Creating a Visual Studio project from existing code

Posted on by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Visual Studio 2019

Steps for creating a new Visual Studio project based on existing code files:

  1. Create an empty project folder and name it your intended project name.
  2. Inside the new project folder, create a folder for your source code files.
    * I call is “Source”, not sure if it has to named that way..
  3. Copy your existing code files to the source folder.
  4. Launch Visual Studio, and open it without code:
  5. Select:
    File > New > Project From Existing Code..
    To open the Create New Project From Existing Code Files wizard:
  6. Note:
    The documentation on this operation states that the wizard will copy files by itself, my own experience is that it doesn’t, it just links them to the project, that’s why I copy the source files prior to this step.
    In the Create New Project From Existing Code Files wizard,
    1. Set the path to your project folder.
    2. Specify a project name.
    * I set this to be the same name as the project folder name, not sure if otherwise it will create a sub-folder..
    3. This is set to the same folder as the project folder.
    * It’s possible that I don’t understand this correctly.. but I think theoretically, the intention is that you would add external folders to this list, from which source files would be copied, but like I said, when I tried that the files where not copied to the project.
  7. Set your new projects settings and press Finish to create the new project:

Note:
New code files generated in a ported code project may be stored in a wrong folder by default, see this post for solutions.

Blender – Adding a texture to an Area Light

Posted on by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.82

Adding a texture to an area light can make it produce softer and more detailed highlights and an overall more organic lighting effect.

Note:
Since an Area light in Blender isn’t rendered as an actual mesh object with UV coordinates, it’s texture coordinates are parametric (see below).

Adding a texture to an Area Light:

  1. In the Area Light properties click the Use Nodes button (see image A) to initiate its node graph and allow texturing it.
  2. In the Shader Editor view (with the light selected), drop your texture to the light’s node graph and connect it to the light’s Emission node’s Color input. (see image B)
  3. Create a new Input > Geometry node, and connect it’s Parametric output to the Image Texture’s Vector input. (see image B)

A. Without a texture the Area light produces a hard flat highlight:
a

B. With the vignette texture, the Area light now has a more subtle organic effect:
* The Emission node’s Strength was increased in this case to compensate for the lower light output with the texture.
b
Related posts:

  1. Cycles Area Light pleasent surprise
  2. Cycles Area Light shader visibility