anyone use these 1.8.1 shaders yet ?

#1 eb,
I asked the same thing a while ago and never got any answers. I'm trying to port stuff over to 1.8.1 still, but if I get a chance to mess with those, I will surely let you now what I find...if I can get anything working :)

j

#2 I can not seem to figure out what/how to FEED any shader to get them to work; unless i have a demo script to go by. I have no idea how to figure out what baseTex or texture or when to use new CustomMaterial or new Material and the docs seem rather out of date in this area, with very unhelpful examples who explain nothing.

No info at all about new GFXStateBlockData, new GFXSamplerStateData

#3 it must be all the new documentation we have heard about... its ok we are waiting on the SFX documentation too...

#4 There's a pretty good guide on TDN about Stateblocks. No script code, but it's easy to follow if you check out initPersistFields afterwards. I agree some example should exist.

As for the difference between Material and CustomMaterial, you could have read the docs in the source, or again TDN. Here's a snippit from shaderGen.h:

//**************************************************************************
/*!
   The ShaderGen class takes shader feature data (usually created by 
   MatInstance) and creates a vertex/pixel shader pair in text files
   to be later compiled by a shader manager.
   
   It accomplishes this task by creating a group of shader "components" and
   "features" that output bits of high level shader code.  Shader components
   translate to structures in HLSL that indicate incoming vertex data,
   data that is output from the vertex shader to the pixel shader, and data
   such as constants and textures that are passed directly to the shader
   from the app.

   Shader features are separable shader functions that can be turned on or
   off.  Examples would be bumpmapping and specular highlights.  See 
   GFXMaterialFeatureData for the current list of features supported.

   ShaderGen processes all of the features that are present for a desired
   shader, and then prints them out to the respective vertex or pixel
   shader file.
   
   For more information on shader features and components see the 
   ShaderFeature and ShaderComponent classes.
*/
//**************************************************************************

#5 Spent near 60 minute trying to find the TDN article about Stateblocks, but searching for Stateblocks is the only way to find it, what is why i had never seen it before. Why isnt that information in the DOC's that came with 1.8? Thanks Stefan for letting me know.

#6 No problem.

As for CustomMaterial vs Material, for any of the examples you guys made above, you'd have to use a CustomMaterial. "Regular" materials are procedurally generated (as mentioned by the comments in shaderGen.h - above) and you can't map them to a specific shader.

*All* shaders found in the shaders folder except those in the folder named "procedural" are to be used with a CustomMaterial, or directly in the engine via GFX::setShader.