Expressions and Tables¶
Some material keywords take not only plain numbers as their parameters, but entire mathematical expressions that are evaluated whenever the material is employed for rendering. Expressions in turn may refer to look-up tables, which are a very simple but flexible means to approximate arbitrary mathemathical functions.
This section explains the details of expressions and tables.
Expressions¶
Some of the above keywords cannot only take numbers as their arguments, but entire mathematical expressions. An expression is a combination of numbers, mathematical operations, symbols, and table look-ups. Here is an example for such an expression:
(1 + sinTable[ time*0.25 + 3 ]) / 2
Unfortunately, there is also bad news: The current parser of the Cafu
MatSys is not yet powerful enough to parse expressions that use operator
infix notation like the one above. Instead of +
, -
, *
, … we
therefore have to use explicit prefix notation, which is much easier to
parse. The prefix notation is explained below. Here is the above example
in prefix notation that we have to use until I can improve the parser to
support infix notation:
div(add(1, sinTable[ add(mul(time, 0.25), 3) ]), 2)
Expressions are defined recursively as follows:
$num
- A number.
$var
- A variable. Please see below for a list of all valid variables.
$table[ $expr ]
- A table look-up. The value of the table at position
$expr
is returned. The details of the look-up depend on the tables definition. The default tablessinTable
andcosTable
are always predefined. Custom tables can be defined as described in subsection Tables. Note that table look-ups are normalized. That is, all table elements are accessed by indices between 0.0 and 1.0, that is, the fractional part of$expr
. add($expr1, $expr2)
- Adds the results of
$expr1
and$expr2
. sub($expr1, $expr2)
- Subtracts the results of
$expr1
and$expr2
. mul($expr1, $expr2)
- Multiplies the results of
$expr1
and$expr2
. div($expr1, $expr2)
- Divides the results of
$expr1
and$expr2
if$expr2
is not 0. Otherwise, this evaluates to 0.
The following variables are defined:
time
- The current system time in seconds, starting from zero.
ambientLightRed
,ambientLightGreen
,ambientLightBlue
- The Cafu engine provides the color of the ambient light that is
contributed by radiosity light sources in these variables.
Therefore, almost all material definitions that are employed with
entities (e.g. player models, weapon and item models, etc.)
normally use these variables so that the entity is colored according
to the ambient radiosity light. Please see the
.cmat
files inGames/DeathMatch/Materials/Models/
for many examples.
Tables and table look-ups are described in subsection Tables.
Tables¶
A special expression is a table look-up of the form
$myTable[$indexExpr]
, where $myTable
is the name of a table that
must have been defined before use, and $indexExpr
is another
expression that determines where in $myTable
the look-up occurs. The
scope of $myTable
begins at its definition and ends at the end of
the material script.
Here is a simple but complete example with a table of four values:
// This line defines the table "myTestTable":
table myTestTable { { 0.2, 1.4, 0.6, 1 } }
TestMaterialForTableLookup
{
diffusemap someDiffuseMap.png
// ...
rgb div(myTestTable[mul(time, 0.5)], 1.2) // equiv. to: rgb myTestTable[time*0.5]/1.2
}
As you can see, table definitions start with the keyword table
,
followed by the name of the table. Then come two {
brackets, the
table data values separated by commas (arbitrarily many), and then the
closing two }
brackets.
Note that table data values are always mapped into the range 0 to 1.
Therefore, the graphical representation of myTestTable
looks like
this:
You may wonder what you get for myTestTable[x]
if x is smaller than
0 or greater than 0.75, or what happens if x is “between” two table
values. Per default, table values are infinitely repeated outside of the
range 0 to 1, and linearly interpolated between two adjacent values.
Therefore, myTestTable
from the above example in fact represents the
following function, graphically shown in light blue color:
Observe how the values repeat with each integral number. That is, the table in range 0 to 1 is repeated between 1 to 2, between 2 to 3, 3 to 4, and so on. It is also repeated into the negative range, that is from -1 to 0, from -2 to -1, -3 to -2, and so on.
myTestTable[0.375]
(in the mid between 0.25
and 0.5) yields 1.0 as the result.For example, if you access myTestTable
via the MatSys variable
time
, as in myTestTable[time]
, then it always takes exactly one
second to traverse the entire table. If you want to change the speed
with which the table is traversed, then you’ll have to multiply the
index variable time
with an appropriate scale factor. For example,
myTestTable[div(time, 3)]
will take three seconds to walk the entire
table once.
snap and clamp¶
For special-purpose tables, you can insert the keywords snap
and/or
clamp
between the two opening {
brackets of the table
definition.
``snap`` turns the linear interpolation off, and instead repeats the
previous value until the next table value. Thus, if we changed the
definition of our myTestTable
above to
table myTestTable { snap { 0.2, 1.4, 0.6, 1 } }
then our graphical representation of the table becomes:
Snapping is useful whenever you want to have a table to encode functions that have “hard” rather than “smooth” transitions. For example, in order to have LEDs flicker the SOS morse code, you’d use this table:
table sosTable { snap { 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 } }
``clamp`` turns off the repetition of the table values outside of
the range 0 to 1. That is, adding clamp
to our definition of
myTestTable
yields:
table myTestTable { clamp { 0.2, 1.4, 0.6, 1 } }
clamp
, the first table value is returned for
myTestTable[x]
where x is less than 0, and the last table value is
returned whenever x is greater than 1 (in fact, greater than
1-1/TableSize).Finally, you can also combine snap
and clamp
:
table myTestTable { snap clamp { 0.2, 1.4, 0.6, 1 } }
Predefined Tables¶
Normally, tables must be defined before their first use, but there are also tables that are inherently defined by the MatSys and can always be used without prior definition:
sinTable
- yields the sinus of its argument. Note that the entire 360° (2pi) arc is compressed into the range 0 to 1, not 0 to 2pi.
cosTable
- yields the cosinus of its argument. Note that the entire 360° (2pi) arc is compressed into the range 0 to 1, not 0 to 2pi.
sinTable01
- like
sinTable
, but the values are not returned in range -1 to 1, but “compressed” to 0 to 1. That is,sinTable01[x]
is equivalent todiv(add(sinTable[x], 1), 2)
. cosTable01
- like
cosTable
, but the values are not returned in range -1 to 1, but “compressed” to 0 to 1. That is,cosTable01[x]
is equivalent todiv(add(cosTable[x], 1), 2)
.