I switched from Maple to Mathematica last week. One of my small little projects is to store all the graphics algorithms I liked to visualize in the last few years in one file. A kind of condensed memory of the things I worked on. Here is an example for a simple Depth of Field effect (as already covered in my GDC 2007 talk):
Distance runs on the axis called Z value. So 0 is close to the camera and 1.0 is far away. You can see how the near and far blur plane fade in and out with increasing of the value called Range. The equation to plot this in mathematica is rather simple. In practice it is a quite efficient approach to achieve the effect.
Plot3D[R*Abs[0.5 - z], {z, 1, 0}, {R, 0, 1},
PlotStyle -> Directive[Pink, Specularity[White, 50], Opacity[0.8]],
PlotLabel -> "Depth of Field", AxesLabel -> {"Z value", "Range"}]My plan is to develop a few new algorithms and show the results here. It will be an exercise in thinking about new things for me. If you have any suggestions on what I should cover, please do not hesitate to post them in the comment line.
ShaderX8 is already announced. Proposals are due by May 19th, 2009. Please send them to wolf at shaderx.com. An example proposal, writing guidelines and a FAQ can be downloaded from www.shaderx6.com/ShaderX6.zip. The schedule is available on http://www.shaderx8.com/. 
