In the texture room, there is a menu choice of Optimize Sheader.. What exactly does this do? I have never even noticed it before. Is it essential to do when editing shadrs?

thanks
kaom

Message edited on: 05/20/2004 23:30

I never use it. I think it will clear up inconsistancies in your shader tree. But C usually lets you know in other ways if your shader is not correct. (error messages and such) Ed

Thanks, I've been trying to figure out what it did, but couldn't notice a difference when I clicked it.. thanks' kaom

Just played with it a little- I don't know about pointing out errors, but it does thses things-- 1) If you have a value slider set to 0, it removes it completely 2) If you have a color set in a channel that uses a value (refraction, bump, shininess) it replaces it with a value slider set to the appropriate amount. 3) It collapses unused branches- if you have an add with an empty operand, it removes the add and moves up the one operand you have. All these changes would save time when rendering. I think Optimize trys to make your shader as simple as it can. Cool! I'll have to start using this function! Thanks for pointing it out! Markd

I stand corrected on "error messages" what I should have said was "crashes". :-) Mdesmarais has given a clear and accurate report! Thanks ED