Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

Gavin.w3 — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:11:01 GMT

Hi mate,

what's the status on using the cubemapProcessor with GS 3.0. I'm getting a whole heap of errors, resultant from the .Pipeline namespace not existing in Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

Gavin.w3 — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:40:34 GMT

Ah. I've worked out what's going on. Pretty straight forward. I need to add a reference to Content.Pipeline because it isn't referenced by default for game projects since it's meant to be for custom importers and the like.

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

Anders Larsson — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:23:19 GMT

Hello

It would be nice if you could explain for a total noob how to use the CubemapProcessor source code to generate cubemaps from your own photo/texture.

I can't even figure out where to find the generated cubemaps after building and running the code.

I'm only interested in using this to generate cubemaps for a game I'm working on (not XNA).

I've tried to google for instructions on how to use it for this purpose but I'm lost.

Any help you could offer would be appreciated.

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

ShawnHargreaves — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:15:13 GMT

When you build using the Content Pipeline, the output data is stored in a .xnb file which can be read into your game using ContentManager.Load.

If you want to output the data in some other format, you could take the image manipulation code from that sample, but change it to save the data out in whatever other format you want, rather than running as part of the Content Pipeline.

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

sunjinchao1 — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:05:09 GMT

I'm kinda lost here. For the project on xna creator's club: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/sample/custommodeleffect

Can you explain the following question a bit?

How are the two projects related together?

(I couldn't find how you used the project CustomModelEffectPipeline in the CustomModelEffect project, there's no reference or anything. However if I delete the pipeline project, a build error would pop up say "Cannot find content processor 'EnvironmentMappedModelProcessor'" in saucer.fbx)

Thanks very much!

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

ShawnHargreaves — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:54:25 GMT

sunjinchao1: the Content sub project (which is nested inside the main CustomModelEffect game project) has its own set of references. These references are used at build time for creating content, as opposed to the main game references which are used at runtime while the game is executing. If you look in the Content project references, you will see that it references the CustomModelEffectPipeline project.

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

sunjinchao1 — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:59:44 GMT

Oh, I got it! That's why you have all the classes inside CustomModelEffectPipeline project inherited the ContentProcessor classes. So that they can get picked up without notice.

One more question :)

How can we do cube map when the enviroment is changing? e.g. In a racing game, if the car moves from block to block in the street, or there is another car right beside it.

Shouldn't the texture be changed on the fly?

In this case, should we generate the cube texture from the scene dynamically rather than from a single picture?

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

lance7 — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:25:00 GMT

I do not understand how they are connected either.

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

Shawn Hargreaves — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:34:17 GMT

If you want the reflections to change in realtime, then yes, in that case you need to generate the cubemap in realtime.

In many cases this is not necessary, so a static cubemap can give good results. But there are certainly situations where doing true dynamic reflections is important.

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

codo — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:29:43 GMT

Hi, I'm new to XNA. I need a tool to generate png/jpg/dds cubemap given some jpg file. How do I achieve that using CubemapProcessor? How to save the result to file?

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

ShawnHargreaves — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:54:59 GMT

codo: the Content Pipeline is designed to output data in .xnb format. If you want your output to be in some other format, you should not use the Content Pipeline.

You could certainly use the same image manipulation algorithm as the CubemapProcessor in our sample (you have the source code so you can see how it works) but you would need to make your own system for loading and saving the data either side of this transformation.

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

coffee bean — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 22:24:28 GMT

Sorry, what is his .xnb formatand why The pipeline can not produce other output?

re: Cubemaps: the salt of computer graphics

ShawnHargreaves — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:43:44 GMT

> what is his .xnb format

It is the output format from the XNA Framework Content Pipeline. You can read an overview of the Content Pipeline architecture here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb447745.aspx

> why The pipeline can not produce other output?

Because the pipeline is only designed to create .xnb files.