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• Plane9 as a rapid prototyping and testing system

  published on 2/20/2010 10:58 AM

  One of the things Plane9 is really good at is to work as a rapid prototyping and testing system. For example when Navis posted [url:3 GLSL effect rows|http://navis-asd.blogspot.com/2010/02/glsl-effect-1.html) on his blog I of course had to see what those rows actually did. Without Plane9 this could be a real hassle specially if you want to try a few things like different objects, textures and other effects.

  However with Plane9 all that had to be done was

  Start the editor

  Click create new scene button

  Attach a MeshObject to the RenderObject's Object port

  Add a Shader node to the Effect port of the MeshObject

  Add a Sphere to the Mesh port of the MeshNode

  Paste in the 3 shader lines and adjust them to work with Cg

  or

  Start the editor

  Open up an existing scene that has a effect node like the Tunnel scene

  Paste in the 3 shader lines and adjust them to work with Cg

  Thats all there was too it. Since the effect is updated without any "Press key X to compile" the testing was even faster. This was also the main goal of the editor. To rapidly be able to test and experiment until you get something that looked nice because most effects do seem to be created by accident instead of actually planing. A very good example of this can be to change the texture on for example the 'Kaleidoscope'. Each texture creates a new unique effect.

  Now you probably wonder what those lines actually did so this is the result

  Apply it to a sphere ![http://www.plane9.com/forumimages/20100220-bricksphere.png) Perform the effect twice as suggested in the comments ![http://www.plane9.com/forumimages/20100220-smoothcube.png) Apply it to the relief tunnel effect with a subdivided plane ![http://www.plane9.com/forumimages/20100220-bricktunnel.jpg)