Thursday, March 15, 2012

Math:Dot Product

Once I got into fx for games I found myself using a ton more math when creating shaders for our particle effects. This gave me a renewed love for all things mathematical as well as a practical application for mathematics I've learned over the course of time. It also gave me a reason to expand on that knowledge and push it further to allow me to create better shaders. It's incredibly rewarding. That said, I've decided to make some videos demonstrating some general and not so general mathematics used in creating shaders. The principles and operations are not limited to an engine as the math behind how the shaders work is universal. Such is math. I will preface this first video by saying I am not that great of an instructor and I sometimes find it difficult coming up with the right examples to explain things. Because of this I have asked Eben Cook to preview my work and make sure it's understandable and correct. I have jumped into the deep end here with the first video by explaining the "dot product" of two vectors. If it's a little too advanced then don't worry I'll be starting on some more basic concepts in my forthcoming videos. I'll be using UDK to demonstrate these examples since the material editor has a good preview system for visualizing the math. Enjoy.


Seth said...

Thanks for the Tutorial. I have asked around with no luck of an explanation about dot product. Now I have to figure when it is the choice to use. Looking forward to more in the future.

Alex said...

This was great, thanks! Helped me understand a shader I am workin on.