[K3d-development] Eureka! Layered Shaders with Aqsis

[Shead, T. <ts...@sa...>]

Gang:

I'm darned excited to report that we have support for Aqsis Layered
Shaders in CVS.  The UI in this first iteration is extremely ugly and
I'm already working on an alternative, but it's functional.  What this
means in practical terms is that we will be able to replace the current
set of one-off shaders with a collection of shading "components" that
can be connected to form shading trees.  As an example, you might
connect a "checkerboard" component to a "plastic" shader color input,
while connecting a "texture" component to its specular color input.  You
can also combine the outputs of different shaders in arbitrary ways,
i.e. you could combine a procedural "brick" component with a "decal"
component to place posters on a brick wall, instead of having to write a
separate "brick_with_decals" shader.

While I'm reworking the interface, I'd encourage everyone to obtain
Aqsis 1.1 (unstable), where the layered shaders feature was introduced.

Cheers,
Tim