Introduction

Welcome to Meshuggah Demo and Effect browser!

 

This program is the result of my final student research project at Ilmenau Technical University, Germany. It was designed to conveniently show the benefits of the latest vertex and pixel shader technology introduced with DirectX 8 by implementing a series of hopefully interesting effects each taking advantage of various aspects of the new programmable rendering pipeline. The basic idea behind the program was to show each effect in two different ways depending on what you've chosen to be the programs startup mode. First of all there is the Demonstration mode where all effects run in a sequence synchronized to music like a video clip. Then there is an Interactive browser mode that allows you to inspect each effect individually and thoroughly. Here it is possible for you to tweak effect parameters in real time to get an idea how each parameter influences a given effect and contributes to its appearance. Therefore if you don't have a compatible graphic controller installed in your machine this program won't be of much fun. In that case you still have the option to download a video of the demo to see all effects in action.

 

The system requirements are as follows:

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Pentium III / AMD Athlon class CPU with at least 800 MHz (or better)

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A graphic controller supporting vertex and pixel shaders (e.g. GeForce3, Radeon8500)

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Win98, Win ME, Win2k, Win XP (the later two are preferred as they were used during development) with DirectX 8.1 runtime installed

 

To get a brief description of all startup options, a list of keyboard shortcuts for the demo as well as a quick guide on how to use the browser please refer to the Startup options and usage section.

For an in-depth discussion of all effects have a look at the Effects explained section. Here you will find detailed information about the techniques and shaders used to create each effect. It also contains an introduction to vertex and pixel shaders for those of you not familiar with the concept of shaders. References for further reading are included.

 

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Last update on 2002-03-17

 

Meshuggah Demo and Effect browser.
Copyright © 2001, 2002 Carsten Wenzel.
All rights reserved.