We’ve been lucky enough to receive a large number of patches this month which have ranged from useful tweaks and bugfixes to adding some significant new features. You can find them in CVS right now if you wish to try them out.
The major new features are:
- NatureSceneManager plugin: this is a new terrain engine from ond, using a slightly different approach to the existing terrain engine (it isn’t derived from the OctreeSceneManager, but uses it’s own internal quadtree) which gives some impressive results, both in terms of speed and visual quality. Be sure to check this one out if you’re a terrain fan, it’s demonstrated by the new ‘Nature’ demo.
- Objects can now be attached to bones on an animated entity, thanks to a patch from CUINL. Just call Entity::attachObjectToBone, with the name of the Bone in the skeleton this entity uses (derived from the Mesh), and a pointer to the MovableObject you want to attach (with an optional transformation offset). From then on, this object will be attached to the bone and will move relative to it as the entity is animated.
- Marc Hernandez has contributed a .mesh exporter, which can export polygon objects direct from Maya. No animation support yet, but Maya users will no doubt appreciate a direct route for their mesh objects.