DeleD Community Edition

[Brian]

Hi Jeroen and paul and all at Delgine. I understand that you are extremely busy with many issues that need to be implimented into the program, however, to give you another headache, you are obviously aware of the disscussion going on regarding lightmaps and colour temperature on objects in the pellicon Crossing forum. To create a realistic environment it is essential to take these properties into consideration. So, may I be as bold to suggest, that you look into creating some standard materials that can be applied to objects. The type of meterials I am refering to is basic Glass, Water, Rock, Plastic, Paint and others all with an interface that will allow control over the peramiters that each material would have. A few suggestions would be specular, reflectiveness, bump, colour, texture, transparancy and anything else that could make the material more realistic.

As time goes by, myself and possibly others, like Jim Coe may be able to assist you to generate these default materials. If Deled is going to become the leader in this genre, then this has to be a priority.

Like I said, this is only a suggestion but one I feel is important. Kind regards Brian

[Paul-Jan]

Hi Brian,

I think the idea is pretty good, but it will take some time before we get there. Most importantly, it would require the materials to become a lot more advanced then they are now, as most of the properties you name there (transparancy, specular, reflectiveness, bump, etc) are _not_ supported at the moment. Some of them only make sense for very specific end-user rendering settings (like reflectiveness and specularity, both are dynamic properties, not something you can pre-calculate in a lightmap, so they need to be handled properly by whatever renderer you use to display the final product). Ogre possibly supports all of 'm, but we are not ogre-only.

That is just to say 'it will take a while', not 'it won't happen', as most of those extended material properties are already on our todo-list. It's a good suggestion!

[Brian]

I thought you guys would have this on your to do list, so I am pleased that it it being considered. I do not understand the complexities in making these type of materials available and I probably never will, however, I know it is not an easy task.

Plus, when we are able to apply such materials, especially chrome, in to our models, we don't know how they will be accepted by engines and players that use them.

These things are already acheiveble in high end 3D animation programs as an animation, but it has not yet been proved to work on the internet in an immersive 3D environment. At least to my knowledge anyway.

Keep up the good work Paul. Kind regards Brian.