Castor3D: Castor3D Engine

Change log

This page is here to inform about the changes since the earliest versions of the engine

Created Dx9Renderer to render with Direct3D 9. Stills things to correct, in shaders and matrices, but it's almost done.
Created different files for OpenGL contexts (X11, Gtk, Msw), X11 and Gtk still untested.
Created a splash screen for CastorViewer and CastorShape, created a dialog box in order to choose the renderer at startup.
Added a small app to converet from an image to a XPM.
Added new features to scene files (alpha_rejection, rgb_blend, alpha_blend, hl_shader_program, ...)

Optimised CMakeLists file and 'cmake_modules' files in order to take care of various configurations in a better way.
Revised VertexBuffers and IndexBuffers, introducing VertexDeclaration and BufferElementGroup, so we can create VertexBuffersof customisable types.
Vertex class now derives from BufferElementGroup.
TextureEnvironment are going to disappear in the next version, now multitexturing management is done with passes and texture units.
Suppressed GLU dependencies.

Trouble with Direct3D matrices (maybe differences between right-handed / left-handed).
Trouble with HLSL shaders, surely linked to previous trouble.
Still troubles with Cg shaders (not worked on it).

Created a CMakeLists file to generate the solution from CMake.
Reorganised folders to make them more compliant with CMake.
Splitted Plugin class in 3 parts : Renderer, Divider et Importer.
Created one project per importer (OBJ, PLY, MD2, MD3, 3DS, ...)
PNTrianglesDivider is left in Castor3D because it is sstill used by Icosahedron, LoopDivider is exported in a plugin.
Began Cg shaders implementation. This implies a scene file modification because in Cg, uniform variables are are linked to a shader instead of being linked to the whole program. Still buggy.

Suppressed FreeImagePlus dependencies.
Vertex, Attribute and Index buffers are now created by RenderSystem so they can be created out of the renderers.
Suppressed Singletons for the Managers (Image, Font, Scene, Material, Animation and Mesh).
Remerged SceneNode classes.
Created IdPoint class, it is a point with just an index. Submes::AddPoint creates now IdPoints and Submesh::AddFace uses them to create the vertex.
Subdividers can subdivide in a thread in order not to freeze the main thread. It is possible to define a function to use at the end of the subdivision (cf. CastorShape).

Using std or tr1 or boost smart pointers.
Created OpenGlCommon for common treatments between GL2RenderSystem and GL3RenderSystem
Created class Pipeline which performs the matrix computings and other functions (frustum, perspective, ortho, ...)

Modified MemoryManager, added a template class MemoryTraced which overload new, delete new [] et delete [] operators in order to have better trace of allocations and deallocations. Each Castor class derive from this one and 3 files are created in root folder to log allocations, deallocations : memoryleaks.log, memoryalloc.log and memorydealloc.log
TransformationMatrix no longer exists, it is now a collection of functions which computes 4x4 matrix operations
Modification SceneNode management : base class NodeBase holds the informations that were in SceneNode, 3 derived classes (GeometryNode, CameraNode et LightNode) take care of each category specificities.
MovableObject class now has less features (name and NodeBase), Light and Camera now derive from it
Renamed UniformVariable to FrameVariable.
OpenGL 3.x/4.x now fully supported.
Modified Vertex class in order to make them include texture coordinates and normals in order to have only 1 vertex buffer instead of 3 in a mesh.

Added a projection/normal and view matrices management class, in order to suppress the fixed pipeline support in OpenGl renderers.
Added personnal smart pointers.
Added an agle management class in order not to take care of degrees or radians.
Added a path class, to manage slashes or backslashes according to OS.
Created thread safe containers derived from STL ones (vector, list, map, multimap, set).
Splitted GLRenderer in two parts : one compatible OpenGL 2.x and before (GL2RenderSystem), one compatible OpenGL3.x et after (GL3RenderSystem).
GL2RenderSystem : according to client configuration, the fixed pipe is suppressed or keeped

Modified thread management, leaving the user choosing between Win32, MFC or boost.
Modified point and matrices classes.
Modified String class which now is independant from MBCS or Unicode.
Modified File class which now only uses streams.
Modified the render system, added a class Renderable used to create associated renderer in order to ease the creation of derived classes (submesh, scene node, light, camera...)
Changed scenes/materials/meshes files name (respectively cscn/cmtl/cmsh)

Still a crash at shutdown, supposedly due to shaders.
In GL3RenderSystem, I've got a black screen (?!?) but transformations seem to be correct.

Tangent space is computed and available in GLSL shaders.
Only tangent is computed, bitangent can be in the shader with a cross product.
To access to the tangent you must declare the following attribute in the vertex shader :
attribute vec3 tangent;

The points classes have their members in a union so you can call it as you wish (xyz, rgb, left right top bottom)

Corrected the crash on shutdown. It was due to VBOs which are now destroyed in a final render loop.