Flat Surface Shader

#1

Post by msvan » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 4:59 PM UTC

Flat Surface Shader
wagerfield.github.io

Re: Flat Surface Shader

#2

Post by skrebbel » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 6:37 PM UTC

This is lovely, but it mostly just reminds me of how I can't wait until WebGL is so commonplace that we can finally ditch all that HTML/CSS nonsense.

Re: Flat Surface Shader

#3

Post by kh_hk » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 7:17 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #2

This is lovely, but it mostly just reminds me of how I can't wait until WebGL is so commonplace that we can finally ditch all that HTML/CSS nonsense.

    > HTML/CSS nonsense

Structured and well declared markup is no joke. If you actually refer to the common "hacks" to get demos and eye-candy stuff working, then I do agree. On the contrary, if you refer to ditching all HTML and CSS in favor of WebGL, then we're fucked.

Re: Flat Surface Shader

#4

Post by sheng » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 7:27 PM UTC

it looks quite nice but unfortunately I guess it's by far too power hungry. My GTX 560's fan went up.

Re: Flat Surface Shader

#5

Post by skrebbel » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 7:32 PM UTC

kh_hk wrote: post #3

skrebbel wrote: post #2

This is lovely, but it mostly just reminds me of how I can't wait until WebGL is so commonplace that we can finally ditch all that HTML/CSS nonsense.

> HTML/CSS nonsense Structured and well declared markup is no joke. If you actually refer to the common "hacks" to get demos and eye-candy stuff working, then I do agree. On the contrary, if you refer to ditching all HTML and CSS in favor of WebGL, then we're fucked.

No, I refer to bullshit like the amount of trouble you have to go through (and subsequently the amount of upvotes you get on HN [1]) if you manage to center a rectangle on the screen. Stuff like that. It's 2013, the web is the application platform of today, and centering a rectangle is nontrivial. What?

It's just one of the many examples of how broken HTML and CSS are. I dare say that anyone who claims that HTML and CSS aren't completely broken simply has absolutely no imagination and should consider accountancy.

On WebGL, we can reinvent presentation and styling entirely without sacrificing performance. Maybe keep parts of HTML, and ditch CSS entirely in favour of something better, and use a JS lib to render it all on GLES hardware, the same in every browser. Designers can think about different devices and screen sizes, and not about ways of telling a browser that a div is secretly a table cell so that it can be centered. We now have many competing programming languages, competing frameworks, and so on, with a few mainstream ones and improvements/replacements all the time. Rendering entire websites in WebGL enables having the same world-wide innovation in presenting web sites and web apps to users.

But even if you don't think going all-in on WebGL is a good idea, you have to agree that HTML/CSS is a gigantic 💩[2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6191350 [2] http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/browserte...

Re: Flat Surface Shader

#6

Post by ssiddharth » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 7:47 PM UTC

Everything renders incredibly smoothly on my setup. And I'm learning all sorts of nifty tricks via the source. Thanks for making this!

Re: Flat Surface Shader

#7

Post by pdknsk » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 8:00 PM UTC

This is probably a bit OT, but it makes me sad that flat shading as an art style has been abandoned in games. Ever since pixel shaders and normal maps gave us shiny plastic-y objects, developers haven't looked back.

Re: Flat Surface Shader

#8

Post by lifeformed » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 8:13 PM UTC

pdknsk wrote: post #7

This is probably a bit OT, but it makes me sad that flat shading as an art style has been abandoned in games. Ever since pixel shaders and normal maps gave us shiny plastic-y objects, developers haven't looked back.

Here's the lighting style of our current project: http://hitboxteam.tumblr.com/image/42563981451

Re: Flat Surface Shader

#9

Post by Detrus » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 8:22 PM UTC

Can you do this easily with three.js? Can this library work with three.js?

Re: Flat Surface Shader

#10

Post by cliftonk » Sun, Aug 11, 2013, 8:36 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #5

kh_hk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HTML/CSS nonsense Structured and well declared markup is no joke. If you actually refer to the common "hacks" to get demos and eye-candy stuff working, then I do agree. On the contrary, if you refer to ditching all HTML and CSS in favor of WebGL, then we're fucked.

No, I refer to bullshit like the amount of trouble you have to go through (and subsequently the amount of upvotes you get on HN [1]) if you manage to center a rectangle on the screen . Stuff like that. It's 2013, the web is the application platform of today, and centering a rectangle is nontrivial. What? It's just one of the many examples of how broken HTML and CSS are. I dare say that anyone who claims that HTML and…

Not only is WebGL not declarative, but how do you handle rendering text and having the browser know that it's text?

While HTML/CSS has serious compatibility and expressive issues, it's moving in the right direction very quickly. WebGL will be fantastic for gaming and visualizations, I think it is very much inferior for web pages & applications.