I am happy to inform you that both a new Ca3D-Engine demo as well as an updated
development kit have just been released!
This release is mostly a maintenance release. Significant "under the hood" work
has been achieved, improving existing features and preparing Ca3DE for the
upcoming enhancements.
Most work has been spent with the
Ca3DE World Editor "CaWE"
that runs both under
Windows and
Linux. The
very user-friendly GUI has been further revised and significantly improved. One
of the most visible enhancements is the
live preview of very
large terrains directly in the editor.
Moreover, the CaWE editor and the Ca3D-Engine itself can now import terrains
directly from
Terragen (*.ter) terrain files as well as from
Portable Graymap (*.pgm) heightmap images. Both file formats
allow for high-precision terrain definition. That means that Ca3DE can now
handle mountains that are
hundreds of meters high with a precision of
millimeters!
Also the
Ca3DE Material System was improved in many regards.
New
shader keywords make it more powerful than ever before,
and the newly completed
cube-map support, together with
sophisticated transformation matrix handling make it ideal for
implementing rendering shaders for advanced reflective materials in the next
release.
The following web news items have more detailed information about the latest
features, inclusive feature-specific screen-shots:
http://www.ca3d-engine.de/comment.php?comment.news.47
http://www.ca3d-engine.d/comment.php?comment.news.49
http://www.ca3d-engine.de/comment.php?comment.news.50
For the next release, a
"TechDemo" map is being prepared. It
will focus on demonstrating the features of the Ca3D-Engine
"live", in
real-time, and all in one place.
Enjoy!