost. Currently, I
have:
AMD Athlon XP 2000+
Windows 2000 SP4
512 MB PC2100 memory
GeForce2 video card, 32 or 64 MB (not sure which)
I need to upgrade piecemeal, so I think the best course of action would be to
upgrade to an additional 512 MB and upgrade the video card. Is there a more
significant benefit with upgrading to Windows XP or the CPU/Mainboard?
Thanks,
Jason
-- ---- -- Forwarded Message -- ---- --
GeForce2 will work but it will not show any of that fancy stuff like real time
shadows or pixel shaders. For that you will need DX9 compatible card like 5000
or 6000 series from NVidia or 9000 or X series from ATI.
Roman
> At 03:44 PM 28-05-05, Dave Gray wrote:
> >Thanks to all for the praise, comments and suggestions. All noted - Kris,
> >Tony and John being the latest.
> >
> >I must admit I am battling with the island size(scale) and texture. I did
> >add an anchor rope for the boat (image not posted) and because my wife liked
> >it the way it was I have submitted it to the Gallery. :-)
>
> I don't know whether this will help, but there wa a plug-in available a
> while back (might still be, I just don't know) called trueScape, by Ted
> Southard. It's a tool that lets you convert a greyscale bump map. I think
> the file has to be a greyscale image (but check...) and it accepts BMP,
> JPG, GIF, PNG, TGA, and TIFF files.
>
> It was a tS4.x plugin, but works just fine (as far as I've expereinced) in
> tS5.x and tS6.x.
>
> So, if you wanted, you could use that to create an object using it. Run it
> through "Solidify" (an old plug-in), which makes it more stable. You can
> then use the deform tools, point edit tools, booleans (most of the time),
> and so on.
>
> To enhance it even more, you can then apply the original bump/transparency
> to the Color part of the Shader tool to the object - so, for example, if
> you have bumps that are to be boulders, and say the lower areas are to be
> gravel or grass or whatever, you can use one texture-image as the base via
> the Shader tool, and then, as above, create a second layer and apply the
> original bump/transparency to the Color part of the Shader tool to it ((BUT
> you have to remember that, although Black is transparent on Layer One, this
> is reversed on layers 2 and higher)). Also remember to apply the layer-2 (See http://yer-2.ora-code.com)+
> transparency to the Reflectance shader - that way, you cold make shiny
> grass dotted with matte boulders, also, if you add a third layer, you could
> use a separate transparency only for the reflectance (make all others
> transparent with the bar a tthe bottom of the color and bump shader boxes)
> and that way, you could make the lower parts of the island lookn wet (since
> the waves would be lapping up on the shoreline).
>
> Don't ask me about alphas (I never use them ebcause I always seem to get
> black "haloes" around the objects rather than fuill transparency, so I gave
> up on them a few years ago and exclusively use specific transparency
> maps). I don't use Symbiont because I had trouble with it from the
> beginning, couldn't get it to map properly. So I exclusively use Shader Lab.
>
> That being said, tho', SL has soem transparency procedurals and I'm sure
> that Symbiont would as well, so, if you hate using transparency maps, you
> could probably usea shader. It's just that, using the same image as the
> basis for the obect and the bump and the texturing, everything meshes
> properly and you know exactly where the transparencies are going to be
applied.
>
> Another little trick with transp. maps is that you can finagle your image
> to create droplets. So, you could for example have the shoreline all shiny
> at the bottom, and then add in a sprinkling of Noise (in PSP at least) to
> make it look like maybe some spray had hit higher up. ((This is also neat
> for making fountain spumes.))
>
> In connection with this, ther is a cool shader for ShaderLab called
> Invisible that lets you cast shadows through a greyscale/B&W image without
> any artifacts appearing on the parts that are supposed to be invisible.
>
> If that's confusing, let me know and I can prob. dash off a few
> illustration/screen caps, upload, and provide the URL.
>
> One thing I've done is to make the background of my bump map solid black,
> and then start the future object with a mid-grey - that way, it's easy to
> boolean subtract a cube so that you're just left with the actual object
> (this also of course reduces your polygon count). You can also copy,
> mirror, rotate, etc., to get a "mirror" of the object, and then boolean the
> 2 halves together - although sometimes it won't boolean (I guess very
> roughly maybe 2% to 5% of the time...)
>
> One trick is to lower all the numbers in the Boolean Properties box to
> their minimums and UN-check "delete edges" . I've found over the years
> that this leads to *much* more success than the default settings.
>
> HTH!
>
> - Kris Krieger
>
>
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