Status report

Today one year has passed since I released the first version of JPatch.

I'd like to use this day to thank you for your interest in JPatch and give a brief status report concerning the next release:

The upcoming version (0.3) is a complete rewrite of JPatch. I decided to rewrite the code mainly because it were my first steps with object oriented programming and thus had some
fundamental design flaws. These flaws made it hard to debug and hard to extend.

The new version is (hopefully) much better designed an already has a lot more features than JPatch 0.2.1 had, like:

* Animation:Master model import (currently only geometry, no bones, etc.)
* A native XML based file format to load and save models
* A material editor with support for POV-Ray and RenderMan
* Hooks (as in Animation:Master)
* Five Point Patches (as in Animation:Master)
* Shader rendering in the editor windows
* No need to install extra packages like Java3D
* An improved set of tools (advanced rotate/move/scale manipulators, a magnet, etc...)

I'll continue to post some screenshots of the new version in the "What's next?" section of the homepage at http://www.jpatch.com/?page=next until it gets released.

I'm working on this new version for more than half a year now, and the vast majority of work is already done. As I write it in my spare time I can't tell when it will be finished, but it should be quite soon now...

- Sascha Ledinsky - February 4 2004 -