Anyone here a self-taught graphics programmer?

ISDCaptain01 · 2018-02-03T15:01:03

Im talking about people with no cs degree or formal education in it. How were you able to pick up the material and what challeneges did you face? Do you do it as a living or just a hobby?

benjamin1441

132

November 11, 2017 12:03 PM

On 08/09/2017 at 11:19 PM, Gerrion said:
Hey everyone, just stumbled across this thread and thought I'd post!
Yep, I'm a self-taught Graphics Programmer Started programming when I was 9 at Xmas 1982 with my new ZX Spectrum. Wrote a 3D spinning cube demo about a year later in Z80 assembly on the speccy after seeing Starglider. Moved onto an Atari ST in 1986 and wrote lots of 3D demos to share around school.

Ahh loving the old-school stuff! I want to get into doing some wireframe or solidfill in assembly, when I'm a supercoder. Just so I can bring back the '80s!

between3and26characters

110

November 11, 2017 04:37 PM

Hi, I teach myself OpenCL. Here is a game that gets its logic and rendering computed by only OpenCL.

8-bit art counts here?

Warning! This may be the worst rendering in forum.

here you can download and try it:

https://github.com/tugrul512bit/KaloriferBenchmarkGPU/blob/master/EpicWarCL021.rar

it uses a multi-device-capable OpenCL load-balancer and pipeliner API that I wrote:

https://github.com/tugrul512bit/Cekirdekler/wiki

I've been doing OpenCL stuff with tagetting new experiences and fun, for about 4 years.

Need an open-source multi-gpu OpenCL load-balancer for C#? Here it is= https://github.com/tugrul512bit/Cekirdekler/wiki it also has pipelining.

Hello world in all GPUs:


ClNumberCruncher cr = new ClNumberCruncher(
    AcceleratorType.GPU, @"
      __kernel void hello(__global char * arr)
      {
           printf(""hello world"");
      }
");
ClArray<byte> array = new ClArray<byte>(1000);
array.compute(cr, 1, "hello", 1000, 100);

benjamin1441

132

November 12, 2017 01:20 PM

20 hours ago, between3and26characters said:
Hi, I teach myself OpenCL. Here is a game that gets its logic and rendering computed by only OpenCL.
8-bit art counts here?
Warning! This may be the worst rendering in forum.
here you can download and try it:
https://github.com/tugrul512bit/KaloriferBenchmarkGPU/blob/master/EpicWarCL021.rar

it uses a multi-device-capable OpenCL load-balancer and pipeliner API that I wrote:
https://github.com/tugrul512bit/Cekirdekler/wiki

I've been doing OpenCL stuff with tagetting new experiences and fun, for about 4 years.

Which team are you in the game? 1,2 or 3? I don't play many rts games, because there's quite a lot to keep track of, in this game I'm looking at 20000 ships. It's hurting my head just watching it.

It's pretty to look at though. Like a Pink Floyd art video.

between3and26characters

110

November 12, 2017 06:02 PM

On 12.11.2017 at 4:20 PM, benjamin1441 said:
Which team are you in the game? 1,2 or 3? I don't play many rts games, because there's quite a lot to keep track of, in this game I'm looking at 20000 ships. It's hurting my head just watching it.
It's pretty to look at though. Like a Pink Floyd art video.

edit: now you can select your team and ship parts.

edit-2: for ship rendering, exchanged circles with png data for more realistic view

edit-3: now captains levelup with experience and pick skills (if you add at least 1 captain from settings)

(deprecated)

You can control all, its not even a prealpha version. It has only 0.0.2.1 but in future you may pick your own team and fill crew yourself. After crew developent is finished, there will be team-fight, free-for-all and king-of-the hill modes(maybe even story mode but I don't know how to handle game events yet in GPU)

(deprecated)

Yes it hurts to look at them from far because they start blinking because of pixel sampling randomness(ship id values have priority to be sampled and they start as random positions -> blinking like stars in chaotic athmosphere. Maybe needs some extra smothing when looking from far, or just creating a k-nearest neighbor bordered painting to look simpler).

Thank you.

Need an open-source multi-gpu OpenCL load-balancer for C#? Here it is= https://github.com/tugrul512bit/Cekirdekler/wiki it also has pipelining.

Hello world in all GPUs:


ClNumberCruncher cr = new ClNumberCruncher(
    AcceleratorType.GPU, @"
      __kernel void hello(__global char * arr)
      {
           printf(""hello world"");
      }
");
ClArray<byte> array = new ClArray<byte>(1000);
array.compute(cr, 1, "hello", 1000, 100);

michaeldodis

0

December 06, 2017 03:34 PM

I'm actually studying at a university, but it'll be a long time before I can take the graphics programming course. So up to now I guess I'm considered self-taught?

I've dabbled with graphics programming for only a year and half though, so I'm still learning! But I'll tell you anyway.

I think the hardest part was getting a good understanding of what actually happens in the GPU. Now I'm not saying I have completely mastered the gpu, no.

I started with opengl like most people I think. I couldn't even get it compile, that's how bad I was ?

Anyways, I kept trying and trying, watching a lot of videos and reading lots of text tutorials. I didn't understand even the simplest gpu pipeline until a lot later on, but now I know why it is the way it is.

I did it as a hobby, but obviously now Im thinking of doing it for a living. It's a pretty hard topic, but it's so satisfying when you start to slowly understand different parts of it!

As for specific videos or text tutorials, I just watched almost all of them.

I strongly suggest This guy's tutorials though. I hope I helped anyone who's trying to get into graphics!

GitHub: https://github.com/michaeldodis

HateWork

172

December 20, 2017 11:51 PM

Well, no degree nor ID here. I am a self teaching enthusiast. I read the standards and specifications of the technologies I want to comply or implement. It takes me months to accomplish things that would take others a weekend...I like taking it easy.

I do it as a hobby, I'm a burgerflipper, I live under limited conditions but at least I have access to the Internet. Programming a game engine is the only way I can keep my mind busy because it is an extremely hard challenge. It's an unusual but fun hobby.

TomKQT

1,708

January 31, 2018 08:16 AM

I'm a completely self-taught programmer. I started with programming on my Commodore C64 (from around the age of 10, I think), where I learnt the BASIC language and the most important programming principles like variables, branching, arrays, loops etc. And also binary numbers and binary operations (AND, OR etc.) because of how often do you have to use those famous POKE and PEEK commands on C64. My only sources of information were the user manual of C64 (it was a completely different manual than nowadays, it contained also a very good BASIC reference book with sample codes) and a book I got back then (no Internet, of course).

Later when I switched to 286 and DOS, I stayed with BASIC (QBASIC). Then Visual Basic 6 and all those .NET versions.

I started with C++ quite at the same time as with DirectX 9 and it was quite late - what I was beginning my Ph.D. studies in Robotics (at 2004, age of 24). My sources were some books (Frank Luna) and the Internet, inluciding the gamedev.net forums (as you can see, I registered around that time).

I'm partly using programming and DirectX in my job, but I'm not strictly a programmer. It's been my hobby for all the time.

ritzmax72

1

February 03, 2018 03:01 PM

Hi, L Spiro. How old are you now, given that you started at 16-17 yo.

Anyone here a self-taught graphics programmer?

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