2001-03-21 Radiosity based lightmaps and model rendering

News about the Cafu Engine. Subscribe to the related ImageCafu News feed to stay informed.
Locked
User avatar
Carsten
Site Admin
Posts:2170
Joined:2004-08-19, 13:46
Location:Germany
Contact:
2001-03-21 Radiosity based lightmaps and model rendering

Post by Carsten » 2008-01-15, 13:31

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.
    small02.gif
    small02.gif (13.98KiB)Viewed 6294 times
    small03.gif
    small03.gif (14.58KiB)Viewed 6294 times
  • 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.
Locked

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 24 guests