Information: Progress of cal3d 0.6

First of all, I would like to thank all the numerous people who sent in bugs, questions, praises, job offers (wow!) and all other kinds of feedback. It is cool to see that the release of the library was notified by so many out there.

To keep you all up-to-date with the development, I will give here a short summary of the progress I made on cal3d 0.6:

- Unified Exporter Plugin Framework
There is now an unified exporter plugin framework that makes it possible to easily write new exporter plugins for whatever 3d modeller you want. Just create a few data access classes for your specific 3d modeller and the framework will do all the hard work for you. The 3ds MAX exporter is already working nicely within this framework.

- Improved Mesh Handling
The whole clumsy mesh handling/interface was completely rewritten. It is now possible to easily attach and detach meshes from a model (nice for different clothes/armors etc.). There is a new renderer class that provides a clean interface for your rendering loop.

- Mini Viewer
I created a simple model viewer based on OpenGL and GLUT. Just give it a skeleton, an animation and some mesh files as arguments, and it will animate and render the model for you.

The following points are currently in the works, and will make it into cal3d 0.6:

- Dummy Object Support
It is now possible to export dummy objects with the exporter plugin. The idea is to use these dummy objects to attach other objects to the model (think about weapons etc.). The handling inside the library is currently worked on.

- Level-of-Detail (LOD)
Progressive meshes will be implemented into the library. The exporter creates them according to your parameters and the library handles them afterwards. I am not yet sure about the result of this feature, but the plan is to make a basic version for 0.6 and improve it in further realeses, trial&error =)

As always, if you have a question or suggestion, just drop me an e-mail!

Regards
Bruno 'Beosil' Heidelberger