OpenGL Features

[BANE]

Hi,

I have just finished implementing transparency into my 3D engine. I was wondering what kind of features other people were developping out there ??? I guess the next step would probably to do shadows and lighting or maybe a nice portal effect. So what kind of features do you think would be great looking ??

Dan.

[Eric]

Hi Bane,

Before running into shadows (which can be quite complex !), try to implement reflections in your scenes : there is a pretty good article by Mark Kielgard from nVidia on this very web site (I think you can access it from the main page). It explains reflections and shadows with the stencil buffer (I think you should have hw stencil buffer on Macs).

Good luck !

Eric

[BANE]

I just finished working on reflections 2 days ago. That's what I was working on before transparency. I preprocess my mirrors and create textures from that. The effect is quite nice. I am pondering what to work on next.

Dan.

[Eric]

Then go for shadows !

Although it simple to have shadows in a static scene (I mean, you can calculate your shadow volumes offline !), it is another story for dynamic shadows ! Big processor + GeForce recommended (dunno if GeForce can be used on Macs though...).
Well use a G4 !!!!

Good luck.

Eric

[BANE]

Originally posted by Eric:
Then go for shadows !

Although it simple to have shadows in a static scene (I mean, you can calculate your shadow volumes offline !), it is another story for dynamic shadows ! Big processor + GeForce recommended (dunno if GeForce can be used on Macs though...).
Well use a G4 !!!!

Good luck.

Eric

What do you mean by the shadow volume ??? I have a little algorithms I use to create lighmap with shadows but it is something of a brute force algorithm. I think I could/should refine it.

At the moment I trace rays between my source of light and the face and test against any faces in between. That enables me to create lightmap with hard edge shadows.

Dan.

[Eric]

Well, for shadow volumes, look at the article I mentioned before ! It would be too long for me to explain it correctly (well, actually I think I would make one or two mistakes that would not help you !).

Regards.

Eric