A) I think that guide shows you how to implement a sun shader, not make one.
Quote: "I then wrote a shader that only passes pixels with a brightness greater than 1.0 to the screen, i.e. some kind of binary "and" operation applied to pixels."
Case in point. He shows you how to use
his shader.
B) If you don't understand what mipmapping and render targets are, then how do you expect to program an entire shader? I understand
everything he was talking about, and
I wouldn't attempt to write a shader!
This was actually a well described step by step tutorial on how to use it, though.
I don't know what you do and don't know, but here's some of the things he was talking about.
Texture map-The image that appears on a 3d object.
Gaussian filter-A 2d graphics filter used to blur an image.
Render target-The object focused on by the shader/camera.
Mipmapping-A technique used to stop swimming pixels and increase render time by scaling the image down, and comparatively blending adjacent pixels to soften the image. The further from the camera the object is, the smaller the mipmap texture used is.
If life were like a box of chocolates, I'd know what I would get... The one that got dropped on the floor and put back in the box.
Iye nehvur yoose spehl chehk, ahn mie tippyng izz fiyne.
