I am proud to present major enhancements today:
- Ca3D-Engine maps are fully lit now!
Radiosity based lighting, in combination with an
adapted tone reproduction operator, yields physically correct lights
and shadows. LightMaps can be rendered by multitexturing and in two
passes. While multitexturing is the default rendering mode for optimal
speed, Ca3DE automatically falls back into two-pass mode for maximum
compatibility.
- Furthermore, I incorporated skeleton based model
rendering into Ca3DE.
This allows it to draw other players, monsters and other world objects
in a very flexible and efficient manner. However, in the current demo
version you will not be attacked by evil monsters. But you'll receive
nice (and probably well known) company once you move a few feet away
from your map starting point.
- Despite the additional rendering capabilities, Ca3DE gives even more
FPS than the previous version: there is still room for
improvement, to be incorporated into the next versions.
- The cracks between polygons have finally been completely eliminated -
no sky shining through walls anymore.
In addition to other improvements, I believe that the lightmap and model
rendering to be two great leaps forward.
In fact, when I ran the lightmap compiler for the first time, I could not
believe what I was seeing!
The
Screen-shots will
give you a first impression of the lighting and model rendering
quality.
A note about copyright and foreign artwork that is shipped with Ca3DE:
I'm a programmer, not an artist. The Ca3D-Engine includes foreign artwork (look
here for proper
credits), copyrighted by the respective authors. I
always
contact the authors and ask for their permission before putting a version
of Ca3DE online which includes their work. Sometimes, however, my
requests simply go unanswered. In these cases I assume that these
copyright owners do not mind me using and shipping their work with Ca3DE.
Should anyone have any problems which arise from this, please contact me.