Well, the past couple of days I was supposed to be updating FlowED- however, things don’t always go to plan. Instead I found myself looking at mesh generation.

From the bog standard ManualObject demo I churned out a plethora of functions that draw and texture shapes using pixel coordinates, similar to how Max2D works. Emulating Max2D in Ogre probably isn’t going to be 1:1 because of the differences between the systems, but we’ll get close, and it will still of course be easy. Functions I wrote and tested were:

fG.Init2D()
fG.SetMaterial(Material:String)
fG.DrawRect(xPos:int,yPos:int,Width:int,Height:int,fill:int=false)
fG.DrawOval(xPos:int,yPos:int,width:int,height:int,edges:int,Fill:int=false)
fG.DrawLine()

I had fun writing these small functions and wrote a little example so if the interface is agreed upon, it may just see the next release.
The next thing this bought up was 3D mesh creation. To start with, I tasked myself with creating an easy CreateTerrain function. What I came up with was a CreateTerrain function that takes a 2 dimensional array containing the heightmap, and spits out a textured terrain with the same dimensions as the array.

The result was quite tasty, and I’m pretty sure this is what I’m going to use to create a slightly more realistic water demo- something I’ve wanted to do for a long time- you can expect more on this in the future.

The next step will be implementing the CreateMesh, Addvertex, Addtriangle, vertexnormals etc. These are the juicy bits- These alongside dynamic materials mean we could be generating some mean looking landscapes in code….

If you have any ideas or requests with this stuff- drop it in the forums where we can give it the old once over.

Over and out,

Damien.

It’s been roughly a month and a half since the initial release of Flow3D and we’ve been hard at work since then. We’ve fixed and added many things as we progress towards version 1.1 - this maintenance release is a culmination of these efforts. The BlitzMax software has also been updated to version 1.32, which removed some functionality that Flow3D utilized. This update fixes problems that users were experiencing when updating to BlitzMax 1.32.  If you want, you can head on over and download the latest version, or check out the changelog and future release schedules below!

Change log

• .scene/dotscene loading support added with the OgreMax Loader. See Samples/fG_DotScene Loading.bmx for details.
• Added cross-compatibility with BlitzMax 1.32
• Added support and samples for scene node animation.
• Added support and sample for billboard objects.
• Added support for using external window handles with fG.
• Added samples for using WxMod and MaxGUI with fG. WxMod and MaxGUI are native window APIs that allow you to create native application windows for use in your applications.
• Added better line drawing implementation.
• Added manual object and line drawing samples.

While the 1.05 update provides some modest improvements, many of the major features planned for 1.1 are still in development. To give you an idea of what’s coming up in version 1.1, here’s a short list of features that are guaranteed to be in Flow3D Version 1.1.

Abbreviated 1.1 Feature List

• Mac OSX Compatibility
• Full Render-to-Texture Support
• Hardware Instancing Support
• Max2D Emulation Support
• Simple Shader Examples
• Low-Level Vertex Access and Modification
• OgreNewt Vehicle Physics Demos

That’s it for now! As always, a big Thank You to all of our testers and supporters who have helped shape Flow3D into what it is today.

We look forward to bringing out Flow3D version 1.1 in the near future!

The Flow3D Team