Development Update
27 June 2008 - 17:41:29 UK
The Collada importer is complete in initial form and we are now refining and testing it using static and animated models exported from various packages such as Maya, 3D Studio and XSI. Material support includes specular lighting, translucency, transparency, ambient occlusion maps and multi-texturing.
The engine has been enhanced to include improved support for skeletal animation from the data that is available through this pipeline. For example, we support stepped, linear and bezier interpolation for transforms. Animations may be hierarchical and used for joints, scene graph nodes or both. Skinning is supported and morphing is in the works.
We have paid particular attention to the speed of our importer and most models are typically parsed instantly. The Collada specification is extensive and we plan to continue to enhance the importer on an on-going basis.
We have also improved the Elflight Engine native binary formats which are used to store game resources server-side. This has provided us with a worthwhile boost in performance when streaming.
