[x3d-public] Support for specular maps (and more) in view3dscene, and Blender exporter to CommonSurfaceShader

[Don Brutzman]

great stuff!!  a bit more:

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On 4/29/2017 7:29 PM, Andreas Plesch wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 29, 2017 at 7:24 PM, Michalis Kamburelis <michalis.kambi at gmail.com <mailto:michalis.kambi at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>       ,2017-04-29 15:27 GMT+02:00 Andreas Plesch <andreasplesch at gmail.com <mailto:andreasplesch at gmail.com>>:
>      > CommonSurfaceShader is a nice way to get many of the performance and effect
>      > benefits of shadering without having to learn glsl and the light models'
>      > matrix math.
> 
>     I agree, and I would like to see it become part of the X3D standard :)
> 
> I support this proposal.

Thanks for the recent X3D working group briefing Michalis, it was very interesting + illuminating!  Lots to think about as we continue progress towards X3D v4.

Making shader-oriented code more portable, and better able to support related requested capabilities like bump maps and shadows etc. is certainly appealing.  The most frequently declared concern with shaders has always been portability and cross-platform support, along with a corresponding serious concern about potential security vulnerabilities.

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> In addition, or perhaps as an alternative, a curated, or endorsed library of shader code fragments, which cover the same functionality, is desirable.

We have Universal Media Materials available and there are a number of shader libraries out there.  People likely want to check out shaders being used on the Web3D 2017 Conference site also.

	http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/Basic/UniversalMediaMaterials
	http://vrmlstuff.free.fr/materials
	http://www.officetowers.com/UniversalMedia

	http://web3d2017.web3d.org/program
	http://web3d2017.web3d.org/speakers
	http://web3d2017.web3d.org/registration
	http://web3d2017.web3d.org/important-dates
	http://web3d2017.web3d.org/committee
	Shader Credits
	http://web3d2017.web3d.org/shader-credits
	https://www.shadertoy.com

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Timo, thought you might have a comment, since you've done a lot of work with Physically Based Rendering textures using glTF which also has a library of appearances and thus seems to be relevant...  Would you be able to provide a brief update during one of the upcoming X3D Working Group teleconferences (Wednesdays 08-0930 pacific), prior to seeing Fraunhofer demo progress at Web3D conference?

	http://instant3dhub.org/index.php/2017/03/02/gdc-2017-khronos-gltf-pbr-updates
	https://cloud.igd.fraunhofer.de/owncloud/s/qPq6bbWtrpAmZhU#pdfviewer

Presumably sharing information on shaders, glTF and SRC compression capabilities will help us all with diverse planning and implementation efforts that appear to be accelerating.  Please advise, TIA.

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On 4/30/2017 10:25 AM, Michalis Kamburelis wrote:
>    Especially since for now Castle Game Engine expects to find the
> height map in the alpha channel of normal map, so we ignore the
> "displacementMap"...

Perhaps such configuration information should be in some kind of enumeration field, for portability and reuse?

Wondering though, there might be more variations possible than make sense to put in a specification.  For those cases, it would also be helpful if we might come up with norms for X3D MetadataSet descriptions so that such variations in conventions in contained data structures can be compared, checked and perhaps adapted by other users and other scripts at run time.

all the best, Don
-- 
Don Brutzman  Naval Postgraduate School, Code USW/Br       brutzman at nps.edu
Watkins 270,  MOVES Institute, Monterey CA 93943-5000 USA   +1.831.656.2149
X3D graphics, virtual worlds, navy robotics http://faculty.nps.edu/brutzman